'Shuttin' Detroit Down': the first recession hit

In its hour of agony, the Motor City has found perhaps not succour, but at least a balladeer. Not long ago, John Rich was best known as one half of the feisty country duo Big and Rich. But with his song "Shuttin' Detroit Down" he is on the way to becoming for the current economic slump what Bob Dylan was for the 1960s protest movement.

The idea came to him watching the news as one financial bailout followed another yet did not deter chief executives from splashing out on corporate jets and office make-overs. Thus was a populist troubadour born, voicing the outrage of ordinary America, brought to its knees by the follies of others.

As Rich told a Detroit radio station: "I'm sitting there, getting madder and madder, watching New York and Washington sling billions of dollars back and forth to each other while the hard-working people in America were just going, 'What in the world is going on up there?'"

He penned the song in an hour. When it came out as a single in late January, the impact was instant. It now stands at No 13 on Billboard's country chart.

If anything, in the wake of the deadlines just imposed by the White House on General Motors and Chrysler to get their houses in order, it is more topical than ever. Newspaper columnists are railing at the Obama administration's double standards: open purse strings for the financial sector whose recklessness and greed caused the meltdown; far tougher treatment for Detroit, including a public threat of bankruptcy.

Watch John Rich perform 'Shutting Detroit Down'


That is basically the point Rich makes with his lyrics: "While the boss-man takes his bonus pay and jets on out of town/ And DC's bailing out them bankers as the farmers auction ground/ Yeah, while they're living it up on Wall Street in that New York City town/ Here in the real world they're shuttin' Detroit down/ Here in the real world they're shuttin' Detroit down."

Critics have called Rich's sentiments trite and simplistic but once again country music, a genre that thrives in America, is expressing the feelings of a nation. It conveyed the misery of the Great Depression; it caught the turmoil of the 1960s; in conservative guise it expressed "good ol' boy" patriotism, especially in the wake of 9/11. Now Rich is voicing public indignation at Wall Street and the widespread gut feeling that what's happening isn't fair – above all, to the millions in the motor industry and beyond who have lost their jobs.

As he laments: "Well that old man's been working in that plant most all his life/Now his pension plan's been cut in half and he can't afford to die/And it's a crying shame, 'cus he ain't the one to blame/ When I looked down to see his calloused hands/Well let me tell you friend it gets me fightin' mad."

The Motor City and the Republican party stand to benefit from the song. Rich, a Republican, has made forays into politics before. In last year's White House race, he supported the former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson before switching to John McCain and releasing the single "Raisin' McCain". He also featured in the festivities at the Republican convention in Minnesota.

"Shuttin' Detroit Down" may have a greater political impact as the party identified with George Bush, country clubs and corporate America rebrands as an underdog and a mouthpiece of blue-collar anger, a last rampart against an elitist Democratic juggernaut.