Idaho’s state song is ‘Here We have Idaho.’ It’s not very stirring, and suffers from a tune best suited to a third grade tonette band, but it’s what we’ve got. Here are the lyrics:
HERE WE HAVE IDAHO
- You’ve heard of the wonders our land does possess,
- Its beautiful valleys and hills.
- The majestic forests where nature abounds,
- We love every nook and rill
CHORUS
- And here we have Idaho,
- Winning her way to fame.
- Silver and gold in the sunlight blaze,
- And romance lies in her name.
- Singing, we’re singing of you,
- Ah, proudly too. All our lives thru,
- We’ll go singing, singing of you,
- Singing of Idaho.
Great. Except that it doesn’t fully capture the practical realities of Idaho life. But happily, Idaho, I’m here for you with my own version. Dear reader, if you would like to sing with me in unison, here is the tune:
STRUGGLING IN IDAHO
- You’ve heard of call centers our land does possess,
- Its gigantic pawnshops and bills.
- The majestic ballfield where football abounds,
- We used to have sugar mills
CHORUS
- And here we have Idaho,
- Hocking her guns to live.
- Silver and gold shops on every block,
- But charities nag you to give.
- Searching, we’re searching for jobs,
- At minimum wage. Fed minimum wage,
- I’ll be hungry, but never a jerk,
- Struggling in Idaho.
Lyrics © 2014 J.K. Kelley
The Editorial Maverick 
Wow. The official version is pretty bad. The title sounds like something a tour guide would say. The meter barely manages to sorta-scan, and then only by using language that’s stilted to a nearly Bruce Springsteen degree. The truly weird part, though, is that for some reason (or maybe none) I parsed ‘romance lies’ initially as adjective-noun rather than noun-verb and thought ‘Waitaminnnt. Is that an oblique acknowledgement that “Idaho”, like “Toronado”, isn’t an actual word in any Romance language?’.
Pulling back from that array of potential tangents, I’ll just note that living there (or at least nominally in the same state) might, even still, be an option for me if I could make the right business work there. Unfortunately, I have doubts as to the probability of that being the case.
Finally: Your parody is above average. Someday I’ll try to match it by doing something with the Florida state song, if I ever figure out which one it is.
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You have an interesting thought process, bro. Boise is actually an excellent place to start a business, and seems to have an active music scene. Needless to say, the third-grade-music-class vibe of Idaho’s state song is not representative of the local climate. I am tempted to append another parody with an issue-oriented rather than economic focus.
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