HENRY DILTZ, AFP/Getty Images When Rhode Island's Newport Jazz Festival…
Political Songs: Top 12 Post-Millennial Anthems That Rallied the Masses
- Posted by Joshua Ostroff
Gino DePinto, AOL
With its mosh-friendly riffs and chant-friendly chorus, it's a long-awaited return to form by the former guitarist of Rage Against the Machine.
Of course, it's also a reminder that in the dozen years since Rage disbanded, no artist has been quite as politically angry despite the one-two punch of the War on Terror and Great Recession. But we apparently remembered wrong, because despite a relatively lower level of outrage, a surprising number of classic political songs have indeed emerged from this messy new millennium.
With the U.S. election heading into the home stretch as the debates kick off, we thought it high time to take a look back at the best examples of politics infusing popular music over the past dozen years.
- "Testify" Rage Against the Machine (2000)
- "Let's Roll" Neil Young (2001)
- "Succexxy" Metric 2003
- "Mosh" Eminem 2004
- "American Idiot" Green Day 2004
- "Sunshowers" M.I.A 2004
- "Here's Your Future" The Thermals 2006
- "My President" Young Jeezy ft Nas 2008
- "Somalia" K'Naan 2009
- "Uprising" Muse 2009
- "I Need a Dollar" Aloe Blacc 2010
- "We Take Care of Our Own" Bruce Springsteen, 2012
- Occupy Union Square
- Occupy Union Square
- Occupy Union Square
- Occupy Union Square
- Occupy Union Square
- Occupy Union Square
- Occupy Union Square
- Occupy Union Square
- Occupy Union Square
- Occupy Union Square
- Occupy Union Square
- Occupy Union Square
- Occupy Union Square
- Occupy Union Square
- Occupy Union Square
- Occupy Union Square
- Occupy Union Square
- Occupy Union Square
- Occupy Union Square
- Presidents Who Rocked
- Thomas Jefferson, violinist
- John Quincy Adams, flautist
- John Tyler, fiddler
- Chester A. Arthur, banjoist
- Warren G. Harding, multi-instrumentalist
- Calvin Coolidge, harmonica player
- Franklin D. Roosevelt, pianist
- Harry Truman, pianist
- Richard Nixon, pianist/accordion player
- Bill Clinton, saxophonist
- Remembering Lollapalooza 1991
- Henry Rollins and Ice-T
- Perry Farrell of Jane's Addiction
- Living Color
- Butthole Surfers
- Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails
- Rage Against the Machine
- Fishbone
- Violent Femmes
- Siouxsie and the Banshees
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- Filed under: News, Exclusive, The Hit List, I Fought the Law, Politics as Usual, Music Appreciation
Around The Web:
21 Songs of 21st Century Politics
Your most inspiring political songs | Music | guardian.co.uk
Songfacts - Songs with Political Statements
Category:Political songs - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The 50 Greatest Political Protest Songs of All Time - Yahoo! Voices ...
Flavorwire ยป 10 of the Best Political Songs You'll Ever Hear
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The song in the YouTube video below discusses the cause of the current issues in government (financial crisis, debt, fiscal cliff, etc). Although the cause of the issues is excess influence controlling elections/policy decisions in Washington, the larger point of the song is that the true cause is a flawed system that allows these influencers to force everyone to behave badly (lyric: "Most of them weren't bad, they were just drawn that way"). The full lyrics are printed in the YouTube video description.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNl8rI7UOCQ












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