It was 1938, and Kate Smith was in the market for a new brand.

She was several years into her singing career — a career that would span five decades and earn her a Presidential Medal of Freedom — and Smith’s manager, Ted Collins, wanted to change up her image. She was going to be wholesome, the girl next door. All-American.

So when they approached the composer Irving Berlin, in need of a new patriotic gem for Smith to perform on Armistice Day (now Veterans Day) in 1938, he had just the thing: an old tune, written and stashed away during his Army days 20 years earlier.

“God Bless America” would become a sensation, and so would Smith. But this April, the song would become tarnished by its association with the performer who made it famous, when information surfaced that Smith had performed racist songs in the years before “God Bless America.” Two sports teams that regularly played her rendition, the New York Yankees and Philadelphia Flyers, dropped the Kate Smith version from their playlists.

But “God Bless America” will surely survive, with a staying power that derives from the various meanings it has taken on for different people in different eras.