Listen to new Guess Who tune, “In America,” from band's first studio album in more than 20 years

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Cleopatra Records

Cleopatra RecordsVeteran Canadian rockers The Guess Who tip their hat to their neighbor to the south in a new track called “In America,” which got its premiere on Billboard.com. The tune will appear on the band’s first new studio album in 23 years, The Future IS What It Used to Be, due out September 14.

Drummer Garry Peterson, the only original Guess Who member still in the group, tells Billboard about the song, “The chorus says, ‘In America, you can get anything you want, you can get anything that you need’…It’s in the spirit that America’s a land of opportunity; if you really want to work hard, you can become a rock musician, you can become a brain surgeon, you can become a doctor — you can become president, if that’s really what you want to be.”

But Peterson also notes that the lyrics, penned by Guess Who frontman Derek Sharp, a.k.a. D# [Dee Sharp], also warn of the trouble you can get into in the U.S., or any country, “if you’re behind in taxes or into illicit things.”

“In America” certainly isn’t the first Guess Who song to offer commentary on the U.S.: The group’s chart-topping 1970 rock anthem “American Woman” was viewed as a pointed critique of the States. However, Peterson says he feels that song’s message was somewhat misinterpreted.

“From our perspective we really didn’t write it as a protest or a knock on America — where we’ve made all our money, in effect,” Garry maintains.

“Coming from a small place like Winnipeg and going on tour, there were all these things that are not prevalent in our world, in Canada at the time…and that came out in our song. It’s America personified as a woman that we didn’t quite know what to make of.”

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