April 1, 2025: Foolish Texts: “Won’t Get Fooled Again”

[For thisyear’s April Fool’s series, I’ll be AmericanStudying cultural works with “fool”in the title. Share your thoughts on foolish texts, with or without the word,for a fool-hearty crowd-sourced weekend post!]

On AmericanStudieslessons and limits from an English classic rock anthem.

In oneof my early posts, nearly 14 years ago, I wrote about the Australian rockband Midnight Oil (whose excellent latest album I included in this muchmore recent post), and the limits but also and especially the possibilitiesof the transnational turn in AmericanStudies. Since I’m writing about a song byanother rock group from outside of the US, England’s The Who, in today’s post, I’dask you to check out that prior one (the first hyperlink above), and then comeon back for some thoughts on that transnational band and one of their biggesthits.

Welcomeback! The Who’s “Won’tGet Fooled Again” (1971) is very much a product of its early 1970s moment,and specifically of a rising sense of pessimism and even cynicism about theprior decade’s social movements and efforts to change the world. That tone ispresent throughout the song, but most especially in the chorus: “I’ll tip myhat to the new Constitution/Take a bow for the new revolution/Smile and grin atthe change all around/Pick up my guitar and play/Just like yesterday/Then I’llget on my knees and pray/We don’t get fooled again.” A lot has been writtenabout how Watergatecontributed to an erosion of trust and shift away from 1960s idealism in theearly to mid-1970s, but this song (featured on the album Who’s Next)came out nearly two years before that scandal began to break, and despite itsEnglish origins I have to think it can be contextualized in similar perspectivesin the US as well. The transition between decades is never a singular norlinear one, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t moments of demarcation, andI’d say this Who song can help us identify one between the 60s and 70s.

At thesame time, it’s fair to say that a bunch of English white men aren’t going tobe the best judges of what did and didn’t take place for disadvantaged Americancommunities, and I think this Who song also features some less apt momentsalong those lines. For example, there’s the second verse: “A change, it had tocome/We knew it all along/We were liberated from the fold, that’s all/And theworld looks just the same/And history ain’t changed/’Cause the banners, they wereall flown in the last war.” Maybe that last line is an anti-Vietnam Warsentiment, in which case fair enough on that score, but when it comes toAmerican domestic history I think it’s impossible to argue that the worldlooked just the same after 1960s changes like (for example) the Civil RightsMovement, the women’s movement, the Great Society programs, and more. I’m not ahistorian of England, and maybe less had really changed across the pond duringthis turbulent decade; but here in the US, I think it’d be foolish to suggestthat “history ain’t changed” over that time.

Nextfoolish text tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Foolish texts you’d share?