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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.
Jan 23, 2021 · The Best Protest Songs Represent the Universal Fighting Spirit of Music. Kendrick Lamar, Marvin Gaye, Bob Dylan, Jamila Woods and more music that has defined a century of rebellion. By Anna...
1. American Skin (41 Shots) | Bruce Springsteen, 2001. Springsteen has said that this song raising awareness of the death of 23-year-old Guinean immigrant Amadou Diallo at the hands of New York police (who were acquitted) was not anti-police. But it did spark protests and criticism when "The Boss" performed at Madison Square Garden.
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- 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.
- Billie Holiday – Strange Fruit
- Woody Guthrie – This Land Is Your Land
- Bob Dylan – Masters of War
- Sam Cooke – A Change Is Gonna Come
- Nina Simone – Mississippi Goddam
- Buffalo Springfield – For What It’S Worth
- Aretha Franklin – Respect
- James Brown – Say It Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud
- Creedence Clearwater Revival – Fortunate Son
- Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young – Ohio
Written as a poem by Abel Meeropol – a white, Jewish teacher and member of the American Communist Party – and published in 1937 before he set the lines to music, “Strange Fruit” exposes the sheer brutality of racism in the United States at the time by way of a stark, powerful description of a postcard Meeropol had seen depicting a lynching. Juxtapo...
It’s remarkable to think that a song as entrenched in the American psyche as Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” started life as an answer song. Guthrie had grown increasingly irritated with what he considered to be the smug complacency of Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America”(inescapable in the late 30s, thanks to radio playing Kate Smith’s ver...
While plenty of Dylan’s early forays into politicized writing leave room for interpretation, “Masters Of War” sees the then 21-year-old at his most pointed. On the release of its parent album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, he told Village Voicecritic Nat Hentoff, “I’ve never really written anything like that before… I don’t sing songs which hope peop...
This early 1964 track was a departure for Sam Cooke, who hadn’t previously addressed the Civil Rights Movement in his music. But the times were a-changing and he’d been inspired both by Dylan’s “Blowing in the Wind” and Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. (Cooke wrote the song after his band was turned away from a whites-only motel in...
You can hear the moment on Nina Simone’s 1964 album recorded at Carnegie Hall: After winning the crowd with some show tunes she announces another show tune, “but the show hasn’t been written for it yet.” Then she launches into “Mississippi Goddam” and the laughing stops. Written in the wake of the murder of Emmett Till, Civil Rights activist Medgar...
Though the song’s outlived the circumstances, this Stephen Stills landmark was inspired by a specific event: During 1966 the Sunset Strip police got impatient with hippie kids hanging around, and imposed a 10pm curfew – initially targeting the Whiskey a Go Go, where Buffalo Springfield were the house band. The result was two months’ worth of nightl...
“Respect” certainly wasn’t a feminist manifesto when Otis Redding sang the original version, though Otis wasn’t anti-feminist either: In his version, his partner could do whatever she pleased with her time as long as she showed a little respect when he got home with the money. Aretha’s version is very much a demand to be treated right, and she slig...
Though he’d changed the face of black music a few times by 1968, that year’s “Say It Loud – I’m Black And I’m Proud” was the first song on which James Brown made an overt statement on civil rights – and it was a typically mold-breaking way of making his feelings known. The tone of the civil-rights movement had so far been one of a request for equal...
Few political songs have been subject to more misunderstanding than John Fogerty’s Vietnam-era treatise. Most everyone got what Fogerty meant in 1969: The song pointed a finger at the class-centric nature of the draft system, calling out the “senator’s sons” who managed to avoid service. (A President’s grandson, David Eisenhower, apparently inspire...
While the old saying claims that a picture is worth a thousand words, in the case of a photograph taken by student John Filo and later printed in Lifemagazine, a picture also inspired one of the best protest songs of its time. The photograph was taken in the immediate aftermath of the Ohio National Guard opening fire on students protesting the Viet...
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Feb 25, 2021 · Top 25 protest songs of all time including ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing’ and ‘Strange Fruit’. Angela Dennis, Knoxville News Sentinel. Published 4:02 AM PST Feb. 11, 2021 Updated 3:51 PM PST ...
Dec 7, 2020 · 2020 was defined by the sounds of rage, resolve, mourning and solidarity. Here are 20 songs and albums that represent the best protest music of the year.
