The Heavenly States – “Fifth Of July” (Song Premiere)

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Today I’m excited to bring everyone the latest single from The Heavenly States called “Fifth of July.” The band delivers a razor-sharp, new wave-tinged anthem that is sure to make you feel something. If you’re enjoying the new single, please consider supporting the band here.

“Fifth of July” captures the eerie emotional aftermath of a national celebration. What inspired you to write from the perspective of the day after the Fourth, and what were you hoping to spotlight with that shift?

The fourth of July is our most celebrated event as a country, but there’s something new in the air — something beyond the banality of the fourth of July Sale. Birthdays are supposed to indicate growth. How have we grown? It’s supposed to be a day to remember who we are and what we are doing as a country, as a people engaged in what once was the unique project of “independence.” But we’ve polluted the very idea of freedom. What passes for “freedom” today — freedom to shop, freedom to self-medicate, freedom to cause harm, freedom to self-destruct, to impose one’s idiocy on others, freedom to ignore all life on earth. There is actually, no freedom in America, but belief in it persists as a distortion that is wreaking havoc on everyone, including the believers.

There’s a strong visual and lyrical contrast in the song — plastic forks on lawns, TV slaughter, quiet despair under loud celebration. How did you approach balancing satire and sincerity in this track?

The sincere “heart” of the song is in the opening line, “There is an empty nest facing the sky.” We say it twice. Then we start looking around and see what we have alongside this emptiness. When we say “We care a lot” we’re pointing to the way we consume entertainment and information on one smooth plane, but don’t have great follow-through with the caring. If you hear the lyric from the inside, it’s a satire. If you hear the lyric from the outside, it’s a contradiction baked into humanity that we are framing.

You’ve described the song as a “day-after danse macabre.” How does that metaphor reflect the band’s broader relationship to American culture and current events?

America isn’t a territory, it’s an idea, a constellation of ideas that were supposed to unfold, self-correct based on principles set out by the founders, and therefore unique because it was an open project, not a prison. It recognized that it was going to have to grow while still retaining its identity as a country. That alone was reason to be proud to be an American — even an oppressed American — because it was supposed to be at the vanguard, the one system that had the power and was willing to stand up to tyranny from within and without. Who doesn’t think we’ve lost our way? Instead of marginalizing what could not be corrected in ourselves and in our culture, we shirked that responsibility and just let greed, petty criminality and shameful inhumanity have the day. Some of even started to willfully lean into the shirking, thinking there was nothing they could do, imagining that they were bravely embracing the inevitable or the fated. It’s a “danse macabre” because what we have now is what you get when you let those devils in. Those devils and their deeds are ugly, sad and even terrifying at times but they are also simple, weak and dumb. Evil is just not that interesting — it’s a foregone conclusion and a goofy dancer. It could be dismantled like a parade puppet, but for now, it dances at having tricked us all.

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