NASHVILLE (AP) — This year is a special one for Lee Greenwood. He’s marking the 30th anniversary of “God Bless The U.S.A.” Greenwood wrote the song in 1983 in response to Russian authorities mistaking a Korean jet on its way from New York to Seoul for a spy plane and shooting it down with 269 passengers on board.

Since then, it’s become an anthem during the Gulf War, after 9/11, during the Iraq War and after Hurricane Katrina. Greenwood says the song came so easily, it nearly wrote itself.