The double standard is kind of annoying, though. The Dixie Chicks career was killed by what Natalie said about G.W., but Barbara Streisand actually had a Bush impersonator in her show, acting like a buffoon and basically being an idiot.
What bothers me is that these artists get pressured by the media to backtrack on what they said...and she did. She issued a formal apology. If you're gonna make a statement like that, be prepared to take some monetary losses. But don't come back later and compromise your integrity by apologizing and telling everyone you were wrong to say it in the first place, hoping to get your records sales back up to where they were before.
The only artist I've ever boycotted is Don Henley. I'll listen to the Eagles, but none of his solo stuff, and I'll tell you why. It has nothing to do with his views on anything. I heard him in an interview discussing a new release (this was easily 25 years ago), and while talking about one of the songs, (I forget which) and it has some sort of 'message', he actually said, "Why should I give people what they want to hear? I'm going to give them what they need to hear"
Click. Haven't listened to a Don Henley solo song since. I'll decide what I need to hear. And it ain't Don Henley.
I don't know what comment you were referring to but I think he's just trying to express himself as an artist. He has something to say and he wants people to hear it. I don't see anything wrong with that. That's what makes someone become an artist. They have something to say and they need to be heard.
I don't know what comment you were referring to but I think he's just trying to express himself as an artist. He has something to say and he wants people to hear it. I don't see anything wrong with that. That's what makes someone become an artist. They have something to say and they need to be heard.
Some lyrics by "pussy riot," a Russian feminist anti-Putin Punk band (now three of the members have been arrested):
Punk-Prayer "Virgin Mary, Put Putin Away"
(choir)
Virgin Mary, Mother of God, put Putin away
Рut Putin away, put Putin away
(end chorus)
...
Black robe, golden epaulettes
All parishioners crawl to bow
The phantom of liberty is in heaven
Gay-pride sent to Siberia in chains
The head of the KGB, their chief saint,
Leads protesters to prison under escort
In order not to offend His Holiness
Women must give birth and love
Shit, shit, the Lord's shit!
Shit, shit, the Lord's shit!
(Chorus)
Virgin Mary, Mother of God, become a feminist
Become a feminist, become a feminist
(end chorus)
The Church’s praise of rotten dictators
The cross-bearer procession of black limousines
A teacher-preacher will meet you at school
Go to class - bring him money!
Patriarch Gundyaev believes in Putin
Bitch, better believe in God instead
The belt of the Virgin can’t replace mass-meetings
Mary, Mother of God, is with us in protest!
(Chorus)
Virgin Mary, Mother of God, put Putin away
Рut Putin away, put Putin away
(end chorus)
Putin Got Scared
A rebellious column moves toward the Kremlin,
Windows explode inside FSB offices.
Bitches piss behind the red walls
Riot calls for the System’s Abortion!
Attack at dawn? Am not against it,
For our joint freedom, a whip to chastise with
Madonna to her glory will learn to fight
Feminist Magdalene go demonstrate
Revolt in Russia - the charisma of protest
Revolt in Russia – pissed on by Putin
Revolt in Russia - We Exist!
Revolt in Russia – Riot! Riot!
Take to the streets
Live on the Red
Set free the rage
Of civil anger
(loss on the square)
Discontent with the culture of male hysteria
Wild leaderism devours brains
The Orthodox religion of a hard penis
Patients are asked to accept conformity
The regime heads toward censorship of dreams
The time has come for subversive clashing
A pack of bitches from the sexist regime
Begs forgiveness of a feminist wedge.
Revolt in Russia - the charisma of protest
Revolt in Russia – Putin got scared
Revolt in Russia - We Exist!
Revolt in Russia – Riot! Riot!
Take to the streets
Live on the Red
Set free the rage
Of civil anger
“Death to Prison, Freedom to Protest”
The joyful science of occupying squares
The will to everyone’s power, without damn leaders
Direct action – the future of mankind!
LGBT, feminists, defend the nation!
Death to prison, freedom to protest
Make the cops serve freedom,
Protests bring on good weather
Occupy the square, do a peaceful takeover
Take away the guns from all the cops
Death to prison, freedom to protest
Fill the city, all the squares and streets,
There are many in Russia, beat it,
Open all the doors, take off the shoulder straps
Taste the smell of freedom together with us
Death to prison, freedom to protest
“Kropotkin-Vodka”
Occupy the city with a kitchen frying pan
Go out with a vacuum, get off on it,
Seduce battalions of police damsels
Naked cops rejoice in the new reforms
The ****ing end to sexist putinists!
Kropotkin-vodka splashes in the bellies
You feel good, but those Kremlin bastards
Face the revolt of the toilets, fatal poisoning
Flashing lights won’t save you, Kennedy will meet you
The ****ing end to informant bosses!
Caught some zzz’s, time to oppress the day
The knuckle-duster’s ready, feminism’s sharpened
Take your soup away to Eastern Siberia
So that Riot will become rough enough
The ****ing end to sexist putinists!
The ****ing end to sexist putinists!
The ****ing end to sexist putinists!
“Raze the Pavement”
The Egyptian air is good for the lungs
Do a Tahrir on the Red Square
Spend a violent day among strong women
Look for scrap on the balcony, raze the pavement
It is never too late to become a dominatrix
The bludgeons are loaded, screams get louder,
Stretch the muscles of your arms and legs
The cop is licking you between the legs
The toilets are clean, chickens are in their civvies,
Specters of Zizek washed away in the toilets
Khimki Forest plundered, Chirikova banned from elections,
And the feminists sent home on maternity leave.
I try to stay as far away from political music as humanly possible. I consider it among the least meaningful topics an artist can wax philosophic about, personally. Give me something from your heart, not some propaganda you heard on cable news. =P
Though as far as music reflecting the times, you do see a very notable shift in the latter '00s from the bling bling money culture to a more "getting by with what we have" mentality as the economic recession took hold. Easy examples would be recent hits Keep Your Head Up by Andy Grammer, Pricetag by Jessie J, and Sleazy by Ke$ha.
I try to stay as far away from political music as humanly possible. I consider it among the least meaningful topics an artist can wax philosophic about, personally. Give me something from your heart, not some propaganda you heard on cable news. =P
Least meaningful? I would think the dance music that's on the radio nowadays would be the least meaningful, especially hip hop/rap where most of what they sing about is "bling and bitches."
Though as far as music reflecting the times, you do see a very notable shift in the latter '00s from the bling bling money culture to a more "getting by with what we have" mentality as the economic recession took hold. Easy examples would be recent hits Keep Your Head Up by Andy Grammer, Pricetag by Jessie J, and Sleazy by Ke$ha.
So...I listened to that Andy Grammer song. Very positive, upbeat tune packaged in a radio-friendly vehicle for the masses. It's politically relevant alright, although a skeptic like me could even say that a song like this might even be bought and paid for by the global elite who want to control the people. Who knows if it even came from Andy or not.
I'm trying to remember if there were any upbeat political songs back in the late 60s/70s regarding the Vietnam war but none come to mind.
At any rate, here's a song I found that is the exact opposite of Andy Grammer's take on our current times.
Least meaningful? I would think the dance music that's on the radio nowadays would be the least meaningful, especially hip hop/rap where most of what they sing about is "bling and bitches."
Partisan politics is white noise to me. If I wanted to hear someone repeat party platforms I would read it from a pamphlet. A dance song at least connects to something people feel on the inside, desire. There is a LOT of political music that is genuine and thoughtful and important, I don't deny it. Something like Blowin' In The Wind, but I'm not willing to risk running into the partisan variety in order to find the sincere stuff. It's just a personal preference of mine, that's all.
Basically I see a lot of political songwriting as being the most base form of opinion-regurgitating. Yes people feel VERY strongly about their political opinions but that doesn't automatically make them good song topics or meaningful perspectives. I could write a song about how I think The Legend of Korra is the best TV show but who the heck would want to listen to that? If I wrote a song about how much The Legend of Korra means to me on a personal level, that might be a decent enough song topic. The same distinction applies to political songs. Too many political songs merely tell you what to think instead of taking a personal angle on it, so I consider most in that variety meaningless.
I had to deal with this phenomenon head on when my favorite artist started doing a bunch of political albums in the mid-00s... for me it was like "Wow, Neil, you used to speak straight from your soul with words so personal you were almost afraid to say them. Now you're reiterating verbatim some absent-minded propaganda we've all heard a dozen times before, and you're not even repeating it to a melody." I don't mind political music as a rule, but since I can't stand politics I have a very low threshold for it and require at the very least a unique or genuine perspective on an issue.
So...I listened to that Andy Grammer song. Very positive, upbeat tune packaged in a radio-friendly vehicle for the masses. It's politically relevant alright, although a skeptic like me could even say that a song like this might even be bought and paid for by the global elite who want to control the people. Who knows if it even came from Andy or not.
I'm not talking about politically relevant music. I consider most political music inherently irrelevant, although there certainly are excellent exceptions. The songs I listed are relevant to the times because they speak to the shift in attitude our culture has recently undergone.
I'm trying to remember if there were any upbeat political songs back in the late 60s/70s regarding the Vietnam war but none come to mind.
Upbeat in which sense? Some of them were upbeat musically speaking, like I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die-Rag and Military Madness. And a lot of timely music from that period was upbeat thematically with ideas of hope, peace, and love, like Woodstock and A Change Is Gonna Come. But anyhoo I'm not sure if it matter how similar or different today's timely music is to what they were doing in the 60s. If it was the same as music from forty or fifty years ago, it wouldn't be especially timely lol. x]
Partisan politics is white noise to me. If I wanted to hear someone repeat party platforms I would read it from a pamphlet. A dance song at least connects to something people feel on the inside, desire. There is a LOT of political music that is genuine and thoughtful and important, I don't deny it. Something like Blowin' In The Wind, but I'm not willing to risk running into the partisan variety in order to find the sincere stuff. It's just a personal preference of mine, that's all.
Basically I see a lot of political songwriting as being the most base form of opinion-regurgitating. Yes people feel VERY strongly about their political opinions but that doesn't automatically make them good song topics or meaningful perspectives. I could write a song about how I think The Legend of Korra is the best TV show but who the heck would want to listen to that? If I wrote a song about how much The Legend of Korra means to me on a personal level, that might be a decent enough song topic. The same distinction applies to political songs. Too many political songs merely tell you what to think instead of taking a personal angle on it, so I consider most in that variety meaningless.
If a singer is telling his audience what to think, isn't that on a personal level? At any rate, I think most political/socially relevant songs usually slant one way but don't tell their audience how to think. 'Born In The USA' is a good example of this. You know how Springsteen feels about the Vietnam War but he doesn't hit you over the head with it.
I'm not talking about politically relevant music. I consider most political music inherently irrelevant, although there certainly are excellent exceptions. The songs I listed are relevant to the times because they speak to the shift in attitude our culture has recently undergone.
What is the difference between 'political music' and music 'relevant to the times'? I see them both as the same thing...socially relevant music. I don't know if you're making a distinction between the two or not.
Upbeat in which sense? Some of them were upbeat musically speaking, like I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die-Rag and Military Madness. And a lot of timely music from that period was upbeat thematically with ideas of hope, peace, and love, like Woodstock and A Change Is Gonna Come. But anyhoo I'm not sure if it matter how similar or different today's timely music is to what they were doing in the 60s. If it was the same as music from forty or fifty years ago, it wouldn't be especially timely lol. x]
I could write a song about how I think The Legend of Korra is the best TV show but who the heck would want to listen to that? If I wrote a song about how much The Legend of Korra means to me on a personal level, that might be a decent enough song topic. The same distinction applies to political songs. Too many political songs merely tell you what to think instead of taking a personal angle on it, so I consider most in that variety meaningless.
I don't think there's a great difference between a song that is about how good the legend of korra is versus a song how much the legend of korra means to you on a personal level? The content of the song will be the same. The form will just defer. The former will be like: "the legend of korra is...." and the latter will be like: "I find that the legend of Korra..." The rest will be the same, I don't see the difference there. The last one is just a little less aggressive.
I see songs with a political content as a very positive thing. It's part of our global democratic system, it's the voice of a person, just like another one would make a movie to highlight a topic, or write a petition, or write an article, a column.. One person can make another person, who is thousands of kilometers away, think about a topic from a different angle. It gives power to the people, that's how I see it! And it would be a very bad sign if there weren't any political songs anymore..
Also, interesting from a historical point of view. Maybe 1000 years from now, the love songs will probably be similar to what they are now, perhaps the changing roles of men and women will have changed it a little, though the political songs though.... Now that'd be interesting, right? Will the people still value the same political norms as they do now (participation, respect for human rights, rule of law..) or will there be completely new ideas we can't even imagine at this point?
For the sake of history & for the sake of democracy: hail to the political content in music!
Only in the sense that anything someone says could be considered personal. If someone's just regurgitating slogans they're not expressing anything deep or weighty about themselves or their world experience. At best they're telling you their party affiliation which could have more easily been summed up with a word or two.
At any rate, I think most political/socially relevant songs usually slant one way but don't tell their audience how to think. 'Born In The USA' is a good example of this. You know how Springsteen feels about the Vietnam War but he doesn't hit you over the head with it.
Agreed, there's a lot of fantastic political music. But there's enough bad to put me on the run.
What is the difference between 'political music' and music 'relevant to the times'? I see them both as the same thing...socially relevant music. I don't know if you're making a distinction between the two or not.
Well, I wouldn't consider a song like "Sleazy" be Ke$ha to be specifically political, but it's socially relevant in its shift from bling bling to getting by with less, as that's one of the major things our culture has had to deal with in recent years. But it's not a major distinction, I just wanted to note that I wasn't picking songs that were specifically political. If I had been, my song picks would have been different, and more overt.
'Give Peace A Chance' by John Lennon would be a good example of positive political music in this era.
I don't think there's a great difference between a song that is about how good the legend of korra is versus a song how much the legend of korra means to you on a personal level? The content of the song will be the same. The form will just defer. The former will be like: "the legend of korra is...." and the latter will be like: "I find that the legend of Korra..." The rest will be the same, I don't see the difference there. The last one is just a little less aggressive.
I strongly disagree on this. One song would be "TLOK is the best show ever, it is amaziiiing, it is drawn wellll...." whereas the other song would be "When I was just a young man, there was this show that showed me who I was deep down inside, it taught me that..." (embellishing obviously, hehe). One song is about my opinion of TLOK, the other song is about my experience with TLOK.
Same applies to political music. You have a song like Neil Young's "Let's Impeach The President." And regardless of whether I agree with his political outlook, it's incredibly cringe worthy to me because it's simply "let's impeach him, yaaaay, let's do it brah." It's a political pamphlet. Alternatively you have a song like Blowin' in the Wind or The Way it Is by Bruce Hornsby. The perspective the artist is coming from is still clear, but the lyrics are exploring the subject rather than dictating it. It's the difference between what you might hear at a political rally, and what you might hear while having an intimate discussion with your significant other about their fears and doubts and confusions.
For obvious reasons I'm not familiar with a lot of Bush-era political music, but you could take the same theme Neil uses in Let's Impeach The President, and you could write a song called "What Are We Doing?" or something more probing like that, and tell a story about what's happening to people during this era instead of just a campaign slogan. Maybe a first-person story through the eyes of a soldier in the Middle East or something in that vein.
I've always found David Ford to be an artist that greatly incorporates the emotions and thoughts of our current times through his music!
Panic
(I find this track hypnotic and powerful)
Exactly where should I begin,
Forgive me father I have sinned,
Been caught perpetuating wrongs,
I screamed in accusation,
And yet convinced that still I can,
Somehow be better than I am,
If I could only bring myself,
To step in one direction.
But all this progress that I've made,
Has left me bitter and afraid,
I bolt the doors and let the
Trappings of my life surround me,
And hope to God nobody calls,
But trust the scratching in the walls,
To be my comfort and my shelter
From the world around me.
Ignore the whisper on the wind,
Forgive me father I have sinned,
I swear right now I'd cling
To anything you'd care to show me,
To save me from improper thoughts,
That modern miracle of sorts,
Against a tide of advertising,
And survival only.
Poor condition has been set,
And every new potential threat,
Must be eradicated from
the face of all that's sacred,
Not just anger for the cause,
I'll be hysterically yours,
And deaf to any reason,
Evidence or explanation.
So tell me what have I become?
A middle finger to the sun?
I traded fireworks for love
and I was left with nothing,
But paper shards and empty shells,
A burst of sulphur blown to hell,
It might just be that all this
history has taught me something.
So I'm taking lessons from the past,
They won't build anything to last,
But engineered to fall apart,
The day the warranty expires,
So keep the wheels turning round,
Keep our flag pinned to the ground,
Just don't look back and don't look down,
In fact try not to look at all.
You'll see opinion dressed as fact,
See definitions inexact,
And explain away the darkest days,
As misinterpretation,
This dumbing down it's so uncouth,
Like there's one single ****ing truth,
I couldn't bear that right and wrong,
Could be so uncomplicated.
And swagger dripping from the stage,
Curse the impatience of the age,
It all takes time, and time is money,
Money talks, and talk is cheap,
Cheapest road to lead the way,
From seed to forest in a day,
And by the time the sun is set,
There's only dirt and matchwood.
So could it be the end is nigh,
The time for idly standing by,
Is now upon us,
Everybody look for some distraction,
Throw my patience to the wind,
Forgive me father all my sins,
Feel like they're woven,
Double stitched into the fabric of the World.
State Of The Union
(David has a great way of expressing and building the tension in this track which is another social commentary)
Sweet dreams all met with derision
This train, it was armed for collision
It's a shame, it's a shame, it's a shame
Clap your hands in the sparkle and glitter
Shake your heads at the twisted and bitter
Oh they don't know how lucky they are
Foot down for the alienation
Look on as your love, its gets lost in translation
To a language that nobody understands
There are smiles as they erode and corrupt you
Of the great expectations you could never live up to
We are lost, we are lost, we are lost
Get you coat, 'cause the righteous are leaving
Cause they can't work out what the hell to believe in
It's a shame, it's a shame, it's a shame
No abandon, no heartfelt desire
No love could be worth getting fired
For real, it's surreal, it's so real
So paint over the cracks and then cover
What you thought was the worst ever pain with another
And the first one, it always comes free
How they love you so cold and so vicious
With friends like these, well who needs politicians
The first one, its always comes free
They tell you heroin takes like ice cream
Clever men know all that and all this
And they will talk and they talk and the don't ****ing listen
It's a shame, it's a shame, it's a shame
It's no life but God, it's a living
Come on Jesus Christ, come back all is forgiven
We are lost, we are lost, we are lost
Have no fear of the state of the nation
Let the facts have no bearing on public relations
It's a shame, it's a shame, it's a shame
What a model of Christian behavior
Preach on with the message of "go **** thy neighbor"
It's a shame, it's a shame, it's a shame
It's a shame, it's a shame
Watch your step by the crowd of fanatics
While they kill in the name of applied mathematics
Hate the system even though you invented it
Go kill your brothers and claim self defense of it
Picking up all the secrets and tricks to being
One of the guys whom the shit never sticks to
Take you seats for the final calamity
Don't you look serious, hell, what can the matter be?
Another day and the rot's getting faster
And all the machines started killing the master
It's a shame, it's a shame, it's a shame
It's a shame, it's a shame
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