After recently listening to some of my music collection from the seventies and eighties I find myself asking, where has all the edgy, protest and political tracks gone from our charts and air waves?
Growing up, there was always some band or artist protesting about something or other, whether it was war - Vietnam and the Cold War being common themes; the Government; the welfare state; deprivation; ban the bomb; racism; there was always something to sing about. Not now, it seems we’re all so content with our perfect lives and Governments that there’s no need to protest or sing about it.
So How Do You Define a Protest Song ?
Well for a start it’s a piece of music that in its own right is a great song. Good words and fine sentiments are not enough. The music must move you.
It needs to be a song with a purpose; a song that doesn’t confine itself to commenting on or bemoaning the ills of the world, but looks in some small way to change things. It may do this by directly calling for something to happen – remember Free Nelson Mandela? It must do it by informing us, but also it must appeal to our hearts and our emotions.
A true protest song should really address a specific issue or issues that are current at the time. Songs about wars and revolutions in days long gone don’t really count.
The song should really provoke the listener; it should shock us, unsettle us, amaze us, inspire us, make us angry, make us sad or make us optimistic. If it doesn’t do any of these things, it hardly deserves to be called a protest song.
Thirty of my favourite Protest Songs include:
- Edwin Starr – War
- Sam Cooke – A Change Is Gonna Come
- The Special AKA – Free Nelson Mandela
- Peter Gabriel – Biko
- Billy Bragg – Between The Wars
- The Levellers – Battle of the Beanfield
- Bronski Beat – Smalltown Boy
- Prince – Sign of The Times
- Nena – 99 Red Balloons
- Marvin Gaye – What’s Going On?
- Neil Young – Rockin’ In the Free World
- Bob Marley – Redemption Song
- Bob Dylan – A Hard Rain’s a Gonna Fall
- The Beat – Stand Down Margaret
- Morrissey – Irish Blood English Heart
- Black Sabbath – War Pigs
- Pat Benatar – Hell Is for Children
- Pink Floyd – Another Brick in the Wall
- The Bobby Fuller Four – I Fought the Law
- U2 – Sunday Bloody Sunday
- Yes – Don’t Kill the Whale
- Sly & The Family Stone – Don’t Call Me Nigger Whitey
- Marillion – Forgotten Sons
- UB40 – One in Ten
- The Clash – White Riot
- The Specials – Ghost Town
- Rolling Stone – Gimme Shelter
- The Pogues – Streets of Sorrow/Birmingham Six
- Style Council – Walls Come Tumbling Down
- Frankie Goes To Hollywood – 2 Tribes
Whether it's old classics passed down through generations or the scream of angry young voices, protest has always been at the centre of rock'n'roll. It might still be, but I’m just not hearing it.
Anti-Tory Pop
You very rarely hear pro-right wing protest songs, they’re usually always from the Left and, as usual the Left have the most to preach to us about how we should be doing things. The pop stars of today though, are very quiet about politics, rarely indulging in political comment in case it wrecks their career. It wasn’t always so, remember ‘Red Wedge’ in the eighties where people like Paul Weller, Jimmy Somerville and Billy Bragg got together to hold concerts around the country protesting about social depravation and the policies of the then Tory Government? We’re in a similar boat now but I don’t hear the likes of Little Mix doing much protesting.
Some of the songs back then proved quite prophetic too, Eton Rifles by The Jam told the story of a group of unemployed socialists being heckled on a march by a cadet corps from Eton College. Former Conservative leader David Cameron is reported to have said: “I was one, in the corps. It meant a lot, some of those early Jam albums we used to listen to. I don’t see why the left should be the only ones to listen to protest songs.” Prompting Paul Weller to ask “Which part of it didn’t he get?”
Galvanising
Protest songs like I remember, the kind that galvanised thousands at a time during, anti-nuclear and civil rights marches, the anti-Vietnam war rallies, the Northern Ireland troubles and the economic upheavals during the Thatcher years, seem to have disappeared from the landscape. At least they have from the commercial airwaves.
It’s true that some rap music contains elements of social consciousness, part of a continuing commentary and protest that goes back to the earliest blues forms, but there’s a disconnect between rap and what went on before largely because of the Rappers own image.
The last mainstream, protest albums I can remember are probably Green Day’s ‘American Idiot’ and Neil Young’s ‘Living With War’. Both American, both very successful. So the demand is still there, especially now Trump’s around!
Bigger Pictures
There’s a bigger picture now which all revolves around the internet and social media. There are still plenty of protest songs out there, but they just aren’t part of the cultural mainstream any more. Radio doesn’t play them, and people don’t seem to do things together, as a community. We’re all connected individually to some kind of device, working alone, amusing ourselves alone, and enlightening ourselves alone.
People are still concerned about the issues that have always troubled us. Nowadays though they’re more likely to wear a coloured ribbon, or turn to Facebook to find a like-minded community than to march or sing songs in the streets, the way they did in the 1960s. It also reflects the now common disconnect between politics and young people.
Today’s ‘plastic’ manufactured pop stars are more interested in getting their picture in the paper wearing next to nothing than trying to change the world. They’re a meal ticket for their management and they don’t want to stop that money coming in by letting their little stars voice their opinions and rock the boat. This has led to political and protest now being addressed in music by independent and internet artists, they don’t get the air time though, so we don’t really hear their work.
Is Anyone Really Listening Anymore?
We do seem to lack a groundswell of popular protest songs today, when, from recession, poverty and controversial wars through to bankers and politicians screwing us all, there is surely so much to sing and protest about. But the manufactured likes of X-factor and today's boy and girl bands, are the inheritors of the sanitised pap of old, and have crowded out the old rockers, folkies and ageing punks.
In reality, protest and political songs haven’t disappeared, we just have to hunt them down, they’re alive and well, they are just hiding in plain sight. It seems that we just don’t hear them. We don’t hear anything worthwhile these days unless we go looking for it. Which then begs the question, are political and protest songs effective anymore if nobody’s listening to them ?
The answer is sadly ‘No’
