History Main / ProtestSong

* Most songs by Scottish folksinger Dick Gaughin. "[[http://www.dickgaughan.co.uk/songs/texts/lovesong.html A Different Kind of Love Song]]" is his response to someone who complained he only sang political songs.

* BennyHill included a reference to protest singers (among other things) in his 1965 song "What a World". As a bonus, he sings it in a parody ''BobDylan'' voice.
-->Now the folk singer came from America, to sing at the Albert Hall
-->He sang his songs of protest and fairer shares for all;
-->He sang how the poor were much too poor and the rich too rich by far
-->Then he drove back to his penthouse in his brand new Rolls-Royce car.
* Lots and lots of Latin American singer the movement was even called "Nueva Trova"(New Song) in Spanish speaking countries. It was inspired in Cuban singers and the whole bunch of dictators in the continent in the '50-'70: Pablo Milanes, Mercedes Sosa, Silvio Rodriguez, Leon Giecom Carlos Mejia Godoy are some os those singer

** Parodied, in a protesting-the-protesters TakeThat move, as "The Universal Coward" by Jan Berry of Jan & Dean fame. (Dean Torrence objected and did not participate.)

*** It's a in your face Take That ... and a Tearjerker when you realize just how little has changed and how much of this Land Isn't Ours anymore.

** Woody's guitar had a sign on it: "This Machine Kills Facists". And it's an odd commentary on theAmerican Culture. "This Land Is Your Land" is sung by every kid in grade school, though they hardly ever get past the first verse an as we grow up to have it dismissed as a children's song. It was only as an adult, when this troper finally heard all they lyrics and realized just how subversive, how powerful and how it is even more relevant today:

*** It's a Take That ... and a Tearjerker when you realize just how little has changed.

** Parodied, in a protesting-the-protesters TakeThat move, as "The Universal Coward" by Jan Berry of Jan & Dean fame. (Dean objected and did not participate.)

* "16 Military Wives" by TheDecemberists is fairly transparently about the Iraq War, GeorgeWBush's bully-like foreign policy, and celebrities who could barely come up with even the wishy-washiest of stances on the topic. The music video features a ModelUnitedNations conference gone completely insane, with Colin Meloy (the lead singer) as the United States beating up on Luxembourg before eventually Luxembourg leads a revolt, joined by Ireland. Like I said, wacky.

* "[=~Alice's Restaurant~=] Massacree" (sic) by Arlo Guthrie, an 18-minute-long talking blues ballad that many classic rock stations traditionally play in its entirety on Thanksgiving Day, is a song about the draft. You know it is, because [[WordOfGod Guthrie says so]] about 7 minutes in.
** One of the big reasons it's still played on Thanksgiving, besides pure tradition, is to give [=DJs=] a chance to get some Thanksgiving food.

* LinkinPark has three on their appropriately-titled album ''Minutes to Midnight'': "Hands Held High", which is the boringly obvious and explicit one about the war; "No More Sorrow", which is a somewhat subtler TakeThat to the Bush administration; and "The Little Things Give You Away", which is likewise clearly but not explicitly about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Examples:

* [[MontyPython Eric Idle]]'s "I Bet You They Won't Play This Song On The Radio" was a mockery of censorship practices at radio stations, which inserted comical {{sound effect bleep}}s in place of bad words. He also wrote ''The FCC Song'', which, naturally, is a TakeThat directed toward the Federal Communications Commission, with the rest of the government thrown in for good measure.
** The topic was later taken up by ''FamilyGuy'', via Peter's song "The Freakin' FCC".

* HughLaurie (in ''{{A Bit of Fry and Laurie}}'') sang the protest song, "All We Gotta Do Is" in a whiny, Dylan-esque voice, and mentioned some serious issues everyone ''had to fix'', but didn't actually ''give a solution'' to them:
-->''It's so easy, to see \\
If only they'd listen, to you and me. \\
We got to (mumbling) as fast as we can \\
We got to (mumbling) every woman, every man \\
We got to (mumbling) time after time \\
We got to (mumbling) vodka and lime.'' \\
(Cue the harmonica solo.)
** He also sang a "very angry song" (though Fry wasn't sure it "qualifie[d] as a satire") about jars. Jars that get separated from their lids. The lyrics? "Where is the lid?" repeated over and again.
*** HughLaurie loves this trope - another parody featured an American Country and Western singer with a very specific solution to the world's problems [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqCha93nBTU 'Kickin Ass']]
* Infant Sorrow, the fictional band featured in the film ''ForgettingSarahMarshall'', recorded a similarly satirical piece entitled ''We Gotta Do Something'';
-->''I don't wanna see another child crying\\
I don't wanna see another dog dying in the streets\\
I don't wanna see another homeless person\\
Because that doesn't seem right to me\\
I mean, 'e's got a home, 'e's not got a home!\\
Why can't we all just get together in one great big home?\\
And if I was in government, i'd govern things a lot differently\\
'Cause it doesn't seem like a good way to government things\\
When there's so many poor people around.''

* ''{{Animaniacs}}'' has [[LouisCypher Ol' Scratch]] sentence the Warners to whiny protest songs from the '60s:
-->Oh I hate the government\\
More than you hate me\\
The government took my goldfish\\
And unplugged my TV

** Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama", meanwhile, was a counter-protest song written in response to "Southern Man" and "Alabama".

* Hugh Laurie (in ''A Bit of Fry and Laurie'') sang the protest song, "All We Gotta Do Is" in a whiny, Dylan-esque voice, and mentioned some serious issues everyone ''had to fix'', but didn't actually ''give a solution'' to them:

*** Hugh Laurie loves this trope - another parody featured an American Country and Western singer with a very specific solution to the world's problems [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqCha93nBTU 'Kickin Ass']]
* Infant Sorrow, the fictional band featured in the film ''Forgetting Sarah Marshall'', recorded a similarly satirical piece entitled ''We Gotta Do Something'';

->''We got to fight the Powers That Be!''

->''You have to admire people who sing these songs. It takes a certain amount of courage to get up in a coffee house or a college auditorium and come out in favour of the things that everybody else in the audience is against, like peace and justice and brotherhood and so on...''

--> '''PublicEnemy''', "Fight The Power"

--> {{Animaniacs}}, "Hot, Bothered and Bedeviled"

* A lot of the PetShopBoys' 2006 album ''Fundamental'' consisted of songs with at least some political undercurrent; most directly, [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7TSDUHhPIw Integral]] was an outright protest against mandatory ID cards, as well as "I'm With Stupid," about the overly close relationship between Tony Blair and George W. Bush satirized as a gay love song. Other songs on the album dealt with the Iraq war and immigration.
* "When the Levee Breaks" as covered by {{Led Zeppelin}}, an apocalyptic blues-rock nightmare about the 1929 Mississippi floods and the resulting misery endured by the blacks (forced to work on the levees, abandoned once their properties were destroyed, attempting to leave to the Northern states to alleviate poverty).

* "[=~Alice's Restaurant~=] Massacree" by Arlo Guthrie, an 18-minute-long talking blues ballad that many classic rock stations traditionally play in its entirety on Thanksgiving Day, is a song about the draft. You know it is, because [[WordOfGod Guthrie says so]] about 7 minutes in.

** Same goes for their forebears, {{Public Enemy}}.

* [[MontyPython Eric Idle]]'s "I Bet You They Won't Play This Song On The Radio" was a mockery of censorship practices at radio stations, which inserted comical {{Sound Effect Bleep}}s in place of bad words. He also wrote ''The FCC Song'', which, naturally, is a TakeThat directed toward the Federal Communications Commission, with the rest of the government thrown in for good measure.

* TheBeatles' "Revolution" is an odd subversion: It was protesting against the ''protesters'' of the time, telling that [[{{HeWhoFightsMonsters}} they were no better than the opposition they were fighting against:]]

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