I feel like there are lots of parallels between the eighties and now (recession/inflation, yuppies/inequality, skin-heads/fascists, hot-cold wars etc.) but there used to be protest music! Where is that stuff now? Music that’s intelligent and outraged - like we should be!
I’m out of touch now, so if it exists, educate me! Or have the protest songs been removed from tiktok by the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act (UK specific, but suppression of protest seems to be everywhere)? (I’ve linked to the Levellers - maybe it really was better back in the day?)
edit: Maybe not the right audience, but if the song is old enough to vote then I might already know it! What’s happening now? Any songs from the last 10 years!
edit: Thanks for everyone’s insights. I’ve spent the day discovering music that I’d never have found otherwise. Really enjoying a load of these, but thanks to everyone! It seems like protest music is confined to certain genres/places, and lots of older songs - maybe they just last longer… which is maybe a little interesting.
Maybe I’m late but I recommend Speak by Queensryche, it’s about revolution. The entire album Operation Mindcrime is a rail against religion and capitalism told through a character recruited into an underground revolution. It’s very good and a song that contains the lines “educate the masses” and “burn the Whitehouse down” gets a thumbs up from me
Spreading the Disrase also…
Fighting fire with empty words While the banks get fat and the poor stay poor And the rich get rich and the cops get paid To look away as the one percent rules America
They were talking about the 1% LONG before it was popular to do so.