Country singer Martina McBride performing her song "Independence Day," is today's YouTube addition to Top Country Music Videos. What better a song/video than this, to add for today's 4th of July celebration. "Independence Day" is originally the third single from her 2nd studio album "The Way That I Am," which was released in September, 1993, and released as a single in 1994. Gretchen Peters wrote the song, and later recorded it herself. The video for this song won Music Video of the Year in 1994 at the Country Music Association Awards.McBride grew up on a farm singing country music from the moment she could tiptoe up to a mike. Before launching her own career on RCA Records, she learned about life on the road by selling T-shirts at Garth Brooks concerts. By singing about spousal abuse without coming off as preachy, the song "Independence Day," has since become McBride's signature song, and McBride became even more visible since then with the crossover success of her anti-domestic violence anthem "Independence Day." McBride has sold over 13 million albums in USA alone, and my favorite her song is "Anyway!"
Peters wrote this song tell a story of a woman's response to domestic abuse, seen from the point of view of her 8-year-old daughter. Looking back, she thinks maybe it wasn't coincidental. She was 8 years old when her parents split up, "So I did kind of have some kind of emotional grounding to understand at least how it feels from a child's point of view to have their world just come apart like that," she said. Although Peters herself has never been in the situation this song defines, she has certainly seen enough to know what the effects are. The lyrics have a double meaning in that the woman in the story is finally gaining her "freedom" from her abusive husband. Thus, it is her "independence day." The title also refers to the fact that the events noted in the song happened on the US' Independence Day, or July 4th.
The song's music video was somewhat controversial at the time of its release, because of its graphic depiction of domestic violence. The ending of the video is particularly intense, as it shows the young girl's home burning to the ground, implying that the mother had been responsible for the fire, and that she and the abusive father both perished in the fire. McBride is the spokesperson for many domestic abuse charities, and her recording of this song has had a resounding effect on domestic abuse awareness. Peters also makes a vocal appearance in the video for this song. It's her voice singing "Amazing Grace" in the very beginning. And she says it was a humbling experience. "It's very rare as a writer that you get a chance to hear your song, or you come even close to hearing your song as though you'd never heard it before. But I'll tell you, I worked on the video, and when I first saw the video, when I sat down and they showed it to me, I cried, too. It really moved me."
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