Protest Song: Difference between revisions

** Woody's guitar had a sign on it: "This Machine Kills Facists". And it's an odd commentary on the American Culture. "This Land Is Your Land" is sung by every kid in grade school, though they hardly ever get past the first verse and when we grow up it's dismissed as just a children's song. It was only as an adult that this troper realized just how subversive, how powerful and how it is even more relevant today:

 

That side was made for you and me. }}

 

Is this land made for you and me? }}

 

This land was made for you and me }}

 

* Pretty much anything by [[Rise Against]]

* "20 Dollar Nose Bleed" by [[Fall Out Boy]] seems to be this. At least one verse is obviously anti-Bush:

We won, oh, we won }}

 

** Most of the songs on ''Some Time in New York City.''

* [[The Beatles]]' "Revolution" is an odd subversion: It was protesting against the ''protesters'' of the time, telling that [[He Who Fights Monsters|they were no better than the opposition they were fighting against]]:

All I can tell you is, brother, you'll have to wait.'' }}

** And in the album cut, John stayed deliberately ambiguous in his own position:

Don't you know that you can count me out - in.'' }}

** The song was actually a reference to the Cultural Revolution in China ("But if you go carrying pictures of chairman Mao, You ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow"), not the protests in the Western World. This makes it more of a straight up protest song.

* [[Tom Waits]]' "The Day After Tomorrow" (about the Iraq war specifically, but it could be war in general) and "Road to Peace" (about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and equally critical of both sides).

* As quoted above, the satirist [[Tom Lehrer]] often expressed his hatred of this type of song, finally writing a parody called "The Folk Song Army":

And it don't even got to rhyme.... Excuse me, 'rhyne'.'' }}

** He might have been "expressing his hatred" in a tongue-in-cheek manner, since quite a few of his songs could be considered legit protest songs in their own right...

* "Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye," a classic folk tune from Ireland from the early 19th century.

* Clayton McMichen and "Prohibition Blues", written, unsurprisingly, during and about the Prohibition era:

''Prohibition is just a scheme, a fine money-makin' machine'' }}

* "Unfair" from the musical ''Fiorello!''

* [[Mr. B The Gentleman Rhymer]] humorously protests laws banning smoking in pubs in his song, "Let Me Smoke My Pipe!"

* "The Gulf War Song" by [[Moxy Fruvous]], although it ends up protesting political partisanship more than the war itself:

''But we shouldn't hurt anyone's feelings'' }}

* "Strange Fruit", a song about lynching. The most famous version was sung by [[Billie Holiday]].

** The topic was later taken up by ''[[Family Guy]]'', via Peter's song "The Freakin' FCC".

* [[Hugh Laurie]] (in ''[[A Bit of Fry and Laurie]]'') sang the protest song, "All We Gotta Do Is" in a whiny, Dylan-esque voice, and mentioned some serious issues everyone ''had to fix'', but didn't actually ''give a solution'' to them:

(Cue the harmonica solo.) }}

** He also sang a "very angry song" (though Fry wasn't sure it "qualifie[d] as a satire") about jars. Jars that get separated from their lids. The lyrics? "Where is the lid?" repeated over and again.

*** [[Hugh Laurie]] loves this trope - another parody featured an American Country and Western singer with a very specific solution to the world's problems [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqCha93nBTU 'Kickin Ass']

* Infant Sorrow, the fictional band featured in the film ''[[Forgetting Sarah Marshall]]'', recorded a similarly satirical piece entitled ''We Gotta Do Something'';

When there's so many poor people around.'' }}

* ''[[Animaniacs]]'' has [[Louis Cypher|Ol' Scratch]] sentence the Warners to whiny protest songs from the '60s:

And unplugged my TV }}

* During the ''Greatest Hits'' and ''Song Styles'' games in [[Whose Line Is It Anyway?]], the designated singers would usually default to Bob Dylan if 'protest songs' was suggested.

* [[Benny Hill]] included a reference to protest singers (among other things) in his 1965 song "What a World". As a bonus, he sings it in a parody ''[[Bob Dylan]]'' voice.

Then he drove back to his penthouse in his brand new Rolls-Royce car. }}

* [[Family Guy]] have done many, including the "Bag of Weed" song and the "Freakin' FCC".''