What Makes Your Politico-Pop Top 10?
Updated: Please leave your favorite political musicians in the comments section.
This morning I woke up to my neighbor blasting Bob Marley’s “No Woman, No Cry” - it will be stuck in my head all day, and so has me thinking about political pop music. Since the 1960s, when politics first entered the pop fray in the United States, we’ve seen just about every genre flirt with protest songs. The medium was especially strong during the nascent days of punk and hip hop.
One couldn’t argue that it’s gone away - the war on Iraq has raised enough mainstream outrage by itself to produce a bevy of protest songs - so maybe it’s just less mainstream. Underground hip hop is probably the most politicized genre I can think of, and others as diverse as post-rock’s Godspeed You! Black Emperor and the radical folk music collective Riot Folk are creating album after album of strident protest music.
So, who would make your top ten? Leave your favorites in the comments section.
Some classics spring to mind, most notably;
Paris “Bushkilla”
Public Enemy “Black Steel in the Hour Of Chaos”
Green Day “American idiot”
Beastie Boys “It takes time to build”
Rage Against The Machine “Bombtrack” (or anything by them!)
Marvin Gaye “What’s going on?”
Grandmaster Flash “The message”
Bob Marley “Get up, stand up”
This list could go on……