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What are the best protest songs?
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What are the most influential racism protest songs?
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- Billie Holiday, “Strange Fruit” This track has to be at the top of the list; it’s that influential. One of the first racism protest songs to be recorded in popular music, 1939’s “Strange Fruit” is based off a poem written by Abel Meeropol.
- Woody Guthrie, “This Land Is Your Land” One of the most iconic songs in American lore, “This Land Is Your Land” is actually such an important protest song for the verses that aren’t typically sung.
- “We Shall Overcome,” Pete Seeger. Written as a gospel hymn by a Methodist minister in 1900 and originally adapted during a tobacco workers strike in 1945, “We Shall Overcome” came to represent defiance, endurance, tenacity and sheer determination.
- Bob Dylan, “Blowin’ in the Wind” The tune that endeared Dylan to legions of card-carrying folkies, “Blowin’ in the Wind” remains the standard template for every protest song that’s come along ever since.
- Tolly Wright
- “Strange Fruit” by Billie Holiday. When Billie Holiday recorded “Strange Fruit” in 1939, it became the first song by black artist to ever be released with such bold and explicit lyrics about racism.
- “We Shall Overcome” Based on the gospel song of the same name by Rev. Dr. Charles Albert Tindley, one of the most influential African American ministers of the turn of the 20th century, “We Shall Overcome” became synonymous with the black civil rights movement of the 1950s and ‘60s.
- “War” by Edwin Starr. “War,” as in “What is it good for? Absolutely nothing,” became a funky battle cry among the thousands of Vietnam War protesters on college campuses across the America.
- “Mississippi Goddam” by Nina Simone. Written in 1963 by Nina Simone in response to the assassination of Medgar Evers, a civil rights activist who fought to end segregation at the University of Mississippi, “Mississippi Goddam” is a song damning the racist actions of the Deep South.
- No More Auction Block – Fisk Jubilee Singers, et al.
- Billie Holiday – Strange Fruit
- Woody Guthrie – This Land Is Your Land
- Guy Carawan – We Shall Overcome
- Bob Dylan – Blowin’ in The Wind
- Sam Cooke – A Change Is Gonna Come
- The Impressions – People Get Ready
- The Animals – We Gotta Get Out of This Place
- Buffalo Springfield – For What It’S Worth
- Aretha Franklin – Respect
“No More Auction Block” may not be familiar to you by title. But there’s a strong argument that this is the most important protest song ever written. The melody for this spiritual originated long before the beginning of commercially recorded music (circa 1890). By one account, “No More Auction Block” could first be heard as sung by Black regiments ...
“Strange Fruit” may be the most brutally frank composition ever conceived. Delivered in the sour moan that was singer Billie Holiday’s trademark, its lyrics used the metaphor of rotting tree fruit to condemn the horrors of Black lynching in the South. The song was originally composed as a poem by a white northerner named Abel Meerpol, who was moved...
There is perhaps no figure in the history of western music who casts as long a shadow over the tradition of political resistance than Woody Guthrie. The Dust Bowl Troubadour wrote and recorded literally hundreds of songs confronting social issues against the backdrop of the Great Depression and World War II. An Oklahoma native, Guthrie spent a port...
There is no song more emblematic of the hope, faith, and unity of the Civil Rights Movement than this one. “We Shall Overcome” has been invoked time and again in the near-century since its composition. Indeed, even for its association with the Civil Rights Era of the late 1950s and 1960s, “We Shall Overcome” remains a staple of public demonstration...
Bob Dylan’s importance to the protest movement can’t really be reduced to a single song. His songwriting played an enormous role in making Greenwich Village a hotbed for northern political resistance in the 1960s. And yet, with countless moments to choose from in Dylan’s catalog, the obvious choice is still “Blowin’ in the Wind.” This standard has ...
Sam Cooke produced the Civil Right Era’s most elegant statement. From 1957 to 1963, Cooke landed more than two dozen Top 40 hits, establishing a reputation as a smooth-as-silk soul singer with a clear debt to the gospel traditions that colored his upbringing. Cooke was also among the first Black performers to take managerial control of his own affa...
The image of a train carrying righteous passengers is elemental in American songwriting. As the rails began carrying Americans across great sweeping distances, blues, gospel, and country songwriters built their own mythology around the locomotive. The imagery took on even greater significance for Black Americans with the emergence of the Undergroun...
When we think of protest songs from the Vietnam Era, we may picture hippies holding signs, occupying grassy hills and tripping out to the lysergic sounds of San Francisco. But protestors weren’t the only people who were angry about the war. The soldiers fighting on the ground had plenty of their own reasons to be mad. As the conflict wore on, and t...
With its explicit reference to picket signs and confrontations between police officers and protesters, this one feels like a staple of the late-60’s anti-war movement. In spite of its tone and timing, “For What It’s Worth” actually predates the Vietnam protest era by just a few months. In fact, Buffalo Springfield’s protest was very specific to its...
“Respect” was originally written and performed by soul legend Otis Redding, but you can be forgiven if this is the first time you’re hearing about his 1965 version. A slower, more pleading undertaking in Redding’s hands, the original “Respect” is a cool footnote and nothing more. No umbrage intended to the great Mr. Redding, but his version became ...
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- Radiohead – Idioteque (2000) Radiohead - Idioteque (Oficial video HD) Subs Español. In 2001, the Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change issued its third report and came to the conclusion: "There is new and stronger evidence that most of the [global] warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities".
- Pixies - Monkey Gone To Heaven (1989) Pixies - Monkey Gone To Heaven (Official Video) One of the more oblique protest songs on the list, Black Francis ponders the destruction of the ozone layer and the oncoming environmental apocalypse in terms of the Old Testament "numbers" for Man, God and the Devil.
- Rage Against The Machine – Killing In The Name (1992) Rage Against The Machine - Killing In the Name. Rodney King was savagely beaten by members of the Los Angeles police in March 1991, and the whole incident was caught on camera.
- Green Day - American Idiot (2004) Green Day - American Idiot [OFFICIAL VIDEO] The title track of Green Day’s 2004 album was o riginally written as a response to US President George W Bush and the war in Iraq that came out of the September 11 attacks.
Jan 23, 2021 · H.E.R., Leon Bridges, Dolly Parton, and more have perfected the best protest songs, running the gamut from worker's rights to racial injustice.
Jan 12, 2024 · These are the songs that have really made a mark on the modern spirit of rebellion: the 55 greatest protest songs of all time! 1. We Shall Overcome — Pete Seeger. We Shall Overcome (Live) Originating as a gospel song, We Shall Overcome made its true cultural debut as a protest song.
Dec 3, 2014 · Readers’ Poll: The 10 Best Protest Songs of All Time. The greatest activist anthems from artists like Bob Dylan, Neil Young and Rage Against the Machine. By Andy Greene. Toto’s...
