In 1854 Horace Greeley, a New York newspaper editor, gave Josiah B. Grinnell a famous piece of advice. "Go West, young man, and grow up with the country," said Greeley. Grinnell took Greeley's advice, moved west, and later founded Grinnell, Iowa.
Widely held rhetoric of the nineteenth century suggested to Americans that it was their divine right and responsibility to settle the West with Protestant democratic values. Newspaper editor Horace Greely, who coined the phrase “Go west, young man,” encouraged Americans to fulfill this dream.
The song's title is attributed to the 19th-century quote "Go West, young man" commonly attributed to the American newspaper editor Horace Greeley, a rallying cry for the settlement and colonization of the American West, but also an invitation to pursue one's own dreams and individuality.
political in nature, cold war era song originally by the Village People (the YMCA group), borrowing sounds from the Soviet National Anthem and reforming them into a piece about how great and easy life could be if you abandon restricting and cruel communism
"Go west" is an idiom primarily meaning to die, or for an object to be lost, broken, or ruined. Frequently used in British English as a humorous or euphemistic phrase, it originates from the sun setting in the west and has been used to describe death since the 14th century, particularly during WWI.
