In the poem’s final moments, after laying out widespread 21st century paranoia (“I’m down on my hands and knees / Every time the doorbell rings”), Tweedy’s final verse joins two bleak images of lost nationalism:
“I would like to salute / the ashes of American flags / and all the fallen leaves / filling up shopping bags” The disturbing image of burnt American flags coupled with dead leaves filling up inanimate plastic bags links the demise of American ideals, the freedom our red, white and blue flag stands for and growing materialism.
Josh Ritter’s “Thin Blue Flame,” from his 2006 album “The Animal Years,” is another set of lyrics that encapsulates America’s political climate in the first decade of the 21st century. Ritter repeats the song’s titular refrain throughout the song’s 88 line length, beginning with its first couplet: “I became a thin blue flame / polished on a mountain range” Ritter sings, establishing a fascination with heaven represented by the horizon line. The song shifts from peace to war, delicately rewording the phrase to illustrate the narrator’s changing view of the world. The second verse begins:
“I became a thin blue wire / that held the world above the fire /and so it was I saw behind /heaven’s just a thin blue line.”
Ritter twists his own words, illustrating the painful disillusionment that characterizes the world around him. Vicious scenes of war, paranoia and uncertainty fill the song’s trajectory, gaining momentum. The darkness of a world plagued by war renders the hopeful blue skies of heaven a false construction, as Ritter’s character describes the world he sees around him. Snatches of imagery paint a picture far different from the thin blue flame of the first verse:
“now the wolves are hoing at our door / singing bout vengeance like it’s the joy of the Lord / bringing justice to the enemies not the other way round / they’re guilty when killed and they’re killed where they’re found.”
As Tom Ricks writes in the special edition “The Animal Years” liner notes, “I think a historian seeking a century or two from now to understand the United States in 2006 would do well to start by listening to this.”
That’s exactly where this article attempts to land. If poetry is dead, then perhaps its ghost is alive in the shell of 21st century music. These musicians are vivaciously alive: they’re not only scribbling phrases onto notepads, but they float these words into crowds night after night. Historians may not know these stanzas were set to music, but  they merely find these words printed on a page and think they’ve found poetry.