The Efficacy of Protest Songs — Four Songwriters Discuss on Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #121

Are protest songs effec­tive, either as protest or songs? Your host Mark Lin­sen­may­er is joined by Lil­li Lewis, Rod Picott, and Tyler His­lop to dis­cuss how protest works in var­i­ous musi­cal gen­res, who it’s aimed at, and when it goes wrong. Has the day of the protest song passed, or is it alive and well?

Rod men­tions how Bruce Spring­steen clar­i­fied the polit­i­cal char­ac­ter of “Born in the U.S.A.” by rear­rang­ing it (and so did Neil Young with “Rockin’ in the Free World.”) We also men­tion “1913 Mas­sacre,” “Fuck the Police,” “Signs,” “Ohio,” “We Are the World,” “Why We Build the Wall,” crap­py protest songs against COVID restric­tions, Hip Hop for Respect, and more.

Lil­li men­tions Crys Matthews. Mark men­tions this arti­cle about Twist­ed Sis­ter and their song used for Ukraine. Vis­it worldunited.live re. Ukraine.

Each of us has writ­ten some kind of polit­i­cal song: Rod, Lil­li, Tyler, and Mark. Learn more about Lil­li and Rod’s cur­rent releas­es at folkrockdiva.com and rodpicott.com.

Some arti­cles with more lists and such include:

• “The 50 Great­est Protest Songs” by Mar­tin O’Gorman
• “Rolling Stone Read­ers’ Poll: The 10 Best Protest Songs of All Time” by Andy Greene
• “The Pop­dose 100: The Great­est Protest Songs of All Time“
• “The Most Mis­un­der­stood Polit­i­cal Songs Ever: 10 Tracks You Didn’t Get” by Brett Milan
• “10 of the Worst Polit­i­cal Songs You’ll Ever Hear” by Tom Hawk­ing
• “The Ten Least Effec­tive Protest Songs” by Tim Wor­thing­ton
• “Protest Music: Songs and Free Speech” at First Amend­ment Muse­um

Fol­low us @folkrockdiva, @RodPicott, @sacrifice_mc, and @MarkLinsenmayer.

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion fea­tur­ing all of our guests that you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop or by choos­ing a paid sub­scrip­tion through Apple Pod­casts. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.