Nashville hit-maker Nate Kenyon just delivered a blue-collar battle cry for America’s 250th birthday — and it hits like a middle finger to the elites.
His original song “US” celebrates the real Americans keeping this country running: bus drivers, brick layers, gas station attendants, cops, farmers, postal workers. The people the ruling class ignores.
Kenyon wrote the song for Breitbart’s American Soundtrack series, where top Nashville talent create original music honoring the 250th. His acoustic performance marks the first time anyone has heard the track — and it’s already resonating.
“Up before the rooster crows / Working ourselves to the bone / Like our fathers did / And our fathers’ fathers did”
The Georgia native told Breitbart he thought about his mom when writing it — she works for the post office in Baxley, Georgia, “just middle America, just working her butt off.”
“Without those people this place would fall apart,” Kenyon said.
Kenyon didn’t grow up on country music. He gravitated toward Eminem and Aerosmith before finding Nashville later in life. Those rock and rap influences show in his unique phrasing and melody — a sound that just lands.
His credits speak for themselves. Kenyon has written with Lainey Wilson, landed cuts on albums for Lee Brice and LOCASH, and placed two songs on Luke Bryan’s new record.
Back in February, Breitbart went on the bus with Lee Brice to Turning Point USA’s alternate Super Bowl halftime show. Brice debuted “Country Nowadays” — a song Kenyon co-wrote with Brice and Matt Alderman. The track celebrated faith, family, and freedom from government overreach.
That same populist energy fuels “US.”
The song’s imagery covers the ground the elites overlook: Waffle House servers filling coffee cups, cops putting bad guys in cuffs, farmers growing corn and peas, coaches and bartenders and painters.
“You can’t spell U.S.A without ‘US'”
Kenyon uses the first-person collective throughout — no distinction between himself and the workers he’s honoring. That makes it deeply personal.
One verse lands especially hard:
Tending bar, coaching ball
Painting walls, laying brick
Who you think builds the office
For them big wig pricks
The anger feels justified. The middle finger to the elites feels earned.
Everything in the song feels authentic — like Kenyon knows every person he’s writing about personally. His singing style adds another layer of truth to what reads as a full-throated ode to populism.
The chorus drives the point home with a warning:
America without me
And my kind I guarantee
That the land of the free would go bust
Cause you can’t spell U-S-A
Without us
Kenyon’s “US” arrives as America hits its 250th year — a reminder that the country’s strength has always been the patriots who show up before dawn and work themselves to the bone.
Like their fathers did. And their fathers’ fathers did.
