The songs on "'Merican" address topics including love and relationships, sociopolitical commentary, and frustrations with life in a touring band. Aukerman remarked that "there's no part of the "'Merican" EP that is a retread of anything we've done in the past. Some of the songs are major departures for us, like 'Here with Me,' and the hidden track 'Alive.' Even the title song is actually a stretch for us; if you look back on all the songs we have done, there are very few that have any 'political' content in them." Merican" addresses positive and negative aspects of American history, celebrating cultural figures such as Otis Redding, Duke Ellington, and Walt Whitman while condemning slavery, Joseph McCarthy, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Vietnam War.