Songfacts®:

• In 2020, many Americans, fed up with a broken health care system, longstanding racial divides and a bungled response to the coronavirus pandemic, wondered if the era of American exceptionalism - a concept instilled in the populace for generations - was over. On "American Sunset," Bruce Sudano adds his voice to those who feel their country is slowly falling apart.
  
  "I wrote 'American Sunset' out of concern for the direction of my country and as a warning," Sudano said. "Fearing that if we don't change our ways we will continue to sink as a nation already evidencing the early stages of decline. The reasons for this? Self assuredness, flagrant pride and conceit, unbridled selfishness, deceit, denial, the obliteration of truth, the already overwhelming and growing inequality which in itself is a certain road to revolution. All of this fueled by a government configured to protect and enrich those in power. In doing so we have abandoned the principles that made America great and have allowed rampant greed in the name of capitalism to become our god. Thus, we are headed for sunset, unless we can change our course, it's not too late! Such heavy matters for a little folk song."
• This is the lead single from Sudano's album Spirals, Vol. 2 - Time And The Space in Between. Sudano has been around the block - in the early '70s, he played keyboards in the group Alive 'N Kickin'("Tighter, Tighter"), and later in the decade was part of the group Brooklyn Dreams. After he married Donna Summer in 1980, he put his career on hold to help raise their children and free up time for her to record and tour. Summer died in 2012; Sudano remarried in 2020, a few months before releasing this song.