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?)
edit: Maybe not the right audience, but if the song is old enough to vote then I might already know it! What’s happening now? Any songs from the last 10 years!
edit: Thanks for everyone’s insights. I’ve spent the day discovering music that I’d never have found otherwise. Really enjoying a load of these, but thanks to everyone! It seems like protest music is confined to certain genres/places, and lots of older songs - maybe they just last longer… which is maybe a little interesting.
That was 6 years ago.
🧑👨👨🦳👴💀
Well, not sure about “good” but punk is and always has been about politics.
Personally, I love the folk punk end of things like AJJ’s ‘Normalization Blues’: https://youtu.be/0EDVM73bU-w?si=_mtGGyFhrmeMRlpZ
In a similar vein, Matt Pless’s “where the frayed wind blows” is 5 minutes of angry goodness.
There’s also a lot of protest hip hop but I don’t know the newer stuff particularly well.
Shots fired by Matt is also great. Oh, can’t forget “what you will”.
This is great! :D
edit: Anyone know about hip-hop? Would be great to know where to start on that
A lot of rap is political/social, for more mainstream stuff you’ve got songs like ‘This Is America’ by Childish Gambino, ‘Reagan’ by Killer Mike, or even ‘Fuck the Police’ by N.W.A.
You’ve got even more leftist groups/rappers like ‘The Coup’, RATM/Public Enemy supergroup ‘Prophets of Rage’, hardcore shit like ‘Immortal Techniques’ or ‘Non Phixon’, ‘Dead Prez’, ‘Nas’, ‘The Fugees’, ‘Tupac’, ‘De La Soul’ just to name a few more.
There’s also more tankie shit but I’m not gonna promote that authoritarian garbage.
It’s almost harder to find non-political rap than it is political rap when you start breaking down the messages of many songs.
Thanks! Childish Gambino - is a great example!
I didn’t know some of these, so I’ll check them out, but they aren’t exactly new - the rest are from the ninties, right?
I tried mixing it up, it’s probably more early 2000-2010s for the majority. I kinda lost interest in a lot of rap after that whole trap phase started.
Killer Mikes a bit too centrist for my liking but Reagan from 2012 is an amazing song and one I’d recommend the most from that list.
Try Immortal Technique.
- Dance with the Devil
- Impeach the President
- The 4th Branch
And many more
Reagan by Killer Mike. Samples shit Reagan said
On the Hip Hop note I would say Run The Jewels have some amazing lyrical content in their songs about the state of things
Bro Killer Mike just won a Grammy
He won three! Imo, for the most boring song on his new album, but whatever. But that album is highly political
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…
I’m a big fan of Rise Against. Try these tracks out:
- Architects
- Welcome to the Breakdown
- A Gentleman’s Coup
- Megaphone
- Holding Patterns
and Bad Religion:
- American Jesus
- Meeting of the Minds
- The Resist Stance
Bad Religion was one of my high-school favorites that has stayed a favorite since. I have every one of their albums saved on my phone.
I personally would add: • The Nowhere Generation • Wolves
Listening now! Thanks
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Excuse me, GenX chiming in. We had that exact same list, with the sort-of-maybe exception of climate change (pollution was really really bad though). Then again , we had the daily doom of nuclear war on our heads.
I guess this what I’m afraid of, but things must have felt pretty scary during the first cold war - Imagine raising children while governments were
openly[edit] testing fusion weapons!I think that music is part of giving people inspiration and hope. Does tiktok just filter out the protest to keep us scrolling?
I’ve participated in in-person protests with various groups about a dozen times a year since 2020 and I don’t even live in a city. People are definitely out here protesting, we just don’t get any media coverage at all unless we break things.
edit- in an attempt to actually be helpful - search the internet for any progressive or socialist activist groups near you and sign up for their newsletters/follow their socials. Try to attend a few events, and there you’ll hopefully meet people who can get you connected to local anarchists/more radical folks who go out and protest a lot. Then you can carpool with folks and share expenses and have a safe group of people to go to protests with.
If you like Rage Against the Machine, Tom Morello did a solo project called The Nightwatchman that had a lot of great protest songs. I think it’s closer to 15 years old, so not the last 10.
Toxicity - System of a Down was an incredible album about American exceptionalism and war hungriness. The towers were hit a week after the album was released.
Sheesh, some time in June of 2023, Toxicity’s debut date became closer to 1/1/1980 than present day
Every single one of their records is more relevant now than ever.
System’s whole catalogue really, they’re basically Rage Against the Machine, but with an Armenian twist and flair, love them, but can’t believe the drummer is a MAGAtard.
you mean everything rage against the machine has ever done?
You know that RATMs big albums were over 25 years ago, right?
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Some of those that work forces,
Are the same that burn crosses!
Gotta love the AJJs.
Was just about to post IDLES here myself. It goes and it goes and it goes
Recently found IDLES, amazing band!
I didn’t see this mentioned so wanted to add it. Most people think of it as pro USA, but the lyrics paint a very different message.
For example:
Got in a little hometown jam So they put a rifle in my hand Sent me off to a foreign land To go and kill the yellow man
This might not be everyones cup of tea, but metal and hardcore are full of protest music. Heaven Shall Burn for example is lyricly anti-fascist and environmentalist (live video because that show is fucking legendary).
lekkerrrrr
saved, thanks!Holy shit! Thanks - that video is outrageous! These are great
Between the Buried and Me, a progressive metal band that is considered legendary, is philosophically political in so much as that most of their albums are about the inevitable decline of humanity and the destruction of everything due to capitalism, greed, regressive ideologies etc. If you’ve never listened to them you should start with the Great Misdirect. Spotify has a live version I think and it is phenomenal.
Uncle Sam Goddamn - Brother Ali
Ju$t - Run the Jewels (and a lot of their or Killer Mike’s songs)
Gang Shit - Marlon Craft
The Guillotine - The Coup
I Wish I Was a Riot Grrrl - Destructo Disk
Nobody’s Biz - Four FistsSome of these being older than 10 years is a real bummer lol
Walking In The Snow was the RTJ song that came to mind for me
The music video is amazing
Its not a problem for me - I’m old :)
It’s not as punk, but the last three albums by Metric are brilliant in how they discuss the current state of the world.
This is good. It doesn’t have to be punk - I don’t even know what people listen to now…
Lol me neither
The internet fractured culture and there is no one thing everyone is watching or listen to anymore and I don’t know how I feel about that
anything by the coup
This has been true for over thirty years but most people sadly have never heard of them.
Fuck yes, this is the answer right here.