A good friend sent me a YouTube link of Kid Rock’s recently released single —“Don’t Tell Me How to Live”—advising me turn up the volume to the max and be prepared to have my world Kid Rocked!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agvibm7Wqy4
My ears and soul are still ringing.
“Don’t Tell Me How to Live” is a hillbilly elegy deserving of a Nobel Peace Prize. Like Nobel himself, Kid Rock’s lyrical nitroglycerin alone ought to be enough to shock and awe the “no joke” woke to open their minds to the necessity for respecting dissent. The Kid provides a battle cry so powerful and promising that it ought to make listeners recommit to skepticism. This is Kid Dynamite!
Kid Rock is a particular flavor—by design not made for everyone. It’s a mix of rap, country-rock and a Kid with a hot mic in front of a mouth from Detroit. Like all the best, Kid Rock is a self-conscious artist. He knows his place in the world because he forced himself—and his art—into it. In a must-watch “On the Record” interview with Fuse, Kid Rock explains that his music and the muse behind it goes where it is “celebrated; not tolerated.”
This single will certainly widen Kid Rock’s celebrated circle. Outside of “Monster Truck”—a voice and ax for that American spine of a line, “Ain’t no one going to tell me how to live”— there is kernel of truth so big in this song, that every red-blooded American needs to turn up the volume and listen to this made-in-Detroit devil with a cause and clue:
Years ago, we all thought it was a joke, see?
That every kid got a motherfucking trophy
But yo homie, here’s the situation
A nation of pussies is our next generation
And these minions and their agendas
Every opinion has a millennial offended
But this amendment one, it rings true
And if you don’t dissent, bitch, then see number two
Ain’t nothing new, right church, wrong pew
Get a clue, a crew, your fake news and views
Can all get the bottom of my motherfucking shoe
I’m the last of a few still screaming fuck you.
My fellow Americans, let’s put our money where Kid Rock’s mouth is and buy this single, fill his venues. Let’s make him rich (or richer) — and America Great Again.
Kid, I will see you in Texas on January 15th.
Editor’s Note: A version of this article appeared originally at Planned Man.