Politics and Protest: Songs everyone should hear

[Thrilla]

Right, so I'm not really known as a music guy, in fact my musical knowledge is pretty rubbish. I don't know many bands, songs or history, but I am attempting to change that. Recently, The Guardian put together a list of one thousand songs that everyone should listen to and divided them up by topic matter, the ones that immediately stood out to me were the ones based on politics and protests. As I managed to track them down and given them a listen, I made a list that I could look back upon and have decided to post it here in case anyone of you lot feel like listening to something a bit different.

The blurb underneath each link is what was written about the song in the article, as I thought it might help put the song in its place and give it some more meaning.

The list is actually about 150 songs long but I've only managed to do the first 50. If there is any interest I'll stick the rest up when I get a chance. (Y)

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Rudolph Giuliani’s tenure as mayor saw New York nightlife all but stamped out; his taskforce would close down venues without a dance licence if people so much as tapped their foot. When the bar Nic Offer was working and fell victim to Giuliani’s clampdown, the !!! frontman was driven to write this nine-minute punk-funk epic, which attempts to start a dancefloor insurrection.

There’s perhaps no other current artist who could pull off an apocalyptic lament that sounds like a gentle hymn. This lead track from last year’s EP and highlight of new album The Crying Light is a plea for escape from a world “nearly gone” through war and ecological disaster. That unique, soulful voice sounds utterly bereft, as it waves us a resigned goodbye: “I’ll miss the things that grow/ I’m gonna miss you all.”

Arcade Fire’s second album, Neon Bible, was full of bad vibrations. On Windowsill, Win Butler turns refusenik, driving salesmen from his door, repudiating consumerism and watching the flood waters rise. But even with Armageddon nigh, Windowsill feels like a victory, as voices and brass mass to a climax. Conclusion? With enough instruments, we might just make it. It’s a compelling argument.

'(What did I do to be so) Black and Blue' by Louis Armstrong

Friend to the world he might have been, but Pops didn’t hide behind that smile. Listen to this 1929 performance of a Fats Waller number, on which he sings “I’m white inside but that don’t help my case,” and “My only sin is in my skin.” Little wonder that the protagonist of Ralph Ellison’s classic novel Invisible Man dreamt of listening to five versions of the song simultaneously.

**I couldn't find the Bailey cover, so have linked to the original**

Leon Rosselson has been Britain’s most consistently savage and articulate political songwriter for four decades, but none of his songs have put as many noses out of joint as this epic, rip-roaring deconstruction of popular Christian perception of the Gospels. Part inspired by Hyam Maccoby’s book Revolution in Judaea, Rosselson’s detailed contention that Judas was a heroic political revolutionary subverting the Roman occupation while Jesus was effectively a passive collaborator comes with a blinding chorus fully utilised by Bailey’s impassioned delivery.

'A day in the life of a tree' by The Beach Boys

By this point in his career, it was said of Brian Wilson that he was crazy. But this number, from the album Surf’s Up, co-written and sung by Jack Rieley, made up in anguished sentiment what it risked in eccentricity. And now that we’re all hip to global warming, how nuts do the lines “But now my branches suffer/ And my leaves don’t offer/ Poetry to men of song” sound exactly?

'I was born this way' by Carl Bean

“Say it loud,” the lyrics might have read, “I’m out and I’m proud.” This disco stormer, the genre’s first gay anthem, was given its definitive treatment in this cover of Valentino’s 1975 original. “I feeeeeeeel good! I feeeeeeeel good!” sang Bean, his gospel roots never more in evidence. It’s not the most widely feted Motown single, but it remains one of the most inspirational.

'Stand down Margaret' by The Beat

A highlight of the Beat’s debut album, I Just Can’t Stop It, this unambivalent demand feels like a brash cousin of Ghost Town, the Specials’ more complex, downbeat song of social protest. Released just 12 months after Thatcher came to power, the Brummie ska outfit had already seen straight through the new regime: “I see no chance of your bright new tomorrow/ Our lives seem petty in your cold grey hands.”

'I am the Walrus' by The Beatles

With its “semolina pilchard climbing up the Eiffel Tower”, this anguished howl is easily dismissed as a piece of nonsense – and was written by John Lennon as a riposte to the news that a teacher at his old school was now analysing the Beatles’ lyrics in class. But this masterpiece saw him vent his spleen on establishment culture writ large, and few bands ever sounded quite so menacingly psychedelic. (Just don’t believe that the walrus really was Paul.)

'Revolution' by The Beatles

On this wild, distorted B-side to Hey Jude, John Lennon insisted that, if 1968’s revolutionaries wanted destruction, they could “count me out”. On the slower, quieter version (Revolution 1) on the White Album, the line is “count me in”. Lennon’s honest confusion drew much flak from those who wanted him to be a political figurehead. The screeching, unsettling production was Lennon’s riposte to his fellow Beatles’ refusal to release Revolution 1 as a single.

'War Pigs' by Black Sabbath

Long before Ozzy became a clown and heavy metal a joke, Black Sabbath’s War Pigs was like a Hieronymous Bosch painting come to life. Ripe with rot and rich with musical detail, this seminal outpouring of pacifism noir brought Birmingham’s infamous hippie-haters intriguingly close to their flower-powered, anti-Vietnam war peers. But there is no mistaking the animosity in Bill Ward’s apocalyptic hoofbeats, or Tony Iommi’s acidulated guitar.

This debut single by the veteran Brit sessioneers fronted by Madeline Bell had long since jumped the shark when Alan Partridge jumped around his Travelodge room singing it, stopping only to question whether “Chinky” was still an acceptable term. It’s dated, then, but winningly guileless, with – as the sight of a pub full of old socialists singing along to it on the jukebox will attest – a wonderfully uplifting chorus.

'Cop Killer' by Body Count

Ice T’s in-character reaction to the 1991 police beating of Rodney King begins with the stated desire to shoot every corrupt cop in the face. That’s one way to get your audience’s attention. The pummelling, consciously over-the-top piece of speed-metal that ensues was a significant piece of steam-letting on behalf of a community teetering on the brink; following the 1992 LA riots, Cop Killer was removed from the first Body Count album and remains devilishly hard to find.

There are a thousand anti-war songs, most angry, some sad, others defiant, but none with the novelistic scope and detail of this first-person tale of the battle of Gallipoli, written by a Scottish folk singer who emigrated to Australia while that country was fighting alongside the Americans in Vietnam. Told through the eyes of a rambler who answers his country’s call and returns minus his legs, it skews patriotic fraud like nothing else. Impossible to sit through its seven minutes with dry eyes.

'Stop the violence' by Boogie Down Productions (KRS-One)

Having lost his DJ partner Scott La Rock in a street shooting, Bronx rapper Lawrence Krishna Parker, aka KRS-One, rejected his previous gangsta persona and reinvented himself as a self-styled teacher and voice of hip-hop’s conscience. His second album, By All Means Necessary, featured KRS posing as Malcolm X on its sleeve, and this anthemic plea for social justice and a peaceful rap scene. Hip-hop listened intently to the digital reggae beats but ignored the message.

Conor Oberst, aka Bright Eyes, campaigned for John Kerry on 2004’s Vote for Change tour, although his records made sure his political persuasions were never in doubt. This B-side, which he chose to play on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno rather than promote an album, was as furious an attack on George Bush as any. Riffing on Dubya’s imagined relationship with God, Oberst lists (and it’s a long list) all the president’s failings with a brooding intensity and anger.

Written for a film sponsored by the Greater London Council called Framed Youth – Revenge of the Teenage Perverts, Bronski Beat’s debut dealt with the story of a gay man’s attempts at escaping suburbia. Not the most obvious material for a Top 10 hit, then, and nor did Jimmy Somerville conform to everyone’s idea of a pop star. But his bravura vocal performance and the kind of synthpop backing that’s only now coming back into vogue helped propel it to No 3 in the UK charts. Those who preferred the 12” version found the telephone number of the London Gay Switchboard etched into its inner groove.

During the miners’ strike, the Bard of Barking travelled to the coalfields, playing gigs to raise money for the miners and their families – and in the process, discovered a rich seam of traditional folk song. For this EP, the proceeds of which also went to the cause, he essayed versions of Which Side Are You On?, an American pro-trade union song from the 1930s, and Leon Rosselson’s The World Turned Upside Down (itself an update of the 17th century Diggers’ Song). But the title track was his original, and just as powerful in its assertion of workers’ rights and dignity. Nor, of course, have lines like “I’ll give my consent to any government/ that does not deny a man a living wage” gone out of fashion.

The first record credited to the Godfather of Soul as a solo artist captured the positive side of 60s black militancy with brilliant, funk-driven, call-and-response simplicity. But in his 1986 autobiography, Brown insisted that the song was “misunderstood” and that it “cost me a lot of my crossover audience”. Perhaps it was the socialist implications of Brown’s rap about black self-sufficiency that disturbed Wasp America, but the single still hit the US top 10.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdV8hG6tC0o

Named for an African freedom fighter – Jomo Kenyatta – Burning Spear are roots reggae incarnate and Slavery Days is less a pop song than a Rasta military chant. There’s neither bridge nor chorus, just lead singer Winston Rodney detailing the suffering of the slaves, the other members answering him with a question: “Do you remember the days of slavery?” The uplifting brass section is there as reminder that it’s not an invitation to self-pity, but a call to action.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWdHOm256N4

This demure chamber-folk waltz masks a deceptively sharp piece of political observation from Bush, ostensibly concerning British soldiers in Northern Ireland. Singing with a slight Irish lilt, she laments the boy who “should have been a father” but never even made it into his 20s. “It’s just so sad that there are kids who have no O-levels and nothing to do but become soldiers,” she said. “It’s not really what they want, that’s what frightens me.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDCLgLHk_wQ **Couldn't find the original, so this is a cover by Christy Moore**

The power of subtlety in protest music is brilliantly expressed by one of the earliest anti-nuclear songs, an unofficial anthem of the CND movement and Ban the Bomb marches. Originally sung with innocent clarity by his sister Lorna – and later covered by Simon and Garfunkel – Ian Campbell’s clever descriptiveness gradually subverts a scene of idyllic normality into a shocking climax as the sun falls to earth and “death comes in a blinding flash of hellish heat”.

'Company policy' by Martin Carthy **Not managed to find a full song link yet**

Martin Carthy claims only ever to have written two songs, but he’d be hard pushed anyway to match this damning analysis of the cause and effects of the Falklands war. At the height of his powers both as an expressive singer and innovative acoustic guitarist, Carthy adapts the traditional song form to knit a particularly harrowing human tragedy into the context of a cold commercial enterprise and the gruesome triumphalism of the victory parades.

'Rainin' in Paradize' by Manu Chao

Critics might scoff that Chao is little more than the patron saint of scruffy Eurorailers. But there’s little denying the strident urgency of this lead track from his most recent album, with its shrill guitars and provocative statements such as: “In Baghdad, it’s no democracy/ That’s just because… it’s a US country!” Never mind that the chorus sounded as if it might have been esperanto: “Go masai, go masai, be mellow/ Go masai, go masai, be sharp.” Anyone?

'Straight to Hell' by The Clash

Joe Strummer’s most poignant and intellectually charged protest lyric is a mournful look at the displacement of immigrants and the personal effects of war. Over a percussive two-chord vamp, he connects the fates of unemployed British steelworkers, Puerto Rican immigrants and Amerasian war babies with haunting insight. MIA’s sample of the track for the superb Paper Planes signals a long overdue acknowledgement of the original’s power.

'White Riot' by The Clash

The Clash’s debut single immediately illustrated their ability to pen a rousing terrace-chant while simultaneously grappling with such thorny topics as class and race. Written following Joe Strummer’s involvement in the 1976 Notting Hill riots, it’s a simplistic yet committed call to arms for disaffected white youth, urging them to direct action in imitation of their black counterparts who, apparently, “don’t mind throwing a brick”

'(Cunts are still) Running the world' by Jarvis Cocker

In pop, the c-word is almost as loaded as the n-word. But surely no one could begrudge the ex-Pulp frontman’s use of the taboo noun as he lays eloquently into the excesses of rampant capitalism and the self-perpetuating hegemony of bad men like no one else in British pop. He was right about Michael Jackson; he’s still right about class war in the era of crunched credit.

'Alabama' by John Coltrane

The murder of four girls in the Ku Klux Klan’s bombing of the Sixteenth Street baptist church in Birmingham, Alabama, on 15 September, 1963, proved a turning point in the civil rights movement in America, and inspired Nina Simone’s Mississippi Goddam, Richard Farina’s Birmingham Sunday and this elegiac masterpiece. Coltrane apparently patterned his saxophone playing on Martin Luther King’s funeral speech, and Elvin Jones’ drumming rises to a crescendo that sounds like the surging tide of the struggle.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHa096VQ8FE **Couldn't find the original, so found the next best thing... A cover by Seal **

Barack Obama’s speechwriters knew where to go for inspiration on the night of his election success: “It’s been a long time coming,” said the president, borrowing directly from this greatest of all civil rights anthems, before “but tonight, change has come to America.” Alas, Cooke died before he could witness the commercial success of this record, which was released as a single following his death in 1964.

'All the Blowing-Themselves-Up-Motherfuckers (Will Realise the Minute They Die That They Were Suckers)' by Julian Cope

The erstwhile Teardrop Explodes frontman isn’t necessarily the first person you would turn to for a dose of sanity, but you might well expect some forthright views – and this great slab of a song with its nagging chorus certainly delivers in that respect. “It’s strictly verboten for them to have a laugh,” Cope sings of his subjects, while also observing that: “Our western experience was not built to last.” The result is a funny, catchy and – alas – rather brave endeavour.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-BZIWSI5UQ

Whether you feel it’s fair or not, when Margaret Thatcher finally dies, this bitter lament from Costello’s Spike album will find itself on every ageing leftie’s stereo. The former Declan MacManus taps into both his Irish folk roots and early Dylan to ask whether the former Conservative prime minister can live with every “tiny detail” of her crimes against the working class, before stating that he’s only living to be able to dance on her grave. Possibly the most personally vituperative song ever recorded.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eih67rlGNhU

Yip Harburg and Jay Gorney’s parable about the human indiginity of hardship may have come out of the American Depression of the 1930s, but it’s a telling soundtrack for any era of economic suffering. The gorgeous tune and the crooner’s effortless art enhance the bewilderment of someone grappling with shattered pride, but the song’s underlying bitterness is there in the opening line: “They used to tell me I was building a dream…”

'Ohio' by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young

“Tin soldiers and Nixon coming/ We’re finally on our own/ This summer I hear the drumming/ Four dead in Ohio.” CSNY’s stomping slice of angry hippie rock was a rapid response to the Kent State shootings on 4 May 1970, when the Ohio National Guard shot four students taking part in a Vietnam war protest. Neil Young saw a report in Life magazine, wrote the lyrics, recorded the song with the band and released it by June.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoN6XfyQsr4

A highly individual British rap, preaching the alternative gospel of Essex. Apart from attempting the impossible – ie make beards fashionable – Scroobius Pip’s engaging stream of consciousness takes colourful swipes at his pet hates, ranging from Coca-Cola and Nestlé to the NME and Hollyoaks. It carries as many contradictions as provocative truths, but Pip’s cultural sniping has persuasive wit. “Thou shalt not worship pop idols or follow lost prophets…” Indeed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quLqEu4mUOU

This jolting proto-hardcore debut rose out of DKs’ singer Jello Biafra’s fear of shonky new-age guruism spreading into politics, notably when California governor Jerry Brown stood for election on a platform of Buddhist economics and exploring the universe. Biafra imagined a hippie-fascist future under his presidency worse than Orwell’s 1984, complete with organic poison gas chambers and “suede/denim secret police”. All lurching riffs and twitchy stops, it’s a rabid, paranoid punk classic.

'Sixteen military wives' by The Decemberists

Colin Meloy and his gang of hardy Oregonians had spent their first two albums singing songs about rueful actors and Keith Waterhouse plays; but their breakout 2005 record, Picaresque, and this, its breakout hit, lifted them into a firmament of young American musicians sick of war and lies. The story of a feckless media and the men being sent to fight dumb wars is encapsulated in Meloy’s spruce denigration of facile 21st-century American culture.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgOWTM5R2DA

Gil Scott-Heron declared that the revolution would not be televised. This San Franciscan hip-hop crew set out to explain why. Ranting with an aged-wood authority reminiscent of Public Enemy’s Chuck D, frontman Michael Franti charges the box with corroding freedom and popularising ignorance, as keyboard player Rono Tse unleashes samples of adverts and warfare beneath. But Franti’s stern sloganeering is hitched to a loose-limbed, rolling rhythm, making it one of the catchiest lectures ever delivered.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHH8bfPhusM

Now George Bush is widely considered the worst US president in history, it’s easy to forget that when Dixie Chicks criticised the impending invasion of Iraq in 2003, he was an American hero. It provoked a vicious backlash, resulting in the de facto blacklisting of the band. This was their response. The music is standard mid-pace pop-country, but the lyrics crackle with anger. A genuinely moving song by three women brave enough to say what they thought when few others would.

'Hurricane' by Bob Dylan

Co-written with theatre director and Rolling Thunder Revue collaborator Jacques Levy, this hit single and track from the 1976 Desire album tells the tale of Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, a black boxer imprisoned for a triple murder that he and his supporters insisted he didn’t commit. Written in a richly cinematic style, the song highlighted a campaign that finally saw Carter released in 1988. Denzel Washington played Carter in Norman Jewison’s 1999 film.

'Maggie's Farm' by Bob Dylan

Cut in a single take, this reworking of the traditional Down On Penny’s Farm is seen by some as Dylan’s protest song against protest folk – and at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 it was his electric performance of it that seemingly so incensed Pete Seeger and co. But as ever with Dylan, it’s hard to pin down the meaning of each and every line; instead, what’s left – talking across the generations – is that snarling refusal to work for Maggie or for her brother, ma or pa.

'Masters of War' by Bob Dylan

According to Dylan this is a pacifistic song against war and not an anti-war song, though the distinction might be lost on many listeners. Taken from The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, it is certainly the work of a young man, one who puts himself front and centre to denounce those that “build the death planes”. “I just want you to know/ I can see through your masks,” he whines, but in its arrogance the song carried a real power; one that was to find popular expression as the 60s wore on.

'The times they are a-changin' by Bob Dylan

Although a little stiff and self-conscious, this remains, next to Blowin’ in the Wind, Dylan’s most significant anthem. Quickly adopted by the civil rights movement, it was taken as a comment on everything from the generation gap to the rise of the liberal left; today it simply stands as the ultimate articulation of the seismic cultural shifts of the early 60s. “I didn’t mean it as a statement,” Dylan later said. “It’s a feeling.”

'When the ship comes in' by Bob Dylan

A fine example of personal pique inspiring a song of universal relevance. Refused entry to a hotel – Joan Baez eventually vouched for the scruffy, obscure folksinger – Dylan stomped upstairs to vent. Channelling both Brecht and the Bible, he foresees the day when the “wise men” of the world will rise up to deliver a terrible judgment upon meddling, incompetent figures of authority: “And like Goliath, they’ll be conquered!” Truly rousing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISFNTRaXRiI

One of the most significant political songs of recent times, and a notable attempt to dig into the mindset of John Walker Lindh, the alienated “American boy” who fought for the Taliban forces before his capture late in 2001. In doing so, Earle unearthed some uncomfortable home truths about US complicity in 9/11: “I’m trying to make clear that wherever he got to, he didn’t arrive there in a vacuum,” he said.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwkE97BLVzg

Marshall Mathers’s greatest gift is his ability to couch morality tales in superficially offensive rhymes. This Dr Dre co-production from debut album The Slim Shady LP hits the listener with a deluge of gross and puerile images. But the point is the ridiculous pressure on rappers to be “role models”, and our moral guardians’ insistence that our children will “tie a rope round my penis and jump from a tree” if a pop star tells them to. A satirical protest classic.

'We care a lot' by Faith No More

It’s hard to think of Faith No More without thinking of shock-tactician frontman Mike Patton; but this defining FNM song was first recorded with early-years singer Chuck Mosely. Over an almost spookily sparse appropriation of 80s metal, bent out of usual shape so as to accommodate hints of hip-hop and weird electronics (before that was even remotely the done thing), Mosely mocks the fakery of “compassionate” millionaire rock stars in the Live Aid era with acid aplomb.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTOQUnvI3CA

“When you hear the air-attack warning, you and your family must take cover…” Producer Trevor Horn reworked an insipid white funk version from a Peel session, and despite the vagaries of the lyrics, at the height of nuclear proliferation paranoia, this certainly sounded like a Very Important Thing. The sleeve depicted the US and USSR’s respective nuclear arsenals and it came with Annihilation, Carnage and Surrender mixes, but it was the video that really rammed the point home: depicting Ronald Reagan and Russian leader Chernenko knocking lumps out of each other, it’s still seldom seen on TV in full.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DZ3_obMXwU

When Otis Redding wrote it, he was asking for respect, and a little female succour. When Aretha Franklin sang it, she was demanding respect for an entire put-upon gender and, indirectly – thanks to the backdrop of the civil rights movement of the late 60s – an entire race. But there’s plenty of the naughty in the mix too, as Franklin’s sisters whoop it up on backing vocals and this polyvalent soul classic canters breathlessly to a close.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPXnoLAEUSQ

First recorded by the Crickets and Sonny Curtis in 1959, and later covered by the Clash and many others (including, disturbingly, Bryan Adams); but this was the definitive version. OK, the law always ends up winning and the song ostensibly mourns the girlfriend whom the jailed protagonist leaves behind; but with that line “I needed money, ’cause I had none”, with its foreboding pause, this is really a rebel’s charter.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2rTPlHEoUY

Anyone doubting the political power of song might ponder the brutal murder of the great Chilean activist Víctor Jara, whose music was considered sufficiently subversive to warrant his killing by General Pinochet’s junta during the bloody, US-backed military coup of 1973. Adrian Mitchell’s moving poem – which recounts the story of Jara’s life and death – was set to music by Arlo Guthrie, but Dick Gaughan’s cold fury best captures its angry despair.

Edited March 21, 2009 by NBTim Donst

[ADG]

Big time respect for linking typing all that up AND finding YouTube links for them all. Just wondering, any King Blues tracks on the list?

[Thrilla]

No problem at all, like I said I'm track all the songs down on the list so I can listen to them, so I might as well post the links here. Nothing by King Blues appears to be on the list, obviously bumped for all those Dylan tracks >_>

[apsham]

I was really expecting Slow Down Gandhi by Sage Francis to show up on this. :@

[New Damage]

Suprised not to see any Rage Against the Machine here.

Although I haven't heard anything from Faith No More pre-Patton, I possibly would've said that "Midlife Crisis" would be a good choice, it's in a similar vain of the song you chose. Except more aimed at Madonna.

Similar songs to that (where they take aim at media and their portrayal of stars) which you could add are Soundgarden's "Jesus Christ Pose" and Metallica's "The Memory Remains".

Come to think of it, quite a bit of Audioslave's "Revelations" albums is politically based, namely "Wide Awake" (aimed at George Bush after Katrina) and "Broken City".

Well I say "you" could add, but well, I'd add them if it were my list.

EDIT: Didn't notice that it was in alphabetical and only went up to G. So yeah, I fully expect RATMto be up there. Several times.

[Thrilla]

There is one RATM song from what I recall. I more surprised that there is only one Billy Bragg song on the list given that you could do a list of a thousand songs by Bragg that are political or protest songs >_>

[MalaCloudy Black]

COP KILLER

BETTER YOU THAN ME

COP KILLER

FUCK POLICE BRUTALITY

I forgot how much I love this song.

[lari]

Here's one you forgot:

[METALMAN]

"Ohio" and "Hurricane" are phenomenal. Lots of other good songs there too.

[Thrilla]

Here's one you forgot:

I didn't forget anything, its a list from a newspaper >_>

[The Quasi Juice]

Good list, I'm always up for some new music. I googled the Guardian's list and found this: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=phN...yUFbQ&gid=0

I think it's the entire list.

[Hobo]

Steve Earle has a few songs about the death penalty as well.

and Over Yonder . Also http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPFdbKLUmQk. There is also

and Paul Brady's http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD4eS2Xb6Ls.

[RPS]

NBT, great idea to post this here. I love this list, because it does go with some of the obvious (looking at you Beatles), but it also does go for some less conventional and overlooked protest songs (Two Tribes, Respect). It doesn't seem to discriminate against any genre, and that's why I fucking love this list. You posting the Youtube links makes it worth it... I never was a fan of !!! until I heard that song.

[RPS]

NBT, great idea to post this here. I love this list, because it does go with some of the obvious (looking at you Beatles), but it also does go for some less conventional and overlooked protest songs (Two Tribes, Respect). It doesn't seem to discriminate against any genre, and that's why I fucking love this list. You posting the Youtube links makes it worth it... I never was a fan of !!! until I heard that song.