Songs with patriotic themes garnered significantly less airplay at country radio this 4th of July than in 2017, according to a new article.

Billboard reports that overall, patriotic country songs experienced a dip of 38 percent in airplay from July 1-4, 2018, as compared to airplay for the same songs one year earlier. Lee Greenwood's patriotic anthem, "God Bess the U.S.A.," earned 579 Independence Day spins in 2018, dropping 33 percent from 859 spins in 2017, while Toby Keith's flag-waving post-911 song "Courtesy of the Red, White & Blue (The Angry American)" received 305 spins, a drop of 33 percent from 457 spins in 2017.

Brooks & Dunn's "Only in America," Aaron Tippin's "Where the Stars and Stripes and the Eagle Fly," Darryl Worley's "Have You Forgotten?" and Waylon Jennings' "America" also experienced dips, but the song most impacted at country radio in 2018 was Willie Nelson's "Living in the Promiseland," which earned just 13 spins, down from 35 spins in 2017.

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Billboard's report only cites data and did not interview any program directors for their take on the numbers, but given the current partisan political divide over immigration, the data suggests that the song's massive 63 percent drop year-to-year might be due to immigration becoming such a hot-button issue in 2018.

The news comes on the heels of a recent Gallup poll in which just 47 percent of Americans described themselves as "extremely proud" to be an American. That number is the lowest recorded in the 18 years since Gallup launched that poll, and the first time that less than a majority of respondents described themselves as extremely proud.

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