I feel like there are lots of parallels between the eighties and now (recession/inflation, yuppies/inequality, skin-heads/fascists, hot-cold wars etc.) but there used to be protest music! Where is that stuff now? Music that’s intelligent and outraged - like we should be!
I’m out of touch now, so if it exists, educate me! Or have the protest songs been removed from tiktok by the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act (UK specific, but suppression of protest seems to be everywhere)? (I’ve linked to the Levellers - maybe it really was better back in the day?)
Moscow Death Brigade for example
Maybe I’m late but I recommend Speak by Queensryche, it’s about revolution. The entire album Operation Mindcrime is a rail against religion and capitalism told through a character recruited into an underground revolution. It’s very good and a song that contains the lines “educate the masses” and “burn the Whitehouse down” gets a thumbs up from me
Spreading the Disrase also…
Fighting fire with empty words While the banks get fat and the poor stay poor And the rich get rich and the cops get paid To look away as the one percent rules America
They were talking about the 1% LONG before it was popular to do so.
For the UK specifically I’d recommend Bob Vylan
thanks - I’m checking some of the live dates.
deleted by creator
Gary Clarke Jr. Has some good protest songs, especially for a blues musician, including a remake of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young’s Ohio.
Municipal Waste is great for some hardcore, there’s actually a bunch of hardcore bands that have some excellent protest songs.
Then you have Ice-T’s Body Count.
Lamb of God’s albums post-Randy’s time in a Czech prison have been full of social commentary, far more than the earlier albums.
I’ve seen people highlight Killer Mike’s Grammy wins, but his other group Run the Jewels is pretty much the biggest name in protest rap these days.
Then you have Kendrick Lamar, possibly the best rapper of his generation, absolutely one of the greatest story tellers of rap, period.
Overall there’s a lot of pop, metal, rock, rap and other genres who have some prominent names and many lesser known names who are putting out good angry music.
Then you have Ice Cube putting out Arrest the President then proceeding to talk about voting for that same president.🤦♂️
GRANDSON, GRANDSON, GRANDSON EVERY DAY. You’ve probably heard them, I love Dirty
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJufERGv9Sk
Rap Against Dictatorship. Check out their other videos.
Is Antiflag still around?
Bella Ciao and Sixteen Tons are perennial favorites.
Both of those are good but old songs, I think OP was wondering where the current protest music is.
2020 Visions by Michael Guy Bowman is about the insurrection
Most stuff mentioned here is from artists few people know. We need the big names to step up and take a stand.
I listen to a lot of punk music so obviously it’s strongly political. Here’s just a few off the top of my head:
- White People for Peace by Against Me!
- Unprotected Sex With Multiple Partners by Against Me!
- Survivor Guilt by Rise Against
- State of the Union by Rise Against
- The Eco-Terrorist In Me by Rise Against
- 45 by Sum41
- Empty Walls by Serj Tankian
- Prison Song by System of a Down
- Christian Nationalist by Anti-Flag
- Die for your Government by Anti-Flag
- 72 hookers by NOFX
- Please Play This Song on the Radio by NOFX
- Fuck Euphemism by NOFX
- Take Back the Power by The Interrupters
- Quarantine by Blink 182
I tried to include a bit of variety and not all be anti-war songs from/about the Bush era. A couple are about the music industry specifically, and one is a musical rant about kink culture (and it’s not the one you think based on the title!) I’m also a big Rise Against fan so I tried to pull out some non-singles from accross many years since basically any song by them has a good political message. I highly recommend looking up the lyrics to all of these after the first listen or better during the second listen
Nofx is doing their retirement tour right now and it makes me super sad I won’t be able to go
Someone sent me this one recently, and the lyrics are interesting.
Questionable politics. Not sure the intent, but this raised some red flags last year in various circles. Google will turn them up.
Well, NPR did an entire article of 20 protest songs that came out in 2020. Looks like they might have made a Spotify playlist of them at one point too.
Here are 30 protest albums that came out in the first half of 2022
Here are 50 protest songs from 2023.
These are just results from pretty simple Google searches. ‘protest songs year’.
Hmm… using google to find anti-establishment songs… ;)
And then listening to the Spotify playlist…
Well I found a new band to listen to. I just wish they would have kept that energy at like 30s, and just ended at 1 minute.
Thanks for the recommendation though.
Old School Pig, by Tilt.
