"An Open Letter to My Teenage Son" is a spoken-word song performed by American WMAX radio newscaster Victor Lundberg. Released in September 1967, the song was written by Robert R. Thompson and produced by Jack Tracy. The recording of Lundberg's vocals is played over "Battle Hymn of the Republic." It features on Lundberg's only album, "An Open Letter."
Content and lyrics
The song acts as a message to the teenagers and young adults of the 1960s in the United States who were protesting against being drafted and sent to Vietnam in the midst of the Vietnam War. The lyrics touch on hippies, the hippie movement, 1960s counterculture, the summer of love, and the questioning of Christianity and the existence of God by teenagers. The narrator describes the wishes of his son to be judged on his "own personal habits, abilities and goals," questions about whether God is dead, (a question likely a product of the negative events of the time and unheard prayer) to which Lundberg tries to convince his son that "God is a guide, and not a storm trooper," and that the protests and movements are based on "a well intended but unjustifiable misconception" that "created part of the basis of (your) generation's need to rebel against (our) society." One of the biggest themes of the message is draft-card burning, in which Lundberg claims "all past wars have been dirty, immoral, bloody and second-guessed—however, history has shown most of them necessary," and that if his son is doubtful of the principles upon which the U.S. was founded, whether the free enterprise system in this country is worth protecting, of people's freedom of religion, individual endeavors and method of government, he "(doesn't) belong here." The narrator also accuses him of being ungrateful for the "opportunities" this country has given him. Towards the end, Lundberg tells his son that he and his mother will love him no matter what he does, but that he should also burn his birth certificate because that means to him that he has no son.
On the B-side is a 3-minute-41-second song titled "My Buddy Carl," which discusses similar themes and recounts a letter from a war soldier about one of his best friends at the time, over the same instrumental.
Chart performance and critical reception
For the week of November 11, 1967, the record hopped onto the Billboard Hot 100 chart at #84, breaking into the top ten in just 3 weeks, making it one of the dozen or so fastest-climbing records in Hot 100 history up to that point, as well as one of the shortest-lived top ten presences seeing as it spent a total of only six weeks on the chart.
The record sold over one million copies within a month of release and was awarded a gold disc, along with a Grammy Award nomination for Best Spoken Word Recording, losing to Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen's "Gallant Men".
A writer for Cashbox magazine called it an "inspirational narrative with some interesting points to make," but refuted them, saying "the conclusion rings somehow false." Emmanuel Hapsis of KQED wrote "The track is essentially a rambling rant by a random newscaster about long hair, beards, glue-sniffing, whether God is dead, and George Washington," while Douglas Wolk of Slate called it "the ne plus ultra of right-wing spoken-word hits." One of the songwriters, Robert Thompson, was interviewed by Rolling Stone magazine for their second issue in November 1967:
The record caused criticism as well. William Zinsser wrote a long article for Life magazine in January 1968 titled "The Pitfalls of Pop's Pompous Pop-off," and said of the song, "It's not necessary to be a teenage son to be offended by this record, this is something that anybody can hate. This creep has a voice of mushy smugness intoning a set of rigid creeds. It is hard in a mere magazine to convey the sanctimonious roundness of Lundberg's voice. This man does not sound like anyone's father." He accused the song of "being bought by Lt. General Lewis B. Hershey and sent to draft boards across the country."
Lundberg made an appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show on November 12, 1967.
Parts of "An Open Letter To My Teenage Son" were used as the intro for the song "All My Best Friends Are Metalheads" by American band Less Than Jake.
Response records
"An Open Letter" spawned at least ten "response" records. Most of these spoken-word records all have the father's son write a response to what the father had said. The son's response varies from letter to letter, depending on the nature of the records that are shown here.