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Sociopolitical Or Political Music (1 Viewer)

rockaction

rockaction

Footballguy
Was listening to a band last night and thought it would be an idea for a thread. A place to sort of bury the hatchet and talk about bands that have a sociopolitical or political bent. Anyway, I was sort of struck by the new FONTAINES D.C. song and the lyrics, which are about economic expansion and gentrification and what happens when old and new worlds meet. From "Big."

Dublin in the rain is mine
A pregnant city with a catholic mind
Starch those sheets for the birdhouse jail
All mescalined when the past is stale, pale

Link to song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiLk6G5N-3Y

 
Most of them are going to be liberal or leftist. Why this is so, why are most musicians, Hollywood actors, entertainment personalities, etc., liberal is a fascinating question in itself that deserves discussion. 

One of my favorite exceptions growing up was Danny Elfman’s wonderful new wave band, Oingo Boingo, whose debut album featured a classic song called “There’s Nothing Wrong With Capitalism”. 

 
Good thread idea, rock.

I've been digging back into R.E.M.'s back catalog lately and in listening back to Life's Rich Pageant in particular, I'm struck by how political REM was back in the 1980s and how it slipped past teenaged me. Check out the lyrics to "Begin the Begin" as a starting point:

Birdie in the hand for life's rich demand
The insurgency began and you missed it
I looked for it and I found it
Miles Standish proud, congratulate me

A philanderer's tie, a murderer's shoe

Life's rich demand creates supply in the hand
Of the powers, the only vote that matters
Silence means security, silence means approval
On Zenith, on the TV, tiger run around the tree
Follow the leader, run and turn into butter

Let's begin again, begin the begin
Let's begin again like Martin Luther Zen
The mythology begins the begin
Answer me a question, I can't itemize
I can't think clear, you look to me for reason
It's not there, I can't even rhyme here in the begin

A philanderer's tie, a murderer's shoe
Example: the finest example is you

Birdie in the hand for life's rich demand
The insurgency began and you missed it
I looked for it and I found it
Miles Standish proud, congratulate me

A philanderer's tie, a murderer's shoe
Let's begin again, begin the begin
Let's begin again

 
timschochet said:
Most of them are going to be liberal or leftist. Why this is so, why are most musicians, Hollywood actors, entertainment personalities, etc., liberal is a fascinating question in itself that deserves discussion. 

One of my favorite exceptions growing up was Danny Elfman’s wonderful new wave band, Oingo Boingo, whose debut album featured a classic song called “There’s Nothing Wrong With Capitalism”. 
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Yes, indeed. It's hard, really, to write a right-wing protest song. I've tried, actually, in my own way. I guess gospel is as close as one could get to traditionalism, but that's a whole 'nother ball of wax. 

I'm trying to think of voices that tended toward the right in music. I'm sure I'll come up with some. But most will be libertarian at best.  

 
These are my favorite political lyrics of all time: 

Sitting on a sofa on a Sunday afternoon

Going to the candidate’s debate 

Laugh about it shout about it when you’ve got to choose 

Every way you look at it you lose 

Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you

 
Is 1:45 considered a song these days?  

I think gentrification gets too much attention from people.  The underlying issue are housing shortages, particularly near cities and transit into cities.  With policies preventing more development of housing/transit/bike lanes of course housing will allocate to higher bidders.

 
rockaction said:
I'm trying to think of voices that tended toward the right in music. I'm sure I'll come up with some. But most will be libertarian at best.  
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Country music. But I’m not going to offer examples because for me a lot of it is really awful stuff: Charlie Daniels, Hank Williams Jr, Lee Greenwood, etc. 

 
Hard to pick a favorite, but I always like this (and the song as a whole).  Few songs go after our indifference towards the poor/environment, military state, and materialism all at once.

We got a thousand points of light
For the homeless man
We got a kinder, gentler,
Machine gun hand
We got department stores
and toilet paper
Got styrofoam boxes
for the ozone layer
Got a man of the people,
says keep hope alive
Got fuel to burn,
got roads to drive.

 
Slapdash said:
Is 1:45 considered a song these days?  

I think gentrification gets too much attention from people.  The underlying issue are housing shortages, particularly near cities and transit into cities.  With policies preventing more development of housing/transit/bike lanes of course housing will allocate to higher bidders.
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It's post-punk revivalism, so sure. Yeah, I think he's talking more about a bustling economy juxtaposed against a traditionally religious culture.  

But your point about gentrification is taken. Here's an overt gentrification song. 

Cashout - Fugazi 

 
Slapdash said:
Hard to pick a favorite, but I always like this (and the song as a whole).  Few songs go after our indifference towards the poor/environment, military state, and materialism all at once.

We got a thousand points of light
For the homeless man
We got a kinder, gentler,
Machine gun hand
We got department stores
and toilet paper
Got styrofoam boxes
for the ozone layer
Got a man of the people,
says keep hope alive
Got fuel to burn,
got roads to drive.
Click to expand...
Ah, so who is it and what song? 

Sorry. I'll Google.  

eta* Hilarious. My friends say that's my theme song, somehow...I always questioned that.  

 
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Arcade Fire has a lot of songs that are political but not necessarily partisan (and also has ties to how we have physically arranged our society).  Suburbs and Creature Comfort come to mind there.

 
timschochet said:
Actually, with the exception of a few outliers like “Hurricane”, Dylan stopped being political around 1965. He detested “protest songs”, preferring to write about love and self journey. 
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And God. Hey, where were you in that thread? Busy politicking?  

 
rockaction said:
Yes, indeed. It's hard, really, to write a right-wing protest song. I've tried, actually, in my own way. I guess gospel is as close as one could get to traditionalism, but that's a whole 'nother ball of wax. 

I'm trying to think of voices that tended toward the right in music. I'm sure I'll come up with some. But most will be libertarian at best.  
Click to expand...
I think the salient characteristic of conservatives is resistance to change.  Hard to write a protest song that just goes "keep stuff the same!"

Instead you get things like "Dixie" - nostalgia songs for the way things used to be.
 

 
Also, that isn't a knock - conservatives are needed for exactly that characteristic.  Too much, too fast is dangerous for the country just as stagnation is.
 

 
Henry Ford said:
I think the salient characteristic of conservatives is resistance to change.  Hard to write a protest song that just goes "keep stuff the same!"

Instead you get things like "Dixie" - nostalgia songs for the way things used to be.
 
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I think there's a lot to that. I also think there's a lot to just how different political outlooks tend to have different creative impulses. I don't think that it's any accident that probably the case study of our time that would be most on point, David Mamet, saw his move from liberalism to conservatism marked by a sharp decline in the reception to the quality of his work. 

 
Henry Ford said:
Also, that isn't a knock - conservatives are needed for exactly that characteristic.  Too much, too fast is dangerous for the country just as stagnation is.
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I personally didn't think it was, actually. I think that transition periods where some are allowed to stay the course doing generally what they have done is often -- I mean only often -- a good thing. It's Burkean. I think that President Obama, despite the changes the ACA made to health care, was pretty noted for that, actually. He wasn't really that radical, all things considered. 

As far as art goes, though, it's hard to imagine the latest Dillinger Four or Refused record singing the virtues of restraint and compliance. It's what makes Fred Armisen's Thatcher-loving punk funny on SNL. It's absurd on the face of it.  

 
rockaction said:
I think there's a lot to that. I also think there's a lot to just how different political outlooks tend to have different creative impulses. I don't think that it's any accident that probably the case study of our time that would be most on point, David Mamet, saw his move from liberalism to conservatism marked by a sharp decline in the reception to the quality of his work. 
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Part of that was the shift in his voice.  The shift to conservative voice for him went along with him deciding "well, yeah, things are messed up but it'll be okay.  We always seem to make it work as a human race.  Somehow."

It doesn't make for great conflict and tension.  His own personal stakes just aren't as high - so neither are the stakes of his characters.

 
Not really about heavy politics in my music  but with that said Rage Against the Machine is one of my all time favorites.  

 
Conservatives' general response to liberal outrage is "whoah, relax."  That's not great for art.  It's Thomas Kinkade, not Jasper Johns.

The current Republican party isn't very conservative, so we may get some more heated right-wing work, but it's not likely to be the kind of thing the radio wants to play.

 
Henry Ford said:
Instead you get things like "Dixie" - nostalgia songs for the way things used to be.
 
Click to expand...
It’s interesting to me that a lot of early 70s rock songs celebrate the Old South: “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”, “My Father’s Gun”, even “Sweet Home Alabama” to an extent. 

 
timschochet said:
It’s interesting to me that a lot of early 70s rock songs celebrate the Old South: “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”, “My Father’s Gun”, even “Sweet Home Alabama” to an extent. 
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Walter Berns, now deceased, wrote an essay about Southern Art and aristocracy and what the new seventies love of the archaic Southern way of living might have meant. It was called, I believe, The New Pursuit Of Happiness.  

Here it is. The last two pages is really sharp essaying

https://www.nationalaffairs.com/public_interest/detail/the-new-pursuit-of-happiness

 
timschochet said:
These are my favorite political lyrics of all time: 

Sitting on a sofa on a Sunday afternoon

Going to the candidate’s debate 

Laugh about it shout about it when you’ve got to choose 

Every way you look at it you lose 

Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you
Click to expand...
Joltin’ Joe’s parents weren’t even born here.  He should go back to where he came from.

 
Boy the way Glen Miller played, 
Songs that made the hit parade, 
Guys like us we had it made, 
Those were the days, 
And you know where you were then, 
Goils were goils and men were men, 
Mister we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again, 
Didn't need no welfare state
Everybody pulled his weight, 
Gee our old Lasalle ran great, 
Those were the days

 
Cops give a damn about a negro
Pull the trigger kill a ##### he's a hero
Give the crack to the kids who the hell cares
One less hungry mouth on the welfare
First ship 'em dope and let 'em deal the brothers
Give 'em guns step back watch 'em kill each other
It's time to fight back that's what Huey said
Two shots in the dark now Huey's dead

[. . .]

Take the evil out the people they'll be acting right
'Cause both black and white is smokin' crack tonight
And only time we chill is when we kill each other
It takes skill to be real, time to heal each other
And although it seems heaven sent
We ain't ready, to see a black President, uhh
It ain't a secret don't conceal the fact
The penitentiary's packed, and it's filled with blacks
But some things will never change

[. . .]

And still I see no changes can't a brother get a little peace
It's war on the streets and the war in the Middle East
Instead of war on poverty they got a war on drugs
So the police can bother me

 
Dumb, dumb, dumb, honey what have you done?
Dumb, dumb, dumb it's the sound of my gun
Dumb, dumb, dumb, honey what have you done?
Dumb, dumb, dumb it's the sound

Janie's got a gun
Janie's got a gun
Her whole world's come undone
From lookin' straight at the sun
What did her daddy do?
What did he put you through?
They said when Janie was arrested they found him underneath a train
But man, he had it comin'
Now that Janie's got a gun she ain't never gonna be the same

Janie's got a gun
Janie's got a gun
Her dog day's just begun
Now everybody is on the run
Tell me now it's untrue
What did her daddy do?

He jacked a little bitty baby
The man has got to be insane
They say the spell that he was under the lightning and
The thunder knew that someone had to stop the rain

 
rockaction said:
We sort of covered it in the FFA, but Marvin Gaye and What's Going On deserves mention, as does almost anything Dylan ever did. 
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With Dylan the really crazy thing is how badly he wanted to not be political but didn't seem to understand how politics was so intertwined with so many of his songs.

 
timschochet said:
It’s interesting to me that a lot of early 70s rock songs celebrate the Old South: “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”, “My Father’s Gun”, even “Sweet Home Alabama” to an extent. 
Click to expand...
What they are talking about in the first is how the North didnt just want to win they wanted to destroy. And in Sweet Home they booed McGovern. So there is some subtlety involved. It should also be noted Neil Young loved the song and that he was close to Ronnie Van Zant. The legend is Ronnie was buried in a Neil tshirt.

 
I would think Ohio and Almost cut my hair would be solidly in the conversation especially given the many parallels to today. Of course Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young were and are very political.

 
These kinds of threads always set me to reminiscing. I grew up listening to the radio starting in the late 60s. My first radio memory was me eating breakfast, I was 4, and the song The Letter is playing in the background my Mom is kind of humming along. I've been listening a long time. My father was a huge Beatles fan. People forget they had more than a little politics in their songs especially the ones Lennon wrote. But it was more than straight politics. It was a general social commentary that was of course political in the long run. Sure there was plenty of just fun bubblegum pop but there were so many songs with something to actually say. I still gravitate to bands that have something to say. I liked early rap because of that but these days most of it is vacuous. 

 
NCCommish said:
I would think Ohio and Almost cut my hair would be solidly in the conversation especially given the many parallels to today. Of course Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young were and are very political.
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Ohio is so good. That's the hardest that band ever rocked. Guitar riff is one of the best.

 
NCCommish said:
These kinds of threads always set me to reminiscing. I grew up listening to the radio starting in the late 60s. My first radio memory was me eating breakfast, I was 4, and the song The Letter is playing in the background my Mom is kind of humming along. I've been listening a long time. 
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Alex Chilton and The Box Tops, right? I always loved that song. Not really political, but very cool.  

 
Thinking about it, my favorite political lyricist overall might be Randy Newman. He was always too subtle to come right out with a clear message, preferring irony and dark humor.

 
rockaction said:
Heh. My friend's father, on a trip to Rhode Island, played us music from his youth. That was one of the songs. He expounded upon its virtue for about five minutes or so. My friend and I sat and feigned interest. Then we listened to the Dead Kennedys. 
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I listen to it every Thanksgiving.  Family tradition.

 
Sixties list has to include One Hit Wonder Barry McGuire's, Eve of Destruction

The eastern world it is exploding
Violence flarin', bullets loadin'
You're old enough to kill but not for votin'
You don't believe in war but whats that gun you're totin'?
And even the Jordan River has bodies floatin'
But you tell me Over and over and over again my friend
Ah, you don't believe We're on the eve of destruction......

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfZVu0alU0I

 
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