When you hear the words “protest song,” what do you see? Is it a folkie like Bob Dylan or Joan Baez deliv­er­ing songs about injus­tice? Is it an earnest young thing with a gui­tar? Is it trapped in 1960s amber, while time has moved on to more ambi­gu­i­ty, more nihilism, more solip­sism?

British writers–and may we add ama­teur folksingers–Jonathan Lux­moore and Chris­tine Ellis made this lament over two years ago in the pages of The Guardian, in an opin­ion piece enti­tled, “Not talkin’ bout a rev­o­lu­tion: where are all the protest songs?” Here they blame the imme­di­a­cy of social media, the rise of aspi­ra­tional hip hop, and the decline of rad­i­cal pol­i­tics. They end, pre­scient­ly, with a Jere­my Cor­byn-shaped hope for change. Well, look where we are now. Things devel­oped rather quick­ly, did they not?

(And as a side note, I would sug­gest the 1980s as a way more protest-filled music decade than the 1960s. Because of the self-aggran­dize­ment of 1960s cura­tors, they claim more than they did. But near­ly every pop, rock, r’n’b, and hip hop act of the ‘80s has at least one polit­i­cal song in its discog­ra­phy.)

Enter David Byrne, whose mis­sion apart from his day job as a musi­cian is to bring hope to the mass­es with a deter­mined opti­mism. He’s here to say that the protest song nev­er went away, only our def­i­n­i­tion of it. And he’s brought the receipts, or rather the playlist above, to prove his point:

…in fact, they now come from all direc­tions in every pos­si­ble genre—country songs, giant pop hits, hip hop, clas­sic rock, indie and folk. Yes, maybe there weren’t many songs ques­tion­ing the wis­dom of invad­ing Iraq, but almost every oth­er issue has been addressed.

Stretch­ing over six decades, the playlist demon­strates the var­i­ous forms protest can take, from describ­ing racial vio­lence (Bil­lie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit” to Janelle Monae’s “Hell You Talm­bout”) to bemoan­ing eco­nom­ic injus­tice (The Spe­cials’ “Ghost Town”) and rail­ing against war and con­flict (U2’s “Sun­day Bloody Sun­day”, Edwin Starr’s “War”). Some­times declar­ing the pos­i­tive and gain­ing a voice is enough of a protest: you could argue that James Brown’s “Say It Loud (I’m Black and I’m Proud)” did more for equal­i­ty than any song about racism. Biki­ni Kills’ “Rebel Girl” does sim­i­lar things for third-wave fem­i­nism.

But Byrne wise­ly gives voice to those who feel they’re swim­ming against any resis­tance tide:

I’ve even includ­ed a few songs that “protest the protests.” Buck Owens, the clas­sic coun­try artist from Bak­ers­field, for exam­ple, has two songs here. “Red­necks, White Socks and Blue Rib­bon Beer,” is a cel­e­bra­tion of Amer­i­cans who feel they are unno­ticed, left behind. One might call it a pop­ulist anthem, but I think the ref­er­ence to white socks is inten­tion­al­ly meant to be funny—in effect, it says: “we know who we are, we know how uncool white socks are.”

Look, it’s easy to believe that songs “changed the world” when they are eas­i­ly acces­si­ble to hear decades lat­er but the boots-on-the-ground march­es and rev­o­lu­tion­ary acts from which they sprang are now just pho­tographs, film reels, and fog­gy mem­o­ries. But who can deny the gut punch of this year’s “This Is Amer­i­ca” from Child­ish Gam­bi­no, the con­tin­ued excel­lence of Killer Mike and/or Run the Jew­els, and any num­ber of songs that doc­u­ment our out­rage? The songs of protest con­tin­ue as long as there is injus­tice.

And in the case of David Byrne, cov­er­ing a mod­ern protest song and adding to its list of names, is what can keep an idea, a mem­o­ry, and a feel­ing alive for a new audi­ence. Here he is at the encore of his cur­rent tour, cov­er­ing Janelle Monae’s “Hell You Talm­bout,” a memo­r­i­al to all the black lives killed by law enforce­ment.

“Here was a protest song that doesn’t hec­tor or preach at us,” he said in an arti­cle for the Asso­ci­at­ed Press. “It sim­ply asks us to remem­ber and acknowl­edge these lives that have been lost, lives that were tak­en from us through injus­tice, though the song leaves that for the lis­ten­er to put togeth­er. I love a drum line, so that aspect of the song sucked me in imme­di­ate­ly as well. The song musi­cal­ly is a cel­e­bra­tion and lyri­cal­ly a eulo­gy. Beau­ti­ful.”

He also wise­ly asked per­mis­sion to cov­er such a recent song, espe­cial­ly when it’s an old­er white man lend­ing his voice to it. But Mon­ae gave her bless­ing:

“I thought that was so kind of him and of course I said yes. The song’s mes­sage and names men­tioned need to be heard by every audi­ence.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

When South Africa Banned Pink Floyd’s The Wall After Stu­dents Chant­ed “We Don’t Need No Edu­ca­tion” to Protest the Apartheid School Sys­tem (1980)

Tom Waits Releas­es a Time­ly Cov­er of the Ital­ian Anti-Fas­cist Anthem “Bel­la Ciao,” His First New Song in Two Years

Hear a 4 Hour Playlist of Great Protest Songs: Bob Dylan, Nina Simone, Bob Mar­ley, Pub­lic Ene­my, Bil­ly Bragg & More

David Byrne Cre­ates a Playlist of Eclec­tic Music for the Hol­i­days: Stream It Free Online

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

Drug­store Cow­boy, Barfly, Leav­ing Las Vegas, even Bon­nie and Clyde… we love a good sto­ry about doomed, down-and-out lovers. What­ev­er emo­tion­al reser­voir they tap into, when writ­ten well and hon­est­ly, such sto­ries have broad cul­tur­al appeal. Which in part explains the over­whelm­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of The Pogues’ 1987 clas­sic “Fairy­tale of New York,” the kind of “anti-Christ­mas song,” writes Dori­an Lyn­sky at The Guardian, “that end­ed up being, for a gen­er­a­tion, the Christ­mas song.”

Many hol­i­day sto­ries cyn­i­cal­ly trade on the fact that, for a great many peo­ple, the hol­i­days are filled with pain and loss. But “Fairy­tale of New York” doesn’t play this for laughs, nor does it pull the old trick of cheap last-minute redemp­tion.

Sung as a duet by Shane Mac­Gowan and Kirsty Mac­Coll to the boozy tune of an Irish folk bal­lad, the song “is loved because it feels more emo­tion­al­ly ‘real’ than the home­sick sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty of ‘White Christ­mas.’ ” Even if we can’t iden­ti­fy with the plight of a burned-out Irish dream­er spend­ing Christ­mas in a New York drunk tank, we can feel the ache of bro­ken dreams set in high relief against hol­i­day lights.

The song’s his­to­ry itself makes for a com­pelling tale, whether we believe the ori­gin sto­ry in accor­dion play­er James Fearnley’s mem­oir Here Comes Every­body: The Sto­ry of the Pogues or that told by Mac­Gowan, who main­tains that Elvis Costel­lo, the band’s pro­duc­er, bet the singer that he couldn’t write a Christ­mas duet. (Fearn­ley writes that they were try­ing to top The Band’s 1977 “Christ­mas Must Be Tonight.”)

Either way, a Christ­mas song was a good idea. “For a band like the Pogues, very strong­ly root­ed in all kinds of tra­di­tions rather than the present, it was a no-brain­er,” says ban­jo-play­er and co-writer Jem Fin­er. Not to men­tion the fact that Mac­Gowan was born on Christ­mas Day 1957.

Fin­er began the song as a tale about a sailor miss­ing his wife on Christ­mas, but after the ban­jo play­er’s wife called it “corny” he took her sug­ges­tion to adapt the “true sto­ry of some mutu­al friends liv­ing in New York.” Mac­Gowan took the title from J.P. Donleavy’s 1973 nov­el A Fairy Tale of New York, which hap­pened to be lying around the record­ing stu­dio. After a promis­ing start, the song then went through two years of revi­sions and re-record­ings before the band final­ly set­tled on the ver­sion mil­lions know and love, pro­duced by Steve Lil­ly­white and released on the 1988 album If I Should Fall From Grace with God.

Orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed as a duet between Mac­Gowan and bass play­er Cait O’Riordan, a ver­sion record­ed with her was “not quite there,” gui­tarist Philip Chevron has said. Soon after, O’Riordan left the band, and Mac­Gowan record­ed the song again at Abbey Road in 1987, singing both the male and female vocal parts him­self. Even­tu­al­ly Lil­ly­white took the track home to have his wife, Eng­lish singer Kirsty Mac­Coll, record a tem­po­rary guide vocal for the female parts. When Mac­Gowan heard it, he knew he had found the right foil for the char­ac­ter he plays in the song.

“Kirsty knew exact­ly the right mea­sure of vicious­ness and fem­i­nin­i­ty and romance to put into it and she had a very strong char­ac­ter and it came across in a big way,” Mac­Gowan lat­er remarked in an inter­view. “In operas, if you have a dou­ble aria, it’s what the woman does that real­ly mat­ters. the man lies, the woman tells the truth.” As part of her character’s “vicious­ness”, she hurls the slur “f*ggot” at Mac­Gowan, who calls her a “slut.” The offen­sive words have been cen­sored on radio sta­tions, then uncen­sored, and good cas­es have been made for bleep­ing them out (most recent­ly by Irish DJ Eoghan McDer­mott on Twit­ter).

Mac­Gowan him­self has issued a state­ment defend­ing the lyrics as in keep­ing with the char­ac­ters. “Some­times char­ac­ters in songs and sto­ries have to be evil or nasty in order to tell the sto­ry effec­tive­ly,” he writes, adding, “If peo­ple don’t under­stand that I was try­ing to accu­rate­ly por­tray the char­ac­ter as authen­ti­cal­ly as pos­si­ble then I am absolute­ly fine with them bleep­ing the word but I don’t want to get into an argu­ment.” What­ev­er posi­tion one takes on this, it’s hard to deny that Mac­Gowan, co-writer Fin­er, and Mac­Coll total­ly hit the mark when it comes to authen­tic­i­ty.

The gen­uine emo­tions “Fairy­tale of New York” taps into has made it the most beloved Christ­mas song of all time in TV, radio, and mag­a­zine polls in the UK and Ire­land. It has become “far big­ger than the peo­ple who made it,” writes Lynskey. Or, as Fearn­ley puts it, “It’s like ‘Fairy­tale of New York’ went off and inhab­it­ed its own plan­et.” An artist can’t ask for more. See mak­ing-of videos by the BBC and Poly­phon­ic at the top. Watch the band slop­pi­ly mime the song with Mac­Coll on Top of the Pops fur­ther up (Mac­Gowan can­not actu­al­ly play the piano). And just above, see the offi­cial video, star­ring Drug­store Cow­boy’s Matt Dillon—filmed inside a real police sta­tion on the Low­er East Side dur­ing a freez­ing Thanks­giv­ing week in 1987, for max­i­mum hol­i­day vérité.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie & Bing Cros­by Sing “The Lit­tle Drum­mer Boy”: A Won­der­ful Christ­mas Chest­nut from 1977

Stream 22 Hours of Funky, Rock­ing & Swing­ing Christ­mas Albums: From James Brown and John­ny Cash to Christo­pher Lee & The Ven­tures

Stream a Playlist of 68 Punk Rock Christ­mas Songs: The Ramones, The Damned, Bad Reli­gion & More

Hear Paul McCartney’s Exper­i­men­tal Christ­mas Mix­tape: A Rare & For­got­ten Record­ing from 1965

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

The influ­ence of J.R.R. Tolkien on met­al is so wide and deep it has become almost cliché. There are count­less Tolkien-themed songs, albums, band names, and an entire sub­genre of Tolkien met­al in which the fan­ta­sy mas­ter’s work has become “the foun­da­tion,” as Loud­wire writes, that such bands “have built their per­sona upon.” After all, “the doomy hellscape of Mor­dor is a set­ting that rivals hell itself, mak­ing it the per­fect fod­der for lyri­cal bru­tal­i­ty.”

Of course, there’s more to the fas­ci­na­tion than doomy hellscape. Mys­ti­cism, mag­ic, and mythol­o­gy; “themes of friend­ship, adven­ture, betray­al, greed, and mor­tal­i­ty.” The Hob­bit and Lord of the Rings tril­o­gy fold lit­er­ary rich­ness and depth into a ful­ly real­ized alter­nate real­i­ty full of swords and sor­cery, gob­lins, orcs, and walk­ing trees. What met­al­head can resist? Even those who might want to have a hard time get­ting away from Tolkien.

He’s in the source code of the genre, in its clas­sic rock chro­mo­somes. The most promi­nent pre­cur­sor of Tolkien met­al, Led Zep­pelin, real­ly loved Tolkien. As Robert Plant put it in a lat­er inter­view, “when I read those books, they kind of dis­solved into me.” In the short video above from Poly­phon­ic, we get a sur­vey of the num­ber of Tolkien ref­er­ences not only in Zep­pelin, but in Gen­e­sis, Rush, and oth­er pro­to-met­al prog-rock bands.

One key fea­ture of Tolkien that makes his work such great mate­r­i­al for epic songs is that the nov­els are already full of epic songs (and poems, in Elvish and oth­er lan­guages). “Music plays an inte­gral role in the very found­ing of Mid­dle Earth.” Tolkien ref­er­ences crop up in Black Sab­bath, Uri­ah Heep, and dozens of 70s pro­gres­sive rock bands whose influ­ence exceeds their fame.

One band the Poly­phon­ic video doesn’t men­tion, The Bea­t­les, aren’t often thought of as Tolkienesque, or as hav­ing much influ­ence on heavy met­al. But they were mas­sive Tolkien fans and even approached the author in the 60s about mak­ing a Lord of the Rings film, with John as Gol­lum, Paul as Fro­do, Ringo as Sam, and George as Gan­dalf. McCart­ney even approached Stan­ley Kubrick to direct.

Report­ed­ly, when McCart­ney told Peter Jack­son the sto­ry, the direc­tor replied, “It’s the songs I feel bad­ly about. You guys could have banged out a few good tunes for this.” Tolkien him­self didn’t think so and turned them down imme­di­ate­ly. We don’t have any record of his thoughts on the 70s rock bands who enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly adopt­ed him, if he even knew of their exis­tence. But we do know that he didn’t like The Bea­t­les.

Does this mean he wouldn’t care for any of the clas­sic rock and met­al to whom he has inad­ver­tent­ly giv­en so much? Prob­a­bly. But one com­menter in a dis­cus­sion thread on this very ques­tion imag­ines anoth­er reac­tion Tolkien might have to hear­ing “Ram­ble On,” etc.: “I believe he raised a fist into the air and extend­ed the index and lit­tle fin­gers in imi­ta­tion of a horned crea­ture, while vig­or­ous­ly, emphat­i­cal­ly nod­ding his head back and forth, toss­ing his hair to and fro like a fish­ing boat caught in a rag­ing storm.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Lord of the Rings Mythol­o­gy Explained in 10 Min­utes, in Two Illus­trat­ed Videos

Map of Mid­dle-Earth Anno­tat­ed by Tolkien Found in a Copy of Lord of the Rings

The Ori­gins of the Death Growl in Met­al Music

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

It’s the most unloved and derid­ed of music gen­res, but the his­to­ry of Smooth Jazz is not as bad as you might think. In anoth­er chap­ter of Vox’s excel­lent Ear­worm series (see Chap­ter 1 here and Chap­ter 2 here), Estelle Caswell explores the rise and fall of this mod­ern day ele­va­tor music and asks if it’s worth recon­sid­er­ing.

The undis­put­ed star of smooth jazz has to be the “Song­bird” him­self, the frizzy-hair be-coifed Ken­ny G. (The only part of the video I took issue with is when one fan is quot­ed say­ing “he was the cool white boy.” Ma’am, all due respect, but Ken­ny G was nev­er cool.) The man played along­side Clinton’s inau­gu­ra­tion and once broke a world record by hold­ing a note for 45 min­utes. The smoothest of smooth jazz issued forth from his sopra­no sax and like it or not, his was a read­i­ly iden­ti­fi­able sound in a genre where noth­ing is sup­posed to stand out.

Ear­worm first traces the his­to­ry of the form back to Grover Wash­ing­ton Jr., CTI Records, and oth­er artists like Wes Mont­gomery. While Miles Davis was explor­ing dif­fi­cult son­ic tex­tures, jazz head­ed into free improv ter­ri­to­ry, split­ting from tonal­i­ty in much the same split as befell clas­si­cal music. What emerged was some­thing clos­er to r’n’b and soul with impro­vised melodies over the top, or cov­ers of pop­u­lar pop hits from the ‘60s. This also could be seen as an evo­lu­tion of jazz’s raid­ing of the Great Amer­i­can Song­book along with Broad­way hits. If Coltrane could break “My Favorite Things” into cubism, sure­ly there was a place for Wes Mont­gomery to riff over the groove of “Goin’ Out of My Head” by Lit­tle Antho­ny and the Impe­ri­als.

And from Mont­gomery we get to George Ben­son, silky smooth and unde­ni­ably funky. He even scat sang his solos at the same time as he played them on the gui­tar. His records went plat­inum which meant some­thing in the days of rock’s ascen­dan­cy and jazz’s fall.

But as Ear­worm points out, Smooth Jazz only became a thing when mar­ket­ing stepped in. As freeform sta­tions were bought out by cor­po­ra­tions, mar­ket research firms tar­get­ed audi­ences with focus groups. It was in one of those groups that a woman described the music like Ben­son and Bob James as “smooth jazz,” and the name stuck. 
It’s fit­ting that the west coast was the birth­place in 1987 of the first “smooth jazz” sta­tion, KTWV in Los Ange­les, 94.7 THE WAVE, home of all sorts of laid-back grooves since the very begin­ning of jazz and pop. Oth­er sta­tions would soon fol­low suit, reach­ing a height of pop­u­lar­i­ty in 1994, when Ken­ny G won Best Adult Con­tem­po­rary Artist at the Amer­i­can Music Awards. It was “smooth sounds for a rough world,” as one adman called it, but what it real­ly was com­fort music for office drones.

Iron­i­cal­ly, the forces that put smooth jazz at the top were respon­si­ble for its fall, as new tech­nol­o­gy to mea­sure radio rat­ings found it couldn’t pick out the music from the back­ground sounds. By 2008 and the finan­cial implo­sion, smooth jazz radios sta­tions were on the decline and the great reces­sion killed it off.

It’s fit­ting because smooth jazz was the sound­track to a dream of cap­i­tal­ism, all the rough edges bur­nished away, blink­ered aspi­ra­tions made into melody. But when the dream melt­ed for every­body, smooth jazz evap­o­rat­ed. At least with soft rock you got songs and tales of heartache.

How­ev­er, it would not sur­prise me to see Smooth Jazz make a nos­tal­gic, iron­ic-but-not come­back. If Japan’s City Pop, which trades in sim­i­lar smooth tex­tures, can speak to the dis­af­fect­ed youth about a deep, afflu­ent wish that nev­er came true, Chuck Man­gione can’t be too far behind. And it just feels. so. good.

P.S. If you have a han­kerin’ to hear some smooth­ness right now, Vox has a Spo­ti­fy playlist for what ails you.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Youtube’s Algo­rithm Turned an Obscure 1980s Japan­ese Song Into an Enor­mous­ly Pop­u­lar Hit: Dis­cov­er Mariya Takeuchi’s “Plas­tic Love”

The His­to­ry of Spir­i­tu­al Jazz: Hear a Tran­scen­dent 12-Hour Mix Fea­tur­ing John Coltrane, Sun Ra, Her­bie Han­cock & More

Jazz Decon­struct­ed: What Makes John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” So Ground­break­ing and Rad­i­cal?

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

With a name like a laid back 60s robot, the Mel­lotron has been most close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with psy­che­del­ic pop like The Bea­t­les’ “Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er,” the Moody Blues “Nights in White Satin,” and David Bowie’s “Space Odd­i­ty.” But the ear­ly sam­pling key­board, an elec­tro-acoustic device that used pre-record­ed tape strips mount­ed inside an organ-like key­board, was first mar­ket­ed, Gor­don Reid writes at Sound on Sound, to “old-time/­mod­ern/Latin dance audi­ences.” It was sup­posed to con­vinc­ing­ly repli­cate an orches­tra.

The Mel­lotron, built and sold by Mel­lotron­ics, Ltd., was based on an ear­li­er instru­ment, the Cham­ber­lin Music­Mas­ter, which used record­ed notes from mem­bers of Lawrence Welk’s band—hardly the hippest sounds on the scene when the Mel­lotron MK1 debuted in 1963. By the time of the MK2, how­ev­er, the device devel­oped into a pow­er­ful mul­ti­tim­bral machine, with a dual key­board, “con­tain­ing more than 70 3/8‑inch tape play­ers, a reverb unit, ampli­fiers and speak­ers.”

The rock world “took the Mel­lotron to its heart,” Reid com­ments, “and it was this that ensured its suc­cess.” It could sim­u­late oth­er instru­ments, but it did so with its own dis­tinc­tive fla­vor (pro­vid­ing not only the flute intro to “Straw­ber­ry Fields” but the Span­ish gui­tar at the begin­ning of The White Album’s “The Con­tin­u­ing Sto­ry of Buf­fa­lo Bill”). Brad Allen Williams sums up the slight­ly more portable Mel­lotron M400’s lim­it­ed oper­a­tions suc­cinct­ly at Fly­pa­per:

Due to the rather prim­i­tive tape mech­a­nism (and the inher­ent chal­lenges of keep­ing 35 play­back heads and pinch rollers in good con­di­tion), Mel­lotrons are a lit­tle unpre­dictable and can be quite char­ac­ter­ful. The action of the key­board is stiff and unusu­al-feel­ing, so vir­tu­osic play­ing is not usu­al­ly in the cards. All of these “bugs” some­how become “fea­tures,” how­ev­er — the quirks add up to a son­ic char­ac­ter that’s icon­ic and instant­ly rec­og­niz­able!

Like so many dis­tinc­tive ana­log instru­ments from pop music’s past, the Mel­lotron has returned in Nord’s updat­ed Mel­lotron MK VI, which “uses new mechan­ics and state of the art tech­nol­o­gy, but orig­i­nal unused stock tape heads.” That’s groovy news for musi­cians who dig the Mellotron’s dat­ed idio­syn­crasies. In the short film above, how­ev­er, from 1965, British TV per­son­al­i­ties Eric Robin­son and David Nixon intro­duce the instru­ment to view­ers as a first-rate new “musi­cal com­put­er.”

With built in rhythms and a wide selec­tion of sounds—including trom­bone and French accordion—the Mel­lotron was on the cut­ting edge of its day. Robin­son and Nixon put the device through its paces, show its inter­nal oper­a­tions, and gen­er­al­ly show off what essen­tial­ly looked like a nov­el­ty organ built for liv­ing rooms and cabarets before Lennon/McCartney & Co. got their hands on it in 1967. Just above, see McCart­ney give a mod­ern audi­ence a dif­fer­ent sort of demon­stra­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rick Wake­man Tells the Sto­ry of the Mel­lotron, the Odd­ball Pro­to-Syn­the­siz­er Pio­neered by the Bea­t­les

Every­thing Thing You Ever Want­ed to Know About the Syn­the­siz­er: A Vin­tage Three-Hour Crash Course

Vis­it an Online Col­lec­tion of 61,761 Musi­cal Instru­ments from Across the World

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness