'May you live in interesting times' runs an old curse. Well we certainly are going through those now. On top of a pandemic we have politicians who do not seem to know what they are doing. Well some know exactly what they are doing in stirring up hatred and division. Music has been used through the years to make statements about what is going on.
I have been listening to various stuff on Spotify. Some of it is what I deliberately seek out, but sometimes it suggests something interesting. That may be music I have not heard before or music I have not heard in years. I had a case of the latter today when it came up with 30 Something by Carter U.S.M. (Unstoppable Sex Machine). I had this album on tape and loved the clever lyrics that touched on important topics. This one is about racist abuse in the army.
Political and protest songs go back a long way. This is a cover of a Woody Guthrie song about Donald Trump's dad who had some racist policies about the properties he rented out.
A British equivalent of Guthrie may be Billy Bragg (the Bard of Barking) who has been political for decades. This song is about a boycott of The Sun 'newspaper' (a Rupert Murdoch publication) that said Liverpool soccer fans had behaved disgracefully during the Hillsborough stadium disaster where 96 of them died. If you don't know 'scousers' is a name for people from Liverpool.
There are plenty of comedy song-writers around who are often very topical. Mitch Benn is a performer I have heard many times on various shows. He has been busy under lockdown. This one was inspired by a Labour MP referring to Tories as 'scum' over their lack of empathy for people who are struggling to feed their families.
This is one of my own attempts from last year about Boris and Donald. A few of my songs are political as I can sometimes express myself better that way.
What makes me laugh is when people say musicians should not get involved in politics when, in some cases, their music has been political for years. Maybe those people do not listen to the words.
Rock on!