The Killers’ newest track “Land of the Free” enters the political fray as the song focuses on the border wall and gun violence in the United States.
The song’s music video was directed by Academy Award-winning director Spike Lee and showed images of migrants traveling to the U.S. over the border the country shares with Mexico. Rolling Stone reported Lee was given “full creative control” of the video.
The Killers lead singer Brandon Flowers is heard singing, “When I go out in my car, I don’t think twice but if you’re the wrong color skin [I’m standing crying].”
The song mentions mass incarceration and gun control.
“So how many daughters, tell me how many sons do we have to put in the ground before we just break down and face it, we got a problem with guns,” Flowers sings.
The song concludes with Flowers singing that migrants just “want the same things we do in the land of the free.”
“Down at the border, they’re gonna put up a wall, concrete and rebar steel beams high enough to keep all those filthy hands off our hopes and our dreams,” he sang.
The song’s debut comes amid the partial government shutdown, which is in its fourth week and the longest in history. Republicans and Democrats have been unable to come to an agreement over Trump’s demand for $5.7 billion in funding for a border wall or a barrier.
Flowers wrote in a statement on Facebook that he loved the U.S. but believed “that we can do better.” He said he wrote the song after the number of mass shootings in the U.S.
“In the months and years that followed, America would be hit with an onslaught of more mass shootings of innocents and too many examples of racial injustice to ignore,” he wrote.
Flowers said he “couldn’t help but sit down and commit how I was feeling into a song” after he did some “soul searching.”
“We dishonor our values, our ancestors and our heritage when we tear gas our brothers and sisters seeking asylum,” he wrote.
