I’m pretty sure the first “protest song” I ever bought was the Hedgehoppers Anonymous single “Good News Week,” a 1965 project by Jonathan King that sold surprisingly well in the Chicago area and not so well elsewhere. Of course, it wasn’t really a protest song. It was just a calculated effort to make a buck when topicality was in vogue. See “Eve of Destruction.”
The real stuff came from people like Phil Ochs, Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie.
There hasn’t been much protest music in recent years, real or otherwise. And little wonder. A flip remark from Natalie Maines was all it took to get the Dixie Chicks bounced off country radio.
Adam McKay, co-founder of Funny or Die thinks this is a problem:
“Music is an entertainment slash art form that doesn’t suffer B.S. well. Sure you can sing songs about benign subjects like having a crush or wanting a Benz but try and sing a song about how the Koch Brothers need more tax breaks or how teacher’s unions are overpaid and it’s going to sound really, really F’d up. But other than Green Day we haven’t had a lot of protest music over the past few decades. Sure Rage Against the Machine was amazing and Neil Young had his say about Bush, but I’m always amazed how even small local bands stay away from the fact that our country is being ripped off, polarized and lied to by huge corporations that don’t pay taxes and weirdo billionaires who inherited all their money. ”
So McKay has a plan. He’s encouraging the writing of public domain protest songs. His site invites all comers and all viewpoints to share free speech set to music.
Predictably, the musical results are all over the board, but you have to admire the spirit.