Aunt Jemima is no more. NASCAR will no longer tolerate Confederate flags. Statues ranging from Confederate leaders to Christopher Columbus, some having stood for over a century, have either been toppled or removed. To say the death of George Floyd and the resulting Black Lives Matter movement has forced change unto America is an understatement.
Videos by American Songwriter
Whether you agree with the aforementioned changes or not, it’s not hard to understand the argument how they all, in one way or another, either celebrate slavery or at the very least turn a blind eye to it. Yet there they were, right under our very noses.
Now Buddy and Julie Miller want something else changed that also sits right under our nose: money. Appalled upon finding out that most US currency is adorned with faces of a former slave owners, Julie felt compelled to bring that hypocrisy to light.
Releasing a series of what they call “Public Service Songs” during the Covid-19 pandemic these past few months, the couple has generated songs applicable to the times we are living in. Up until now, they have stayed on the lighter side of things with “Public Service Song #1: Stay Home” and “Public Service Song #2: Concerning Bleach” featuring the cautionary lyrics, “Don’t, don’t drink bleach, it will kill you and you will be dead. Don’t, don’t, don’t drink bleach, no matter what the President said.”
However, that whimsical attitude changes today.
“Public Service Song #5: Get Offa My Money” breaks from the lighthearted route and American Songwriter is proud to premiere this thundering musical mallet. Barebones in body but deafening in delivery, the husband and wife duo take turns exploiting the ‘do as I say, not as I do’ lifestyles of some of our nation’s most revered men.
“I was so shocked to find out from a documentary that many of the architects of democracy were slaveholders,” says a dismayed Julie. “Even the writer of the glorious words ‘… we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…” then packed up and went home to many slaves.I was disgusted. Then I realized my black friends were having to touch the slave owners pictures every time they used money. It is insane and cannot continue.”
To prove their intense belief and insistence on change, the Americana Music Association 2020 Best Duo/Group nominees are putting their money where their mouths are. 100% of the proceeds of “Public Service Song #5: Get Offa My Money” will benefit Black Lives Matter, buy it here.
Photo By Kate York
