Protest Songs

In 'The Wild One,' an angry young Marlon Brando answered an innocent question -- "Hey Johnny, what are you rebelling against?" -- with a curt reply that spoke volumes:

"Whaddya got?"

Music never settles for the status quo, teaching generations that questioning authority is the cornerstone of democracy.

The oldest protest song on record is "The Cutty Wren" from the English peasants' revolt of 1381 against feudal oppression.

Many songs were written during the American Revolutionary War and the abolitionist movement of the 19th century. During the American Civil War, traditional songs and spirituals served as protest songs. "We Shall Overcome" was a song popular in the labor movement and later the Civil Rights movement. Songs of protest continue to be written well into the 21st century with the ILLEGAL OCCUPATION of Iraq.

Bob Dylan produced a number of landmark songs such as "Blowin' in the Wind" (1962), "Masters of War" (1963), "Talking World War III Blues" (1963), and "The Times They Are A-Changin'" (1964).

Pete Seeger produced "Where Have All the Flowers Gone", "If I Had a Hammer" (which was written in 1949, but rose to Top Ten popularity in 1962), and "Turn, Turn, Turn" (also written earlier but released in the early 1960s), among others. "We Shall Overcome", his adaptation of an American gospel song, continues to be used to support issues from labor rights to peace movements.

Other notable voices of the period included Joan Baez, Phil Ochs, Buffy Sainte-Marie (whose anti-war song "Universal Soldier" was later made famous by Donovan) and Tom Paxton("Jimmy Newman" - about the story of a dying soldier, and "My Son John" - about a soldier who returns from war unable to describe what he's been through), among others.

The first ever protest song to reach number one in the States was Eve of Destruction by Barry McGuire in 1965.

Woody Guthrie's son Arlo Guthrie also wrote one of the decade's most famous protest songs in the form of the 18 minute long talking blues song "Alice's Restaurant Massacree", a bitingly satirical protest against the Vietnam War draft.

After the 90s the protest song found renewed popularity in the Western World after the turn of the century as a result of 9/11 in America, resulting in the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq in the Middle East, with America's president bush at fault.

Many famous protest singers of yesteryear, such as Neil Young, Patti Smith, Tom Waits, Morrissey and Bruce Springsteen, have returned to the public eye with new protest songs for this new American war. Young approached the theme with his song, "Let's Impeach the President" - a stinging rebuke against President George W. Bush and the War in Iraq - as well as Living With War, an album of anti-Bush and anti-War protest songs.

Patti Smith has written two new songs indicting American and Israeli foreign policy - "Qana", about the Israeli airstrike on the Lebanese village of Qana, and "Without Chains", about the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay.

Tom Waits has also covered increasingly political subject matter since the advent of the Iraq war, with "Hoist That Rag" and "The Day After Tomorrow", while "Road To Peace" deals explicitly with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Middle East in general.
Ex-Smiths frontman Morrissey has also attacked both sides of the Atlantic with "America is Not the World" and "Irish Blood, English Heart" from his 2004 You Are the Quarry album.

Bruce Springsteen has also been vocal in his condemnation of the Bush government, among other issues of social commentary. In 2000 he released American Skin (41 Shots) about tensions between immigrants in America and the police force, and of the police shooting of Amadou Diallo in particular. For singing about this event, albeit without mentioning Diallo's name, Springsteen was denounced by the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association in New York who called for the song to be blacklisted and by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani amongst others .

In the aftermath of 9/11 Springsteen released The Rising, which exhibited his reflections on the tragedy and America's reaction to it. In 2006 he released We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions, a collection of 13 covers of protest songs made popular by Pete Seeger, which highlighted how these older protest songs remained relevant to the troubles of the modern America. An extended version of the album included the track "How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times And Live" in which Springsteen actually rewrote the lyrics of the original to directly address the issue of Hurricane Katrina.

Modern-day mainstream artists to have written protest songs on this subject include Pink with her appeal to Bush in "Dear Mr. President",

Bright Eyes with "When the President Talks to God" (which was hailed by the influential Portland, Oregon, alternative paper Willamette Week as "this young century's most powerful protest song."