Arizona might need a new state song or two

Arizona's current state songs may need to be updated or replaced altogether. The first song, titled Arizona or the Arizona March Song, was wriiten in 1915 by Margaret Rowe Clifford and contains the opening stanza:

Come to this land of sunshine
To this land where life is young.
Where the wide, wide world is waiting,
The songs that will now be sung.
Where the golden sun is flaming
Into warm, white shining day,
And the sons of men are blazing
Their priceless right of way.

That sounds fabulously flaming welcoming. Especially the part about priceless rights of way. No mention of who should come or not come to the land of sunshine or what kinds of "papers" someone might need to present in order to quarantee "their priceless right of way" while there, but, well, in any case, the third stanza does present this generous invitation:

Not alone for gold and silver
Is Arizona great.
But with graves of heroes sleeping,
All the land is consecrate!
O, come and live beside us
However far ye roam
Come and help us build up temples
And name those temples "home."

That sure seems straight forward enough to me, "however far ye roam". And what could be more beckoning to ye that roam from afar than asking ye'all to "O, come and live beside us" and "build up temples" for which ye can call yees home? I guess those two stanzas will have to go.

The second song, titled Arizona, and naturalized in 1981, contains this interesting opening verse:

I love you, Arizona;
Your mountains, deserts and streams;
The rise of Dos Cabezas
And the outlaws I see in my dreams;

The "outlaws I see in my dreams" - ? Well, I dunno know exactly what that means, but where I come from outlaws are essentially illegals of some sort. In the sense they are living outside the law in some respect or another. The song doesn't get specific as to what exactly "outlaws" might constitute (a motorcycle club from McCook, Illinois?) but, neither does it finish with a two whoops and a hollo to send the illegals - or, for that matter, any other sort of dreamy outlaws that might cross the borders into ones feverish nightmares in the middle of the night - back to wherever the outlaw ye'alls came from in the first place. I guess that'll have to change if Arizona decides to get rid of the "O' come and live beside us - However far ye roam" stuff.

The rest of the 1981 adaptation is your basic county-western truckstop yokel fare: "I love you Arizona; Desert dust on the wind; The sage and cactus are blooming, And the smell of the rain on your skin." And so forth. Christ. Anyway...

You can read both songs in their entirety HERE (Wiki: Songs of Arizona).

The way I see it, the way Arizona is going, they're gonna have to find themselves a couple of new singing welcome mats.

Maybe Shawna Forde will come up with a plucky new ditty or two.

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