KISS always stood for the American proposition.
Last week, President Trump announced that George Strait, Michael Crawford, Gloria Gaynor, Sylvester Stallone, and KISS will join the Kennedy Center’s 48th Class of Honorees. As Kayla Bartsch recently argued, these selections represent a victory for the cultural preferences of “normie Americans.” But by nominating KISS, Trump isn’t simply placing low culture in a grand spotlight. He’s paying tribute to everything that makes America extraordinary.
There have been ten full-time members of KISS since its founding in 1973, but only the four originals will be honored at the ceremony: Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, Ace Frehley, and Peter Criss. Together, they stand as a living, fire-breathing, makeup-coated embodiment of the American Dream. I mean it (full disclosure: I am not-so-secretly a shameless KISS fanatic).
When KISS began releasing music, they were met with meager sales and scornful reviews. Yet they persevered, touring continuously and steadily building a devout following among America’s youth. By 1977, KISS was an inescapable phenomenon; an omnipresent cultural force that consumed the American imagination. Today, the band’s facepaint and costumes represent rock and roll at its commercial apex. But though much of KISS’s success can be attributed to relentless merchandising, the band’s accomplishments and attendant wealth are testament to more than just the enriching power of capitalism.
KISS formed in New York City amid surging crime and rampant urban decay. Its original members were raised by working-class families in modest surroundings. Despite these conditions, they embraced the fundamental virtues of a free society to find success.
In the early days of the band, Stanley and Frehley drove taxis to support themselves, while Simmons taught at a Harlem elementary school. As the KISS concept evolved, they spent months tirelessly rehearsing their material and refining the theatrics that would propel them to fame. The lavish lifestyles they have enjoyed since the mid-’70s are a consequence of sheer hard work, thrift, sacrifice, and dedication. They became stars through an unshakable commitment to the vision that brought them together in the first place, building the largest and most remarkable show on earth.
Simmons has perhaps the most patriotic story of all. Born Chaim Witz to an impoverished family in Haifa, Israel, his mother, a Holocaust survivor, brought him to the United States in 1958. Years later, he’d become a cultural icon. For decades, Simmons has been a vocal champion of his adopted home. “I owe America everything,” he declared in 2011.
In the ’70s and ’80s, KISS’s contemporaries — John Lennon, John Fogerty, and Bruce Springsteen among them — chastised America in their songs and activism. Simmons and Stanley, however, used their own lyrics to convey a message of freedom and rugged individualism. “I believe in me,” they proclaimed in 1981, in a song that celebrated liberty tethered by responsibility. KISS stood for the American proposition, and in their music, they distilled the Declaration of Independence into a simple dictum: With enough self-confidence and determination, anyone can build a fulfilling life.
By honoring KISS, the Kennedy Center isn’t simply celebrating an emblem of popular culture. It’s celebrating the very notion of American exceptionalism. In our iconoclastic cultural moment, where America’s fundamental principles are under constant attack, we should welcome any effort to recognize the boundless opportunities this country has to offer. The opportunity to rock and roll all night and party every day is just one such example.