God Bless America an example of Berlin's "habit of interpolating bits of half-remembered songs into his own numbers." Berlin, born Israel Baline, had himself written several Jewish-themed novelty tunes. In 1938, with the rise of Adolf Hitler, Irving Berlin, who was Jewish and had arrived in America from Russia at the age of five, felt it was time to revive it as a "peace song," and it was introduced on an Armistice Day broadcast in 1938, sung by Kate Smith on her radio show. Berlin had made some minor changes; by this time, "to the right" might have been considered a call to
God Bless Sjumadjaja's film "Laila Majenun" ("Laila is Possessed"). Four years later, God Bless released "Cermin" ("Mirror"), which included more ballads and showed influences from Deep Purple and Van Halen; Abadi Soesman contributed a bit. The band, in an off-again on-again state for the next several years, released their third album, "Semut Hitam" ("Black Ants") in 1988; the album went on to be their most successful. This was followed by "Raksasa" ("Monster"; 1989), and "Apa Kabar?" ("What's Up?"; 1997). God Bless performed a "duel" with Padi on 9 November 2011, a band twenty years their younger; held in the Hard Rock Cafe