A Countdown of the Top 100 political songs, to help provide a soundtrack to the 2011 Canadian Election. Researched and written by a proud New Democrat.
Banned from many AM radio stations in 1971, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's OHIO received steady airplay on illegal underground FM stations in cities and college towns.
Bruce Springsteen is another of a small handful of artists to have two songs in the Top 100. The two songs, My Hometown and Born In The U.S.A., are both perfect examples of where the political and the personal come together to wreck lives. My Hometown is about discarded workers, dying towns, and wanting to plant your feet but being pushed to the ground. Born In The U.S.A. is about discarded veterans, a brutal war, and being kicked after you've already been pushed to the ground.
Halifax freelance music writer Ryan McNutt:
Ronald Reagan thought it was a patriotic anthem. Countless writers have considered it a protest song. And somehow, they're both right. "Born in the USA" is an statement of nuanced, complicated nationalism written against the background of the ultimate 'stars and stripes' decade. The song's title and refrain are ironic when paired up against the verses, but not insincere: this is an anthem about what happens when one's love of country runs headfirst into the harsh reality of the times. Springsteen is bemoaning the phrase "Born in the USA"; he's howling for it to mean something profound again.
For more info on how people can learn more about music by actually, you know, listening to music, check out this 2009 article on the 25th Anniversary of this tune.
Death - the fear of it, the fight against it, creates some beautiful songs. I do wish more political songs would celebrate life, but the spectre of death and the rich seam of material to mine it creates for artists like Tom Waits will also help your heart grow.
Anger at the Mid-East and anger at a kinder, gentler, America. Throughout Neil Young's career he's been all over the political map. Keep on Rockin' In The Free World is one good bloody rant.
I couldn't have 3 punk bands in a row, so after Sex Pistols and Dead Kennedys, I'm putting The Clash, a very nice rock band.
The voice of the vanquished, Federico García Lorca, makes an appearance in Spanish Bombs. Lorca was poet and one of thousands the right-wing killed during the Spanish Civil War.
Creedence Clearwater Revival's song Fortunate Son was inspired by the marriage of David Eisenhower, the grandson of President D.D. Eisenhower who married Julie Nixon, the daughter of President Nixon.
Guitarist and lead singer John Fogerty told Rolling Stone:
Julie Nixon was hanging around with David Eisenhower, and you just had the feeling that none of these people were going to be involved with the war. In 1969, the majority of the country thought morale was great among the troops, and like eighty percent of them were in favor of the war. But to some of us who were watching closely, we just knew we were headed for trouble.
Friends, many of you suggested Tracy Chapman's Talkin' 'Bout a Revolution for this list. But Fast Car is a far superior song. The personal is political.
Asking people to imagine a world without God, country, or possessions is a dangerous thing to do. Sugar-coating that pill with beautiful piano playing made John Lennon's Imagine even more dangerous - it was perfectly crafted for radio play.
Paul McCartney, in an interview with Melody Maker, said:
I like 'Imagine' which is what John is really like, but there was too much political stuff on the other albums.
Lennon replied in an open letter, writing:
So you think 'Imagine' ain't political, it's 'Working Class Hero' with sugar on it for conservatives like yourself! Join the Rock Liberation Front before it gets you.
Imagine means a lot of things to a lot of people. It's a call to imagine utopia. It's a sign that rock and roll is the devil's work. It's a funeral hymn for a society repressed by an authoritarian culture. It's a song about how far we have yet to go.
When a democracy only has two parties, democracy often loses. And then the people stand up and demand change.
Rage Against The Machine's song Testify uses clips showing the two presidential candidates stating the same policies and views on important issues, from war to (in)action on climate change.
In 2009 J. Period and K'Naan made a mixed-tape and did what hip-hop does so very well - sample great music and new material to make a modern powerful composition. They called the mixed-tape The Messengers after three artists that changed music and act as a source of inspiration for K'Naan: Bob Marley, Fela Kuti and Bob Dylan.
From a HipHop DX interview with the artists:
J. Period: If people hear good music they can instantly put that next to bad music and they know which is which. For me, the more people push the envelope in this way, the more Hip Hop goes back to where it began. It was always about taking the breaks and finding the best bits and pieces everywhere. It didn’t matter where it was from. You just put them together in a way that is fresh and new. In essence that is what I try to do with mixtapes. That’s what we’re doing here but on steroids because we have completely different things that are powerful on their own.
K’Naan: Both Black Thought and Wyclef [Jean] were in the room tonight. Both of them had the same thing to say to me about the project and how they’re really inspired and moved. They wanted to do something. They wanted to go and create. That’s ultimately the job of art. It’s to make us feel like we need to do something.
Bruce Springsteen is an incredible poet. I struggled with the question of whether to include Youngstown in this list instead of My Hometown. Youngstown is a brilliant song that takes you through the hundred and eighty years in the life and death of Jenny, a Youngstown, Ohio steel blast furnace. My Hometown takes you through three decades of a man's life in a dying town. Youngstown is the more overtly political of the two songs, but My Hometown seems to have touched so many people, seems so real to so many people, that it made the cut.
From Youngstown:
Well my daddy worked the furnaces Kept 'em hotter than hell I come home from 'Nam worked my way to scarfer A job that'd suit the devil as well Taconite, coke and limestone Fed my children and made my pay Them smokestacks reachin' like the arms of god Into a beautiful sky of soot and clay
From My Hometown:
Now main streets whitewashed windows and vacant stores Seems like there aint nobody wants to come down here no more They're closing down the textile mill
I present Zuppa Theatre director Alex McLean's critique of The Beatles' Revolution:
Viewed by many at the time as a betrayal of the anti-war movement, Revolution is about as politically cautious as a song about revolution can be. Generously, one could say that John Lennon's lyrics tap into a growing disenchantment with the utopian promises of the Left. It is probably more accurate, though, to say that "we all want to change the world" became an easy mantra for those lacking well-formed political opinion (except where the draft was concerned), but hungry for facile spiritualism and California grass.
Revolution is a catchy ditty by an apolitical band that had to say something to address the growing unrest of its target audience. It marks the beginning of a tradition of obligatory pop star activism, complete with its own merchandise and one-size-fits-all slogans. In many important ways the world did change in the late 1960s, but not because of the blind, TM-inspired trust that "it's gonna be all right."
Except in one respect: Revolution is a significant political song because it helped validate the anti-political. In a tumultuous historical moment, it gave listeners an "out" that is not provided by songs like Which Side Are You On? The insignificance of the youth vote in the coming Canadian election is a testament to the success of Revolution's message of disengagement. Why take a stand when you've got your own room in the basement? Why read the news when you've got the music?
Here's the short version, if you're pressed for time:
If this isn't true, it should be. Warren Zevon met a guy in a bar in Spain who previously worked as a mercenary in Africa and the two of them wrote Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner together.
Still a favourite of art class kids when I went to high school in the 90's - Pink Floyd's Education is the second part their three-part song Another Brick in the Wall from their rock-opera album The Wall.
The song was banned in South Africa in the 1980's after it became a sort of anthem for a nationwide school boycott protesting apartheid.
At one point, Bruce Cockburn did make an appearance on an early draft of the Top 100 Political Songs Countdown.
Here's Halifax music writer Ryan McNutt's defense of the best two lines in Lovers in a Dangerous Time.
The greatest lyric ever penned by a Canadian? Depending on my mood, I'd make a case for it. At the very least, it contains probably the greatest couplet ever written by a Canuck: "Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight / Got to kick at the darkness 'till it bleeds daylight." The Barenaked Ladies removed the 80s reverb and made a bluegrass folk song out of it, but "Lovers" is best in its original form, perfectly capturing the thrill of romance against a background of political and military anxiety.
Stephen Biko was South African anti-apartheid activist famous for his slogan "Black is Beautiful", which he said meant: "You are okay as you are - begin to look upon yourself as a human being".
On August 18th, 1977, Biko was arrested at a police roadblock under the Terrorism Act and interrogated in Police Room 619 for 22 hours. His interrogation included torture and resulted in a coma. On September 11th police put Stephen Biko in the back of a Land Rover, naked and in chains, and drove him 1100 km to a prison that had hospital facilities.
He died on arrival at the prison, on September 12th. The police claimed his death was the result of an extended hunger strike.
Peter Gabriel would play Biko and encourage the audience to join him in the singing. As the song ends, all that was left was the drummer's beat and the crowd's cry.
