When even the upside lets you down
July 20, 2017 8:14 AM   Subscribe

 
I remember expecting the same after 9/11, but it took a long time to show up. I asked MetaFilter about post 9/11 protest songs and there were very slim pickings in the first year afterwards.
posted by Kattullus at 8:38 AM on July 20, 2017 [2 favorites]


Buried in the article (emphasis mine):

“Since people have learned to use other mediums to express their anger with the world, there’s been a considerable decline of protest music, at least made by white boys with guitars.

There's a paragraph or two acknowledging that Black protest music is a Thing, but this is really an article about music made by white boys with guitars. Is it a surprise that protest music isn't huge with this demographic?

Obvs, many fans of the music are anti-Trump, but I don't think Trump has the same emotional resonance with most of them as, say, the draft. He's not as immediately, personally threatening.

(Also, I would suggest: A lot of music by women has always been about protest, but isn't recognized as such, for reasons.)
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 8:44 AM on July 20, 2017 [15 favorites]


I was expecting him to mention Quiet by MILCK as the unofficial anthem of the women's march, but yeah, white boys with guitars...
posted by numaner at 8:47 AM on July 20, 2017 [5 favorites]


at least made by white boys with guitars

That is what puzzled me before TFA. Kendrick Lamar? Run the Jewels? Algiers? Ben Harper, even? The majority of the last 30 years of hip hop? Come on.
posted by cmoj at 8:56 AM on July 20, 2017 [11 favorites]


This article says: “The old way never works,” says Walsh, who is also the author of the forthcoming book Astral Weeks: The Secret History of 1968. “It’s not going to be folk music, it’s not going to be punk music. This isn’t a science. It’s not going to happen the same way, and no one knows how it’s going to work yet.” Then assures us that Billy Bragg, Todd Rundgren and Roger Waters, nonetheless, are on it! Then breathlessly tells us that the Clash TOTALLY would have done the little films the way Bey did with Lemonade.

I am rolling my eyes so hard at this. Which is good because I'm fresh out of incoherent rage right now.
posted by crush at 8:59 AM on July 20, 2017 [4 favorites]


The problem is that we have silly shits like that British tool from American Idol determining 90% of what you will hear.
posted by jeff-o-matic at 9:07 AM on July 20, 2017 [3 favorites]


at least made by white boys with guitars.”

Well there's your problem. White boys with guitars either support Trump or are too busy harassing women on the internet to write protest music.

I mean sure, ACA, Voter Supression, Russian hacking, yeah, yeah, yeah, BUT THE NEXT DOCTOR IS A WOMAN! MAN THE INTERNET BARRICADES!
posted by happyroach at 9:17 AM on July 20, 2017 [5 favorites]


BUT HER EEEEEMAAAAAAIIIILLLLLS!
posted by tully_monster at 9:22 AM on July 20, 2017 [3 favorites]


“Woody’s guitar didn’t actually kill fascists,” Bragg says, referring to the slogan Woody Guthrie famously scrawled on his instrument. “It inspired people to kill fascists. That’s what music does.”

Do we know how many Woody Guthrie listeners went on to kill fascists?
posted by redsparkler at 9:23 AM on July 20, 2017 [5 favorites]


I never bought into this idea in the first place. Like a bunch of retreaded Minor Threat is going to be my compensation for Trump? No thanks!
posted by thelonius at 9:24 AM on July 20, 2017 [2 favorites]


you say there's no good protest music? hell you talmbout.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 9:31 AM on July 20, 2017 [12 favorites]


Interestingly enough, I'm wondering if the definition of a protest song has evolved. "Formation" is a great example, of course, and part of its protest is the defiant celebration of black culture and beauty.

The night after the Orlando shooting, I saw someone sing Pillowtalk at karaoke and turn it into their own kind of protest song, an incredible reframing of a song I had dismissed up until then. Similarly, I saw Perfume Genius on Sunday night and it became abundantly clear that so much of his music is its own form of protest .

Oh, ooh love
They'll never break the shape we take
Oh, ooh
Baby let all them voices slip away

Perfume Genius - Slip Away


No family is safe
When I sashay

Perfume Genius - Queen
posted by redsparkler at 9:35 AM on July 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


> Do we know how many Woody Guthrie listeners went on to kill fascists?

A bunch? Like a big bunch?
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 9:43 AM on July 20, 2017 [6 favorites]


His name is Dan Bern. He's been around for about 20 years now.
posted by elsietheeel at 9:43 AM on July 20, 2017


http://www.30days30songs.com/ Was pre-election protest music against Trump from a whole range of artists. They're saying they're going to expand it to 1000 songs over the next 4 years. One a day.
posted by Peter B-S at 9:47 AM on July 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


Well there's your problem. White boys with guitars either support Trump or are too busy harassing women on the internet to write protest music.

Yeah, saying stuff like this will surely help.
posted by lmfsilva at 9:50 AM on July 20, 2017 [8 favorites]


Aimee Mann wrote this song. Is it a protest song?
posted by chrchr at 9:51 AM on July 20, 2017


Yeah, saying stuff like this will surely help.

You're right. Hurting fragile white-boy egos is what got us into this mess in the first place, amirite?
posted by tully_monster at 9:57 AM on July 20, 2017 [4 favorites]


A Tribe Called Quest - We The People.... was the first protest song I heard after the election that felt like it was speaking directly to the results (even though I know it wasn't). The lyrics might not specifically mention Trump, but they're pretty clear in calling him out.
posted by gladly at 9:58 AM on July 20, 2017 [5 favorites]


Do we know how many Woody Guthrie listeners went on to kill fascists?

It's never too late to start, but I took it as a reference to WWII.
posted by yerfatma at 10:02 AM on July 20, 2017 [2 favorites]


As soon as the draft gets reactivated for the upcoming two-front war against Iran and North Korea, there'll be protest music galore coming out of the woodwork.
posted by Thorzdad at 10:21 AM on July 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


I mean the article discusses this, but: there is already protest music galore coming out of the woodwork. So much good protest music that I'm startled that anyone manages to not notice it. Most of it is by PoC, of course, cause people of color in America have been exposed to arbitrary state violence like forever. The main thing that's changed with the rise of American fascism is that White folks are becoming exposed to it, too.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 10:29 AM on July 20, 2017 [7 favorites]


Fuck Donald Trump
posted by chrchr at 11:04 AM on July 20, 2017 [3 favorites]


BUT THE NEXT DOCTOR IS A WOMAN! MAN THE INTERNET BARRICADES!

I think the Venn diagram intersection of boys mad about a female Doctor and boys with guitars is a razor thin sliver.
posted by rocket88 at 11:07 AM on July 20, 2017 [3 favorites]


Talib Kweli & 9th Wonder - Whose Side Are You On, which never fails to remind me of Letter from a Birmingham Jail:
"I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate..."
I think the Venn diagram intersection of boys mad about a female Doctor and boys with guitars is a razor thin sliver.

Whoa hold on. Plenty of boys with guitars are awful misogynists, and there are some pretty prominent examples - let's talk about Sun Kil Moon sometime.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 11:16 AM on July 20, 2017 [9 favorites]


I think the Venn diagram intersection of boys mad about a female Doctor and boys with guitars is a razor thin sliver.

I think I went to college with a bunch of them, tbh.
posted by pemberkins at 12:46 PM on July 20, 2017 [3 favorites]


She's not a guy, sure, but Juliana Hatfield just made a whole protest album (Pussycat) ffs. Here's the video for Short Fingered Man
posted by outfielder at 2:00 PM on July 20, 2017 [2 favorites]


Gov't Mule's new album Revolution Come...Revolution Go might fit the bill. They started recording on election day last year and Warren Haynes said the unpleasant outcome definitely affected the lyrical tone of the the album. Also, there's plenty of guitar thunder.
posted by Ber at 2:49 PM on July 20, 2017


Well, I never played guitar (I took lessons in my youth in clarinet and other woodwinds) but I had a couple opportunities in my comedy writing semi-career to write parody lyrics to pop songs that other people recorded (sadly, none of which have survived; you have to take my word for it). And the people I wrote for allowed me to be more political than the King of Parodists Weird Al (while paying me .0001% of what he made). I was particularly proud of turning "Funky Cold Medina" into the Oliver North rap "Funky Cold Marine" with the one-of-my-favorite-things-I-ever-wrote lines: "I love to do / The wild thing to / The U.S. Constitution". I also did a re-imagining of Van Halen's "(I Might As Well) Jump" to "(I'll Sell Out to) Trump" which I have considered bringing up to date several times. But I don't know... can ridicule be good protest?
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:01 PM on July 20, 2017


This white boy with a guitar has been writing and singing protest songs as loud as I can for decades now, and so was that dude who just died (though I'm sure not everybody agrees that counts for reasons). Judging from what I've seen, the premise isn't even in the neighborhood of the truth, much less right or wrong. Can we just take whatever weird intuitions we personally have and posit them as assumptions now, or should we maybe consider looking for hard evidence before we start spinning whole worlds of unsubstantiated rhetorical claims onto the printed page?
posted by saulgoodman at 3:09 PM on July 20, 2017 [3 favorites]


I think the Venn diagram intersection of boys mad about a female Doctor and boys with guitars is a razor thin sliver.

We're allowed to count Rock Band and Guitar Hero.
posted by happyroach at 3:46 PM on July 20, 2017


> Can we just take whatever weird intuitions we personally have and posit them as assumptions now, or should we maybe consider looking for hard evidence before we start spinning whole worlds of unsubstantiated rhetorical claims onto the printed page?

... have... have you been reading my dissertation?
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 3:57 PM on July 20, 2017


404 Not Found
posted by metaphorever at 7:14 PM on July 20, 2017


As a hip-hop listener, I too was offended by this article. I'm also surprised that it took as long as it did for Fuck Donald Trump to be posted here.
posted by C^3 at 7:48 PM on July 20, 2017 [3 favorites]


Hail Mary, Jesus and Joseph
The great American flag is wrapped and dragged with explosives
Compulsive disorder, sons and daughters
Barricaded blocks and borders
Look what you taught us!
It's murder on my street, your street, back streets
Wall Street, corporate offices
Banks, employees, and bosses with
Homicidal thoughts; Donald Trump's in office
We lost Barack and promised to never doubt him again
But is America honest, or do we bask in sin?
Pass the gin, I mix it with American blood
Then bash him in, you Crippin' or you married to blood?
I'll ask again—oops—accident
It's nasty when you set us up
Then roll the dice, then bet us up
You overnight the big rifles, then tell Fox to be scared of us
Gang members or terrorists, et cetera, et cetera
America's reflections of me, that's what a mirror does


-Kendrick Lamar
posted by gucci mane at 8:09 PM on July 20, 2017 [4 favorites]


How about women with guitars?

Electrelane's cover of "The Partisan"
posted by hototogisu at 8:13 PM on July 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


> I'm also surprised that it took as long as it did for Fuck Donald Trump to be posted here.

Well the first time I posted it was over a year ago.
posted by chrchr at 9:57 PM on July 20, 2017


You don't even need to look in new places for protest music, as Depeche Mode has a new album out with a resistance theme running through it. I do agree that to focus on white guys with guitars (or keyboards) misses out on a lot of social commentary that's been going on for years.
posted by terooot at 10:17 PM on July 20, 2017


I'm glad somebody else already linked 30days30songs, which mostly posts songs from previous eras but has a few excellent specifically modern songs, and I'd also like to point out Hugs For Chelsea. As far as protest songs go, the highlights are probably Kimya Dawson - At the Seams and B. Dolan - Which Side Are You On? .

There's a lot of good shit coming out if you look for it.
posted by fomhar at 11:13 PM on July 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


Grace Petrie (a protest singer in the classic Billy Bragg British Socialist mould) did an EP literally called There's No Such Thing as A Protest Singer, precisely about the bizarre assertion of the kind that the original article makes.

(and yes the article does appear to be about white boys with guitars; Kendrick and RTJ totally count as protest music, as does basically the entire Grime genre in the UK.)
posted by parm at 3:16 AM on July 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


Or, hell, there's Matches (which read to me as a protest song, certainly, and which almost everyone I knew had on constant repeat from November 2016 to February 2017); there's Immigrants: We Get the Job Done, Andrew Huang's Sins of the Now, as mentioned on 30 songs for 30 days, With Love From Russia. Hell, even in Top 100 pop music hits in the past five years you have songs with explicitly political content like Hozier's Take Me to Church (white boys! with guitars!) and Lorde's Royals and Twenty-One Pilots' Stressed Out. Those last two are literally chronicling Millennial economic fears, stresses, and demanding something better, and they are the epitome of popular "piped through shopping centers" level music.

Not all of those were written pre-election, mind, but it doesn't matter because a lot of the shit this administration is pushing wasn't made up from whole fucking cloth. It already existed. We were already angry about it, and we were already trying to think about what if this shit would shut the fuck up.

Even if you're restricting yourself to white boys with guitars, well, Frank Turner exists even if he's in the British mold rather than the American one.
posted by sciatrix at 5:24 AM on July 21, 2017 [2 favorites]


If you're looking for hot protest music and performance and haven't been to a drag show since the election, now might be high time to change that. There's plenty of protest performance happening in the queer bars and clubs.
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 9:55 AM on July 21, 2017 [3 favorites]


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