Song 16: Highway Man, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristoffersen, Johnny Cash

The battle continues. Here and there throughout the Top 100 Political Music Countdown, you see references in lyrics to the same fight, sometimes righteous and sometimes futile, re-occuring again and again and again and again.

The Highwayman by Willie Nelson, Kris Kristoffersen, Waylon Jennings, and Johnny Cash is a story of reincarnation and of unending struggle of outlaws, labourers, and spacemen everywhere.

Song 25: Intervention, Arcade Fire

Arcade Fire BOUGHT A CHURCH to record their Neon Bible album.

It's beautiful. If you've been following this list you just knew I'd slip a song about God into the Top 25.

The whole album is inspiring and pessimistic, with characters that are confused and clear, apocalyptic and brimming with life.

From Intervention:

You say it's money that we need

As if we're only mouths to feed

I know no matter what you say

There are some debts you'll never pay

Working for the church

While your family dies

You take what they give you

And you keep it inside

Every spark of friendship and love

Will die without a home

Song 49: Jesus Christ for President, Billy Bragg and Wilco

Woody Guthrie left a thousand song lyrics with no music for them when he died. In 1995, his daughter asked Billy Bragg to write music for an album's worth of songs. Bragg and Wilco released two volumes called Mermaid Avenue in 1998 and 2000.

Christ for President is off the first album. Guthrie often combined biblical references and revolutionary music. This song's less ambiguous. 

Song 51: Inner City Blues (Make Me Want To Holler), Marvin Gaye

A few songs on the Top 100 Political Music Countdown thus far have a political take on religion and a few songs bring religion into politics. Marvin Gaye's Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler) always struck me as beautiful and interesting for its transition from a fighting stance (Oh Make Me Want To Holler) to a position of prayer (God Bless You, And Keep You). Desperate times for desperate people. The Holy and the Profane.

Song 81: Methodist Coloring Book, The Dead Milkmen

The sweetest punk song I know that fights against the the idea that you have to follow a set of rules that don't make sense. They might have been athiests, but The Dead Milkman's Methodist Coloring Book gives a lesson appreciated by plenty of lapsed Catholics.

Song 83: Jesus Walks, Kayne West

God. Guns. Gospel Music. Violins. Violence. Faith. Commerce. A Children's Choir. A Song for Sinners.

To the hustlers, killers, murderers, drug dealers even the strippers

(Jesus walks with them)

To the victims of Welfare for we living in hell here hell yeah

(Jesus walks with them)

Song 87: Forgive Them Father, Lauryn Hill

Beware the false motives of others
Be careful of those who pretend to be brothers
And you never suppose it's those who are closest to you, to you
They say all the right things to gain their position
Then use your kindness as their ammunition
To shoot you down in the name of ambition, they do

From the album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, the song Forgive Them Father is a beautiful critique of men who value money and power over all. Like in Song No. 94, forgiveness for trespass is possible. But forgetting? Lauryn Hill will never, never trust them again.

By the way friends, Canadian women make up 22% of the House of Commons, and there are 22 women on this Top 100 Political Music Countdown. Want to change the debate? Elect more women to office, and send me more music by women.

Song 99: Jesusland, Ben Folds

Down the tracks
beautiful McMansions on a hill
that overlook a highway
with riverboat casinos and you still
have yet to see a soul

Alt-rock with a piano- It's a miracle. Ben Folds wishes the Bible Belt took the words of Jesus more seriously in this beautiful piece of melancholy.


Newfoundland reader and writer Danny MacEachern defended this song to me:


Ben Folds' music is decidedly personal, so any songs of his that qualify for this list unsurprisingly tackle social problems through the eyes of an individual, like the father raging against overconsumption in "All You Can Eat." in "Jesusland," the (possibly homeless) narrator in what seems to be the U.S. Bible belt appears almost defeated by the hypocrisy he sees in the gulf between Christian values in theory and Christian values in practice. "They drop your name but no one knows your face," he sings, lamenting the emptiness of a supposed community, despite all its McMansions. Still, he wants you to pray for Jesusland.

Song 100: Jerusalem, Dan Bern

Click here to listen.

Both Dan Bern's parents survived the Holocaust. He once said he called his regular group of backup musicians The International Jewish Banking Conspiracy because he "wanted some way of telling my Mom that from now on when they talk about the international Jewish banking conspiracy they’re just talking about my band."

Jerusalem is a wickedly funny song. It makes me laugh every time I hear it. I wish that was an exaggeration. I really do. You'd think once you've heard a really funny joke told a few dozen times you'd learn to control yourself. Part of it is that it's about the sensitive topic of religion, part is the faux-folk style Bern sings in, part of it is the absurd, near non-sequitor transition from the kinda cruel opening and the story that follows.

I told a few people that Jerusalem was Song 100 on the Political Song Countdown. They were pretty excited. Sorry rugby fans. April Fools.