MiniMoon
Oh yes please! It's an awful song. The full lyrics are all about crushing foes.
Yes, well if you look at the texts of other countries national anthems they are all much of a muchness.
Generally speaking they were either written at a time of national crisis or adopted as a national anthem during one.
And it is hard to know what would be better.
It may seem easy to write a text that basically says that you love your country, but really only Sweden has managed to do so without either sounding martial or in the case of the Danish anthem about the country regretting the time when the country was greater,
Certainly the Danish anthem is dated now, but even if new anthems are written they will be old-fashioned in the course of quite few years.
Most of us probably sang both Land of Hope and Glory, and Kipling's Land of our Birth as schoolchildren with enthusiasm, but are made slightly uncomfortable now by the sentiments expressed. The same thing is likely to happen even if you do succeed in getting a new British National Anthem.
