Fight the Power
40 ESSENTIAL PROTEST SONGS
Forty of the greatest protest songs of all time, from Woody Guthrie and Nina Simone up to Kendrick Lamar, YG, and H.E.R.
It is up to us to take a stand and demand that they ‘stop killing us,’ ” Beyoncé said in 2016. When pop’s biggest superstar is talking like an activist, it’s clear that historic change is happening right now. And indeed, the past few years have been a golden age for protest in pop music, especially in R&B and hip-hop, as artists have risen to confront the presidency of Donald Trump and the racist police killings that have been answered by the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. Of course, these artists are building on a legacy that goes back many decades, from folk singers like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger to socially conscious Sixties truthtellers like Sam Cooke,
John Fogerty, and Joni Mitchell, right up through Seventies soul, reggae, and punk, Eighties agit-rap, and Nineties feminist riot grrrl. What makes a classic protest song? Some, like Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit” and Teejayx6’s “Black Lives Matter,” confront the horror of oppression and violence with shuddering realism; others, like N.W.A’s “Fuck tha Police” and Green Day’s “American Idiot,” are torqued-up jeremiads that shatter the complacency of American political life; some turn inward, mixing rage with sorrow, while others strive to find solutions, turning angst into hope and using love to conquer hate. “I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself,” Guthrie once said. Here is a playlist you can take to the front lines.
“Strange Fruit”
Billie Holiday 1939
Written by a Jewish schoolteacher from the Bronx and definitively recorded with chilling power by Billie Holiday, the 1939 anti-lynching statement “Strange Fruit” startled audiences with its stark imagery: “Pastoral scene of the gallant South/The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth.” It’s been covered countless times since, most memorably by Nina Simone, whose 1965 version was sampled on Kanye West’s “Blood on the Leaves,” sounding as wrenchingly timely as ever.
“We Shall Overcome”
Pete Seeger 1948
Folk-music pioneer Pete Seeger originally adapted the 1940s labor song “We Will Overcome” into his own version in 1948; it became ubiquitous during the civil-rights movement, performed by Joan Baez at the March on Washington and quoted by President Lyndon Johnson when he introduced the Voting Rights Act of 1965; it’s continued to echo around the globe as a universal anthem of freedom and solidarity.
“The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll”
Bob Dylan 1964
Hattie Carroll was working at a society gala in Baltimore when William Devereux Zantzinger, a wealthy white tobacco planter, beat her to death with a cane. The 1963 killing moved Bob Dylan to write this angry, mournful song, which elegized Carroll (“who carried the dishes and took out the garbage/And never sat once
at the head of the table”) and condemned her wellconnected killer and the legal system that let him off with a six-month sentence. Decades later, the song’s indictment rings out with tragic clarity.
“Mississippi Goddam”
Nina Simone 1964
Before 1963, Nina Simone hadn’t been interested in recording topical songs, calling them “simple and unimaginative.” Then a church bombing in Birmingham killed four black children and Mississippi NAACP official Medgar Evers was shot to death, and a song “erupted out of me quicker than I could write it down,” she said. Deceptively jaunty, like a mordant show tune, “Mississippi Goddam” channeled the mood of a stunned nation.
“A Change Is Gonna Come”
Sam Cooke 1964
Five months before Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Sam Cooke summed up the long struggle and new hope of the era, taking inspiration from Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” and drawing from the anger he felt after being denied a room in a segregated Louisiana hotel. When Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, he quoted the song in his acceptance speech.
Phil Ochs 1965
Phil Ochs was the burning conscience of the Sixties folk scene, denouncing the political establishment’s hypocrisies long after many of his peers lost interest in topical songwriting. This anti-war broadside, where he tallies up the human costs of the American military machine from 1812 onward, is a fine example of his pointed truth telling: “It’s always the old to lead us to the wars, always the young to fall.” As resistance to the Vietnam War grew, the song became a counterculture standard.
“Say It Loud — I’m Black and I’m Proud”
James Brown 1968
Promoted as “a message from James Brown to the people of America,” the Godfather of Soul’s landmark anthem of black pride and selfdetermination was radical enough that Brown brought in a group of kids to sing on the chorus in the hope that their cute voices might help its in-your-face politics feel less threatening. Radio programmers resisted at first, but his message couldn’t be denied, and the song went to Number One on the R&B charts.
“Fortunate Son” Creedence Clearwater Revival 1969
At the height of the Vietnam War, CCR frontman John Fogerty wrote this furious rocker about the hypocrisy of working-class kids being drafted to fight in a rich man’s war. “To me those soldiers were my brothers,” said Fogerty, who had been in the Army
Reserve. After George W. Bush took America into the Iraq War in 2003, Fogerty and Bruce Springsteen performed rousing versions of “Fortunate Son” at Vote for Change concerts in support of John Kerry.
“Is It Because I’m Black”
Syl Johnson 1969
Grief-stricken after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., Mississippi-born Chicago soul singer Syl Johnson poured out his desperation on this slowburn, seven-minute lament: “Something is holding me back/Is it because I’m black?” he sings, touching a raw nerve that’s never healed.
“Give Peace a Chance”
Plastic Ono Band
1969
John Lennon and Yoko Ono were in the middle of their second Bed-In for Peace, in a Montreal hotel room, when they recorded the song that became Lennon’s debut solo single. “No one’s ever given peace a complete chance,” Lennon said. “Gandhi tried it, and Martin Luther King tried, but they were shot.”
“Whitey on the Moon”
Gil Scott-Heron 1970
With America patting itself on the back after the Apollo moon landing, black poet and activist Gil Scott-Heron opened this classic 1970 song-poem with “A rat done bit my sister Nell/ With Whitey on the moon/Her face and arms began to swell/ And Whitey’s on the moon.” It still might be the sharpest indictment of white privilege ever recorded.
“Ohio” Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young 1970
“We were speaking for our generation,” Neil Young said. Inspired by an image in Life magazine of the 1970 Kent State massacre, in which four students were gunned down by the National Guard, Young penned a blunt, melancholic song that reportedly left bandmate David Crosby crying in the recording studio.
“War”
Edwin Starr 1970
When it comes to great protest songs, subtlety is hardly a necessity, as Motown stalwarts Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong demonstrated with “War.” The Temptations’ original was funkier, but label second-stringer Edwin Starr added a forceful urgency that took the song to Number One. It was the “Huh! What is it good for?” heard ‘round the world.
“Big Yellow Taxi”
Joni Mitchell 1970
On a trip to Hawaii, Joni Mitchell looked out her hotel window, literally saw paradise paved over by a parking lot, and wrote this elegant environmentalist pop tune, singing “Put away the DDT now.” In 1972, the EPA did just that, banning use of the chemical.
“Impeach the President”
The Honey Drippers 1973
The Honey Drippers were a band of black high school kids from Queens, New York,
convened by Georgia-born songwriter Roy C. Hammond; when Congress announced an impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump in 2019, streams of their Watergate-era banger shot up 1,053 percent.
“You Haven’t Done Nothin’”
Stevie Wonder 1974
“Everyone promises you everything, but in the end, nothing comes out of it,” Stevie Wonder noted when he put out “You Haven’t Done Nothin’,” a funky bowshot against neglect and apathy. Released two days before President Nixon resigned, the song became another chart-topping Wonder hit.
“Them Belly Full (But We Hungry)”
Bob Marley 1974
Bob Marley was an international star by 1974, but he hadn’t forgotten where he came from. This highlight from Natty Dread distills Marley’s voice-of-the-people philosophy into a pithy warning to the ruling classes of Jamaica and the world; by the bridge, he’s inviting listeners to “forget your troubles and dance,” which only makes it a more effective vessel for his message about economic inequality.
“Oh Bondage Up Yours!”
X-Ray Spex 1977
Fronted by braces-wearing Somali British firebrand Poly Styrene, X-Ray Spex set the London punk scene ablaze with their call to arms against sexist consumerism and its role in enforcing gender oppression. “Some people think little girls should be seen and not heard,” she shouts, “but I think ‘Oh, bondage! Up yours!’ ” her voice echoing down through generations of feminist resistance.
“(Sing If You’re) Glad to Be Gay”
Tom Robinson Band 1978
Openly gay New Wave singer Tom Robinson took on homophobia with this acerbically jaunty 1978 song, decrying the police and the media while describing incidents in which his friends had been beaten by “queer bashers.” Yet he still came around to a rousing chorus of “Sing if you’re glad to be gay,” fighting oppression with community pride.
“The Message” Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five 1982
Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five delivered this historic blast of urban realism at a time when hip-hop was still mainly party music.
Painting a bleak portrait of inner-city life in the Reagan era, “The Message” proved that rap could, as Flash put it, “speak things that have social significance and truth.”
“Born to Die”
MDC 1982
Texas punks MDC sounded the alarm about Nazi-skinhead violence at hardcore shows, chanting “No war, no KKK, no fascist USA!” on “Born to Die.” Decades later, that slogan started popping up at anti-Trump rallies, with “no Trump” replacing “no war”; Billie Joe Armstrong even hollered it at the 2016 American Music Awards.
“Fuck tha Police”
N.W.A 1988
Ice Cube said “Fuck tha Police” was “400 years in the making.” Drawing on his own experience with racist cops growing up in L.A., he came up with a six-minute diatribe/comedy record, with Judge Dr. Dre handing down a ruling that’s echoed through the years right up to today’s BLM protests.
“Fight the Power”
Public Enemy 1989
Repurposing the refrain from the Isley Brothers’ funky 1975 single “Fight the Power” and lashing out at “straight-up racist” institutions from Elvis to the U.S. Postal Service, PE gave us rap’s greatest political block rocker; the song’s Spike Lee-directed, protest-themed video put black radicalism in heavy rotation on MTV.
“Killing in the Name Of” Rage Against the Machine 1991
Rap-rock lefties Rage roiled the mosh pit as they sounded off on the state of modern American police departments, which remain a fetid breeding ground for white-supremacist groups like the Klan. The hard-hitting results got frat boys reading Noam Chomsky.
“Feels Blind”
Bikini Kill 1991
The riot-grrrl warriors set off a feminist punk explosion in the Nineties, with the slogan “Revolution Girl Style Now!” Bikini Kill made “Feels Blind” a rock & roll exorcism of growing up female with misogyny on all sides, with Kathleen Hanna snarling, “As a woman I was taught to always be hungry.” Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein later said, “It was the first time someone put into words my sense of alienation.”
“Ride the Fence”
The Coup 2001
For 25 years, Boots Riley of the Coup has been one of hip-hop’s most radical voices. “Ride the Fence” goes after imperialism, FBI operatives, La Migra, picket-line-crossers, and expensive watered-down drinks, among dozens of other ills. It’s not shiny sloganeering, either; The Coup’s Oaklandschooled funk makes Boots’ manifesto sound, as he puts it, “joyful like jwailbreaks.”
“American Skin (41 Shots)”
Bruce Springsteen 2001
Springsteen’s piercingly sad response to the brutal 1999 police murder of Amadou Diallo got him labeled a “fucking dirtbag” by police organizations.
“It ain’t no secret/You can get killed just for living in your American skin,” Springsteen sang. He brought back the song in the 2010s, dedicating it this time to the memory of Trayvon Martin as the rest of white America began catching up to the fact that black lives matter.
“American Idiot”
Green Day 2004
Green Day’s power-chord condemnation of mindless jingoism broke through the creepy conformity of America in the age of “freedom fries” and the Patriot Act to become the era’s top protest rocker. “You go through periods where no one’s talking about anything,” Armstrong told Rolling Stone. “That was happening in the lead-up to the Iraq War.”
“Alright”
Kendrick Lamar 2015
The Pharrell Williams-produced linchpin of Kendrick Lamar’s self-interrogating rap masterpiece To Pimp a Butterfly became a modern civil-rights standard when its chanted refrain, “We gon’ be alright,” started popping up at Black Lives Matter and anti-Trump rallies. Rousing yet bittersweet, it even drew comparison to
“We Shall Overcome.” Said Lamar, “I wanted to approach it as more uplifting — but aggressive. Not playing the victim, but still having that ‘We strong.’ ”
“Freedom” Beyoncé feat. Kendrick Lamar 2016
Beyoncé made a worldchanging statement when she strode into the halftime show at the Super Bowl, leading a phalanx of black women in military garb that evoked the Black Panthers.
Her liberated radicalism came through equally powerfully on “Freedom,” her most gripping political song, featuring a searing assist from Kendrick Lamar; when she sings, “I can’t move,” the line echoes “I can’t breath,” Eric Garner’s final words before being choked to death by police.
“Mexican Chef”
Xenia Rubinos 2016
When most people think of resistance, they think of taking to the streets. Cuban-Puerto Rican artist Xenia Rubinos takes it inside America’s homes and kitchens: “Brown walks your baby/Brown walks your dog/Brown raised America in place of its mom,” she sings in “Mexican Chef,” a witty reminder that without the painstaking labor of brown people, the United States would simply grind to a halt.
“Don’t Shoot”
Shea Diamond 2019
“I got whoopings for walking like a girl,” soul singer-songwriter Shea Diamond recalled of her youth in Michigan. She explores the alienation, aloneness, and physical terror too often experienced by black trans women into the stunning “Don’t Shoot.” Diamond sings about her own story, including the years she spent in prison after trying to hold up a liquor store to get money to pay for her gender-affirming surgery.
“FTP” YG
2020
In 2016, Compton rapper YG released his instant-classic “FDT (Fuck Donald Trump).”
After the killing of George Floyd, he updated it with “FTP,” itself an update of N.W.A’s eternally reliable “Fuck tha Police.” Along with his righteous rage, YG also captures the exhausted spirit of attending protest after protest amid a never-ending loop of racist injustice. “Been tired, fuck cardboard signs, we in the field,” he says at one point, adding, “I’m tired of being tired of being tired.”
“Black Lives Matter”
Teejayx6 2020
A perfect example of the rapid-response nature of protest music in 2020, Detroit rapper Teejayx6’s “Black Lives Matter” was released within days of George Floyd’s death under the hashtag #RIP GEORGEFLOYD and paired with a video featuring footage of Floyd’s final moments and other instances of police brutality against black people. “Another black man just died on camera,” he raps, then adds darkly, “We can’t even use our hammers/All we can say is, ‘Black lives matter.’ ”
“2020 Riots: How Many Times”
Trey Songz 2020
“I know this ain’t usually my message and you’re not used to hearing this from me, but this is the person I’ve always been,” Trey Songz wrote in an introduction to this new track, crafted in the midst of the current protests. The song finds the singer pivoting from his sensuous R&B wheelhouse to a yearning, gospel-tinged sound and posing a litany of questions (“How many mothers have to cry? How many brothers gotta die?”), none of which has an answer that won’t break your heart.
“The Bigger Picture”
Lil Baby 2020
The superstar Atlanta rapper used his diamond-encrusted platform to offer what might by the signature protest song of the Black Lives Matter movement since the killing of George Floyd. “The Bigger Picture” is full of anger, paranoia, and sorrow, taking on such cathartic resonance because it sounds as if Lil Baby is working through his pain in real time, trying to find the right words to process the violence engulfing his world: “I find it crazy the police will shoot you and know that you dead but still tell you to freeze.” It’s the voice of America.