"For America" is a song written and performed by American singer-songwriter Jackson Browne from his 1986 album Lives in the Balance. Released as the first single from the album, it reached #30 on Billboards Hot 100 chart, spending twelve weeks on that chart after debuting at #72, and peaked at #3 on the Mainstream Rock chart. It was also released as a single in the United Kingdom, as an EP in Germany, and as a promotional issue in Spain and Japan. A Statue of Liberty-shaped vinyl picture disc single was also released by Asylum in 1986, manufactured in the United Kingdom.

Although concern with the state of the world has always been found in Browne's lyrics ("Doctor My Eyes," "For Everyman"), the more specifically referenced socio-political awareness of the previous album's lead single "Lawyers in Love" became even more overt and political in "For America," (the title of which seems to deliberately link the song to two of Browne's earlier "eulogy" songs, "For a Dancer," and "For a Rocker").

And the album from which it came, Lives in the Balance, is seen as his first overall "political" album, so critical reaction to the song reflected a perception of this movement in Browne's lyrical themes toward more specific and biting lines in "sharply etched political songs (that) question cultural imperialism, foreign policy and the current state of the American Dream:'"

"When Browne sings in 'For America' of how he used to retreat into "the safety of my own head," he isn't kidding," wrote Jimmy Guterman in a 1986 Rolling Stone review of the album, but now Browne opens his new album with a song, "both a prayer and a love song, which damns 'a generation's blank stare.'" Critiquing the musical and production aesthetics, Guterman complains "a gratuitous Clarence Clemons-derived sax riff that mars 'For America' distracts the listener.

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