28 July 2007

"Protest Music, How Cute"

Why do people ask "Where have all the protest songs gone?" Were they expecting marijuana and accoustic guitars at Live Earth? Rebellious music hasn't gone anywhere, and it's really not that hard to find. One trip through a modest iTunes library yields...

Ben Folds could easily be mistaken for meaningless pop or flash-in-the-pan emo. But in Fired, he ends the song with an epic, harmonious, satisfying "Mother-fuckers." Delicious!

Bloc Party
has some tricky lyrics to break over the heads of evil. They're the successors to Franz Ferdinand's tradition of mega-popular English Indie, and they quote Bertrand Russel.

Bruce Springsteen isn't new, but the man responsible for the police brutality and racial profiling that inspired Bruce's American Skin (41 Shots) is currently the Republican front-runner for President. (What?) Bruce disses the current President too, once calling for his replacement by E-Street Band saxophonist Clarence Clemons.

Flogging Molly is a classic staple of Irish punk, staggering to a drunken brawl with the status quo. Lambasting the English and highlighting the suffering of the impoverished are common themes in their music.

Like Bruce, Neil Young has been around a while, but he still makes new music. His rush-produced "Living With War" album openly called for impeaching Bush, dissed consumers and continued what he's been doing through "Keep on Rockin' in the Free World" (often mistaken for a patriotic song) and "Ohio."

Around the same time that "Living With War" hit the shelves, Pearl Jam's self-titled protest album contained such mighty tracks as World Wide Suicide. Singing about a morning newspaper where he learned that a friend had died in Iraq, Eddie Vedder sends a powerful message straight into the mainstream.

Eccentric Indie genius Sufjan Stevens has a track from "Come On Feel the Illinoise" with more lyrics in the title than the song - but The Black Hawk War, or, How to Demolish an Entire Civilization and Still Feel Good About Yourself in the Morning, or, We Apologize for the Inconvenience But You're Going to Have to Leave Now, or, "I Have Fought the Big Knives and Will Continue to Fight Them ntil they are off our lands!*" really says it all, doesn't it?

Ted Leo and the Pharmacists are gaining popularity in the world of unpopular music, and you won't find a more politically charged band. The music actually sounds good, too. Their latest album, "Living With the Living," has such tracks as The Sons of Cain and Bomb, Repeat, Bomb.

Nerdcore rap isn't something to take too seriously, but Futuristic Sex Robotz do have a volatile Fuck the Police spoof called Fuck the MPAA. It's available online for free, and they drop some wicked bombs on anti-piracy groups. Other parts are bad enough to sound like self-mockery, but bad or good, it's a fair representative of a growing online culture.

Finally, you have Tenacious D's "The Government Totally Sucks." It's secretly a protest against bad protest music, and that makes it brilliant.

*iTunes and Finder both were unable to display the entire name of the song, hilariously. Sufjan Stevens valiantly foils the world of convenience where you can have a song and its title catalogued on a computer in seconds.

1 comment:

Molly said...

I saw ted leo this summer, I was standing about a foot away from him. beautiful man. beautiful voice. hardcore lyrics.