How a satirical Bosnian song about the American dream became a World Cup anthem

When Bosnian banding Dubioza kolektiv released U.S.A. in 2011, they ne'er imagined their tongue-in-cheek vocal well-nigh disillusionment with the American stargaze would be repurposed into a certified World Cup hit.

“We had no idea and no plan, even though some of the people accuse us that we have some prophetic things in our songs,” Vedran Mujagić, the band’s bassist and one of its founding members, told As It Happens host Nil Köksal. “That we, somehow, like The Simpsons, managed to get the future right.”

Similarly, according to the band, nobody could have predicted what unfolded in April, when underdog Bosnia stunned Wales in a dramatic penalty shootout in Cardiff, ending Wales' World Cup hopes. Just before the match started, the band members say they were surprised when cameras captured a group of hardcore Bosnian supporters unfurling a banner bearing what would soon become an iconic chant: “I am from Bosnia, take me to America."

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The rest, as they say, is history. The fast-paced, ska-punk earworm resurged as a viral hit after Bosnia pulled off another upset days later, this time defeating Italy to secure the country’s second-ever World Cup appearance. 

“We didn’t have any clue that 15 years later the song would have its second incarnation in this football context," said Mujagić.

On May 25, just three weeks before Bosnia-Herzegovina’s FIFA World Cup 2026 match against Canada, the band dropped a new music video for a reimagined version of the track. Retitled, I Am From Bosnia, Take Me To America, the video celebrates football’s working-class roots, with the song borrowing its name from the opening lyrics of the original hit.

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The video has already racked up nearly three million views on YouTube, in addition to the 26 million views the original U.S.A. video has gathered over the years.

“Our song is out of our hands and out of control,” said Brano Jakubović, the band’s keyboardist and other founding member. “It basically doesn’t belong to us anymore; it went somewhere else and I love that because this is the dream come true for every musician, that your song becomes something else…you know, [the] people’s song.”

The original song — driven by its infectious accordion melody — opens with a catchy, hummable stanza — “I can no longer wait, take me to United States; Take me to Golden Gate, I will assimilate." But Mujagić says the “naive” protagonist's dream to escape “this nightmare” and “go to a promised land” quickly dissolves into a realization that the American dream isn’t all it's cracked up to be. 

“He realized that it actually is not all that nice and that ‘grass is not greener in the neighbour’s courtyard’ and that there is ‘no place like the motherland,'” said Mujagić, quoting some of the song's lyrics. “So he turns back and goes back home, so this was the original intent … we were playing with all of these cultural and stereotypes of Bosnians.” 

Mujagić says the song arrived during a time when there was a large diaspora of Bosnians — some  1.7 million — living abroad, “immigrating either for economic reasons or they left as war refugees in the ‘90s."

Both band members note the song may carry a deeper, emotional resonance for the players on Bosnia’s national team, many of whom were “either born or raised in the diaspora and not living in Bosnia.”

“[The] same player who is born and raised in [the] States, he scored the last penalty against Italy,” said Jakubović, referring to 21-year-old Esmir Bajraktarević. “Imagine how it [looked] when he scored his goal and immediately this song started playing in the stadium. I mean, for me it was very emotional, I cannot imagine how it was for him.”

Journalist

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