History Main / ProtestSong

* Music/SimonAndGarfunkel with their cover of Ian Campbell's "The Sun is Burning." "The Sound of Silence," one of their first major hits, is believed to have been written about the [[WhoShotJFK assassination]] of UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy.

* This is witch house duo Music/{{IC3PEAK}}'s whole thing, proudly calling their band "audiovisual terrorism." They've gotten into [[DidYouJustFlipOffCthulu pretty deep shit]] with the Russian government for their music, live performances, and videos, which are very blatant with their disdain for the Russian government and Putin. "Марш" ("Marching") is an anti-war song which came out [[HarsherInHindsight a year before Russia invaded Ukraine,]] which the duo were ''very'' much against.

* Music/HaruNemuri wrote "Watermelon (Demo)" in support of calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and the West Bank. The title is reference to how the watermelon emoji became of symbol for Palestine since posts using the Palestinian flag was being shadowbanned/censored, and watermelons have the same colors as the flag.

** [[http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2010/08/music-monday-bloody-war-songs-review/ This article,]] about the album which the first recording is on, gives a good history about the song and how there was a pro-war version too. Strangely the refrain stayed the same: "It was all about the battleship of Maine", which is meant to be like saying, "We know this war is a hoax!"

* If the rock musical ''Theatre/{{Hair}}'' doesn't count, then no work of musical theatre does. ("Three-Five-Zero-Zero", anyone?)
* Even Music/TheMonkees got into the act, though they had to be subtle about it: their biggest hit, "Last Train to Clarksville", was about a soldier about to be shipped off to Vietnam, making plans to sneak off base to meet his fiancee at a NoTellMotel for one last fling because "I don't know if I'm ever coming home." Whether this was actually meant as a protest or just a case of LyricalDissonance seemed to depend on which of the bandmembers (or their songwriters) you ask. Other Monkees examples:

* Almost everything by Music/PhilOchs, who once defined a protest song as "a song that's so specific that you cannot mistake it for bullshit". See "I Ain't Marchin' Anymore," "Outside of a Small Circle of Friends," etc.

** Along with its B-side, "Find the Cost of Freedom".

** "Music/{{Imagine}}," which can also be interpreted as a ReligionRantSong with the opening line "Imagine there's no Heaven".

* Music/{{Metallica}}'s sadly-underplayed "Disposable Heroes". Lars Ulrich described the following album, ''...And Justice for All'', as their "CNN years" - he and James Hetfield would watch CNN and write songs about whatever displeased them.

* SimplyRed's "Money's Too Tight To Mention".
* Music/TheSpecials commonly explored themes of racism and unemployment in their songs, most notably "Ghost Town" and "Free Nelson Mandela".

* Bruce Cockburn's "The Trouble With Normal", about the trend towards repression and totalitarianism in the name of national security.

* Music/GunsNRoses, "Civil War".

* Dream Theater's "Prophets of War". To drive the point home they add the pun-tastic chorus line "Are we prophet-ing from war?" and a spoken buzzword-filled bridge. Surprisingly enough, it's actually good.

* Music/EmilieAutumn has "Take The Pill" and "If I Burn". The entire "Opheliac" ConceptAlbum could also be seen as this. Also, "Girls! Girls! Girls!" - in a satirical, VillainSong way.

* Rapper YG and Nipsey Hussle released a song entitled [[https://youtu.be/WkZ5e94QnWk "FDT,"]] an acronym for "Fuck Donald Trump". It's pretty self-explanatory what it's about.

** "Am I Wrong," released in 2016, calls out indifferences to current events, with SUGA's line "We all are dogs and pigs We get angry and become dogs" being a TakeThat of the [[http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-south-korea-dog-pig-20160711-snap-story.html classist remarks of a government official during the then soon-to-be-impeached Park Geun-Hye's government,]] who said that "99% of South Koreans have no ability to move up in the world and can be treated like animals".

* "King for a Day" by Music/BattleBeast speaks of a RevolvingDoorRevolution of {{Corrupt Politician}}s who come in saying they'll improve things, and instead profit off the office for as long as they can before being "dethroned" in favor of "another greedy, rotten puppet on a string".

** Music/LynyrdSkynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama," meanwhile, was a counter-protest song written in response to "Southern Man" and "Alabama". It serves as an interesting example because Young and the members of Lynyrd Skynyrd were actually good friends.

** "Us and Them" from ''Music/TheDarkSideOfTheMoon'' addresses popular attitudes towards war and suffering, and the album ''Music/{{Animals|1977}}'' is basically a long rant about popular culture, with some rather specific {{Take That}}s in "Pigs".

** His father, Music/WoodyGuthrie, also had his share of these, up to and including "This Land Is Your Land".
*** Woody's guitar had a sign on it: "This Machine Kills Fascists". 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 they grow up it's dismissed as just a children's song. In reality, it is subversive, powerful, and even more relevant as an adult:

* Many songs by Music/TheJam, including "Going Underground" and "Eton Rifles".

** Malvina Reynolds' "Little Boxes", which satirizes [[StepfordSuburbia suburban conformity]] and was famously covered by Pete Seeger. Tom Lehrer, apparently not a fan, once called it "the most sanctimonious song ever written".

* Bruce Cockburn has penned several good ones: "If I Had a Rocket Launcher," "The Trouble with Normal," "Call It Democracy," "If a Tree Falls".

* Music/{{KMFDM}}'s ''Hau Ruck'' album has several of these, including "Free Your Hate" and "New American Century". Also, "Search and Destroy" from ''Nihil''.

* The Nice's hard rock version of Music/LeonardBernstein's ''America'' was described by keyboard player/arranger Keith Emerson as "the world's only ''instrumental'' protest song".

* Music/TheZombies' "Butcher's Tale (Western Front 1914)": Despite being released during UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar, it was actually about a soldier fighting in UsefulNotes/WorldWarI. Still, the overall message is "WarIsHell, and those that support wars generally do so because they don't know what it's like to be in one".
* A number of songs by Ewan [=MacColl=], including against the death penalty ("Go Down Ye Murderers" and "Derek Bentley," the latter about a mentally handicapped man who was hanged for the murder of a policeman that he most certainly didn't commit - the one who pulled the trigger was 15 at the time and Bentley used the ambiguous phrase "Let him have it," which the prosecution portrayed as incitement to murder. Others have pointed out that he might equally well have meant "Give him the gun".), UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar ("Brother Did You Weep") and [[UsefulNotes/TheApartheidEra Apartheid]] ("Black and White").

** The topic was later taken up by ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'', via Peter's song "The Freakin' FCC".

* Creator/BennyHill 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 ''Music/BobDylan'' voice.

* ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'' has done many, including the "Bag of Weed" song and the "Freakin' FCC".''

* ''Series/BoardwalkEmpire'' has one sung by the Atlantic City Women's Temperance League towards the end of "Nights in Ballygran," as Van Alden shuts down the Celtic dinner and arrests Jim Neary for transporting the liquor being served at it.[[note]]It's a real Prohibition-era hymn by C. M. Williams, except it originally said "saloons" not "drink".[[/note]]

* ''Two'' in ''Theatre/LesMiserables'', though they refer to the in-story society of early 19th century France: "Red and Black", and "Do You Hear the People Sing?" Both are awesome, and the latter was used in union protests recently.
* OlderThanRadio: "The Battle Hymn of the Republic", first published in 1862, started out as an abolitionist protest song. In more recent years, it has been associated with Civil Rights in general.

* OlderThanSteam: One very old example is "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God", the battle hymn of the Reformation. Notable in that it's not particularly anti-Catholic by itself -- its status as a protest song is due to its popularity within the Reformation, and that having everyone in the church singing in the vulgar language was a clear break with the Catholic church.

* Probably one of the first American anti-war songs from the 20th century (written roughly about 1900) was "The Battleship of Maine", which pointed out the [[WarForFunAndProfit stupid, corrupt]] and [[YellowJournalism trumped-up reason]] [[SpanishAmericanWar the US declared war on Spain in 1898.]]

* "Strange Fruit", performed most famously by Music/BillieHoliday in 1939, is a protest song against the lynching of black people.

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

* Music/WoodyGuthrie's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxiMrvDbq3s "This Land Is Your Land"]] was written as a critical response to Irving Berlin's 1938 hit "God Bless America", which Guthrie thought ignored a lot of the problems going on in the country. The song includes lyrics talking about bread lines and class warfare. Then the first three verses were included in a school songbook, and it spread as a patriotic ballad as a stealth torpedo, which exploded when Pete Seeger sang all the verses, as Woody wrote them, at [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnvCPQqQWds Barack Obama's inauguration concert in 2009.]]

* Big Bill Broonzy's "Black, Brown And White Blues", about the experiences of black war vets who came back home only to find they were still second-class citizens.

** Also by Sainte-Marie, "Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee", covered by the Indigo Girls.

* "It's Good News Week", by '60s British group Hedgehoppers Anonymous.
** Produced by Jonathan King, who'd recorded one of these of his own in "Everyone's Gone to the Moon".
* Music/SimonAndGarfunkel with their cover of Ian Campbell's "The Sun is Burning". "The Sound of Silence", one of their first major hits, is believed to have been written about the [[WhoShotJFK assassination]] of UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy.

** ''Music/FreakOut'': "Hungry Freaks Daddy", "More Trouble Every Day'', "Who Are The Brain Police?"
** ''Music/AbsolutelyFree'': "Plastic People", "Brown Shoes Don't Make It".

* Music/ElvisPresley's ''Music/FromElvisInMemphis'' has several Protest Songs in his career: "In The Ghetto", which shows Elvis' compassion for inner-city youth, born in poverty.
** "If I Can Dream", arguably is the most significant Anti-War songs of the Rock era.
** "Suspicious Minds", to a lesser extent, is about separation anxiety.

* Almost everything by Music/PhilOchs, who once defined a protest song as "a song that's so specific that you cannot mistake it for bullshit". See "I Ain't Marchin' Anymore", "Outside of a Small Circle of Friends", etc.

* "Ohio", by Music/CrosbyStillsNashAndYoung, which was specifically about the Kent State shooting in 1970.

** Crosby & Nash (sans Stills and Young) also recorded "To the Last Whale...", which depicts the last whale in the ocean being hunted and killed by whalers.
** "Wooden Ships", written in the very early CSN (no Y yet) days (And also originally recorded and released by Music/JeffersonAirplane), is a protest against nuclear war. Not a very direct protest considering the (later) in-your-face "Ohio" mentioned above, but the line "silver people on the shoreline / let us be" is a reference to hazmat suits.

* Music/BlackSabbath had a lot of these on their early albums before their lyrics started becoming more and more cryptic: "Wicked World" (from ''Music/{{Black Sabbath|Album}}''), "War Pigs", "Electric Funeral", "Hand of Doom" (all from ''Music/{{Paranoid|Album}}'') and "Children of the Grave" (from ''Music/MasterOfReality'') all come to mind.

* Music/PaulMcCartney and Music/{{Wings|Band}}'s 1972 song "Give Ireland Back To The Irish", which was written in response to [[UsefulNotes/TheTroubles the Bloody Sunday massacre]].

** "Music/{{Imagine}}", which can also be interpreted as a ReligionRantSong with the opening line "Imagine there's no Heaven".

* Music/ElvisPresley: "Pieces Of My Life", "We Can Make The Morning", "Separate Ways" and many others.

* Many of Music/MidnightOil's songs. A lot of their songs concern Australian issues such as the historic mistreatment of Australia's Aboriginal peoples ("The Dead Heart", "Beds Are Burning", "Truganini") and loss of built heritage ("Dreamworld"), but have found an audience far from Down Under. Other issues they have covered include nuclear war ("Put Down That Weapon", "US Forces", "When the Generals Talk"), materialism ("Power and the Passion"), the plight of workers ("Blue Sky Mining"), and [[StrawmanNewsMedia corporate media]] ("Read About It").
* During the early 1980s, Australian rockers Goanna had a hit with "Solid Rock", which, like Midnight Oil, also explored the plight of the Aboriginal peoples.
* Music/KateBush likewise decried the exploitation of Aboriginal Australians, including the destruction of their land to mine for weapons-grade uranium, in the title song on her album ''The Dreaming''.

* Music/{{Nena}}'s "99 Luftballons".

* In China, Cui Jian's "Nothing to my Name", sung at Tiananmen Square, is ostensibly about an impoverished guy who can't win a girl's affections because he has no money. In fact, it was about how the Chinese people had no rights and whose demands for increased freedom were ignored by the government.

* Labi Siffre's "Something Inside So Strong", originally written to protest Apartheid, has been repurposed over the years as an anthem of defiance against any injustice.

** Government: "Big A, Little A", "Do They Owe Us a Living?"
** Military/War: "Fight War, Not Wars", "Major General Dispair"
** Religion: "Sucks", "So What", "Reality Asylum"

* A lot of Music/{{Megadeth}}'s songs qualify. A prime example is "Hook in Mouth", which takes shots at the P.M.R.C. and censorship.

* John Rich (of Music/BigAndRich) had "Shuttin' Detroit Down", a protest against the 2008-09 automotive crisis and government bailouts.

* A large portion of Darryl Worley's output: He had a massive hit in 2003 with "Have You Forgotten?", an anti-9/11 / pro-Iraq War song. He later returned to the politics well with "I Just Came Back from a War" in 2006 and "Keep the Change" (an anti-Obama song) in 2008.

* Music/BryanAdams doesn't usually venture into this kind of territory. The one exception was "Don't Drop That Bomb On Me", the final track of 1991's ''Waking Up The Neighbours''. Five years earlier, he refused to include his song, "Only The Strong Survive", on the ''Film/TopGun'' soundtrack because he felt the film glamourised war.
* The Korean song "Achim Isul", which was a common anthem during pro-democracy protests in South Korea in 1980. North Korea co-opted the song as a nationalist anthem in the mid-1990s, but eventually it made people start to question the government and the song was banned.

* Music/RandyNewman has quite a few, ranging from the subtle ("Rednecks") to the sarcastic ("Political Science", about nuking every other nation on the planet for dubious reasons, "A Few Words in Defense of Our Country," arguing that the US government isn't as bad as, say, the Roman Empire, or [[GodwinsLaw Hitler, Stalin]]) to the fairly direct ("Mr. President, Have Pity on the Working Man").

* Music/MarvinGaye's later career swung back and forth, from protest songs ("What's Going On?", "Inner City Blues", "Mercy Mercy Me", from ''Music/WhatsGoingOn'') to the kind of music that probably got you conceived ("Let's Get It On", "Sexual Healing").

* Music/IronMaiden has "Holy Smoke" (on televangelists), "Be Quick Or Be Dead", "Face in the Sand", "Age of Innocence", "Two Minutes to Midnight", whose title references the DoomsdayClock, and their latest song, "El Dorado". Some of their historic battle-inspired songs that enter WarIsHell territory might count.

* Many calypsos fit this trope; LordInvader's "Rum and Coca-Cola", is a famous one with MisaimedFandom.

* Some of Music/EltonJohn's songs have subtle elements of this. "Daniel" is a Vietnam War vet (although it's subtle; a cut verse would have made this clearer), while "Ticking", an account of a gun massacre that killed 14 people, is a protest of American Gun Culture. Furthermore, as mentioned above, "Belfast" is a protest against The Troubles in Northern Ireland.

** "Guns are the Tongues" [[AvertedTrope averts]] this to some degree; while it takes place during UsefulNotes/TheTroubles and is quite clearly on the side of "this was a very bad idea", it's mostly telling the related story of a twisted relationship.

** Also, "7 O' Clock News/Silent Night", which juxtaposes the peaceful Christmas carol with a series of downbeat newscasts relating to then-current events.

* Bruce Cockburn has penned several good ones: "If I Had a Rocket Launcher", "The Trouble with Normal", "Call It Democracy", "If a Tree Falls".

* Music/LinkinPark has three on their appropriately-titled album ''Minutes to Midnight'': "Hands Held High", which is the obvious and explicit one about UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror; "No More Sorrow", which is a somewhat subtler TakeThat to the Bush administration; and "The Little Things Give You Away", which is likewise clearly but not explicitly about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

* Obscure Boston post-punk band Human Sexual Response only put out two albums...deliberately confrontational ones about sexual attitudes. Among their protest songs, "Dick and Jane", which takes LyricalDissonance to new heights; "Jackie Onassis", a pointed TakeThat to media manipulation and false celebrity; and the self-explanatory "Butt F**k", which takes on an added dimension when you find out three of the band's four lead singers were openly gay.

** He also has the song "Sort of a Protest Song", which isn't really against anything in particular, but can be applied to the general apathy modern people apply to third-world problems.

* A number of songs by Ewan [=MacColl=], including against the death penalty ("Go Down Ye Murderers" and "Derek Bentley", the latter about a mentally handicapped man who was hanged for the murder of a policeman that he most certainly didn't commit - the one who pulled the trigger was 15 at the time and Bentley used the ambiguous phrase "Let him have it", which the prosecution portrayed as incitement to murder. Others have pointed out that he might equally well have meant "Give him the gun".), UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar ("Brother Did You Weep") and [[UsefulNotes/TheApartheidEra Apartheid]] ("Black and White").
* Parodied in Music/CamperVanBeethoven's "Club Med Sucks", which uses the same kind of rhetoric as political HardcorePunk songs of the time to describe a teenager's parents [[FelonyMisdemeanor forcing him to go to Club Med]] instead of just letting him hang out on the beach on his own all summer ("I want no part of their death culture/I just wanna go to the beach"). Played more straight with "Might Makes Right", from the point of view of a disillusioned soldier.

* Music/AlyAndAJ have a variety of this off their first album and one on their second: "Blush", "I Am One Of Them", "Sticks And Stones" and "Speak For Myself".

* ''{{Series/SCTV}}'' had hardcore British punk band the Queen Haters on the "American Bandstand"-style "Mel's Rock Pile" to sing "I Hate the Bloody Queen", making no impression on the squarish North American audience.

* ''Series/BoardwalkEmpire'' has one sung by the Atlantic City Women's Temperance League towards the end of "Nights in Ballygran", as Van Alden shuts down the Celtic dinner and arrests Jim Neary for transporting the liquor being served at it.[[note]]It's a real Prohibition-era hymn by C. M. Williams, except it originally said "saloons" not "drink".[[/note]]

* Parodied in the ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' episode "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS4E17LastExitToSpringfield Last Exit to Springfield]]", where Lisa composes a protest song (unnamed in the episode, but subsequently known as "Union Strike Folk Song (Parts 1 & 2)" on its CD release) for the power plant workers after Mr. Burns cons them out of their dental plan. It uses the style of Depression-era folk music.
** Later parodied in the Season 12 episode "Pokey Mom", where the prisoner that Marge befriends is described as being such a terrible person that "Bob Dylan wrote a song to keep him ''in'' prison!"

* Music/AnaisMitchell's "Song of the Magi". She sings of a baby being born in Bethlehem, to the joy of his parents... except the lyrics and imagery ("West Bank town," "your home is a checkpoint now") alludes to the modern, war-torn state of the region. The imagery used at the end (lions laying with lambs) is a common call for peace and the end of conflict.

* The 1973 SelfTitledAlbum by the band Lavender Country is unique, considered to be the first openly gay [[CountryMusic country album]]. While it has it share of love songs and country ballads, many of the tracks -- "Straight White Patterns," "Waltzing Will Trilogy," "Cryin' These Cocksucking Tears," "Back In The Closet Again" -- are weary portraits of gay life in a pre-queer liberation world, where holding hands in public consitutes a death sentence for most gay people. "Waltzing Will Trilogy" especially is a ''furious'' song lambasting the treatment of gay men.

* Music/EthelCain's "American Teenager" is an anti-war song. She also wrote anti-genocide song "From the River" in support of [[UsefulNotes/Palestine Palestinian liberation]] from Israel, which also criticizes white Americans whose empathy for others doesn't extend beyond anyone who isn't also white and American.

* Creator/DouglasHodge's 2005 album ''Cowley Road Songs'' addressed UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror with the cheeky, march-tempo "Onward Christian Soldiers", sung from the perspective of a U.S. soldier in Iraq. As per usual President Bush gets mocked, but Hodge (who is British) doesn't spare then-Prime Minister Tony Blair any barbs for being an ally.

* treble charger's last big hit before they disbanded, "Hundred Million", was a slightly weird protest song against the presidency of George W. Bush. Weird in that treble charger was a Canadian band, big at home but with almost no exposure in the States.

* 2017's ''Music/IsThisTheLifeWeReallyWant'' from Music/RogerWaters is littered with these. Songs like "The Last Refugee", "Picture That", "Broken Bones" and the title track, tackle a variety of subjects from war, social media, climate change, and [[UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump President Trump]], who can be a favorite subject multiple times on the record.

* While it may seem counterintuitive for the Icelandic self-proclaimed "anti-capitalist BDSM [[HardcoreTechno techno]] performance art group" Music/HatariBand to take part in the Series/EurovisionSongContest 2019 with a song titled "Hatrið mun sigra" ("Hate will prevail"), with such lyrical gems as "Europe will crumble", "Love will die" and "The emptiness will get us all", performed with copious amounts of screaming and a hellish stage performance, Hatari have repeatedly expressed in interviews that the song is meant as a wake-up call. In the face of rising political tensions, social dissatisfaction, and fear-mongering, the song is meant to show that unless people remember to love and respect each other, hatred will come out on top as the dominant emotion and destroy everything.
* Italian indie group Music/PinguiniTatticiNucleari have "Cancelleria" and "Me Want Marò Back", both of which criticise far-right politics in Italy.

** "No More Dream" and "N.O", which protest the structure of the Korean education system and the pressures society forces on students to achieve academic success.
** "Baepsae", which criticizes class inequality and the burdens society, and particularly older generations who are unreasonably demanding, places on younger generations.
** "Am I Wrong", released in 2016, calls out indifferences to current events, with SUGA's line "We all are dogs and pigs We get angry and become dogs" being a TakeThat of the [[http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-south-korea-dog-pig-20160711-snap-story.html classist remarks of a government official during the then soon-to-be-impeached Park Geun-Hye's government,]] who said that "99% of South Koreans have no ability to move up in the world and can be treated like animals".
** "Strange" from Agust D (SUGA)'s mixtape ''D2'' (featuring RM) is a commentary on the state of today's society which is dominated by capitalism. He opens the song with "Capitalism injects a morphine called hope, using dreams as its collateral", stating that everyone is a slave to the system and that [[CapitalismIsBad capitalism is feeding people false hope]].
* Music/AnaisMitchell's "Song of the Magi". She sings of a baby being born in Bethlehem, to the joy of his parents... except the lyrics and imagery ("West Bank town", "your home is a checkpoint now") alludes to the modern, war-torn state of the region. The imagery used at the end (lions laying with lambs) is a common call for peace and the end of conflict.
* Music/DanielKahnAndThePaintedBird: A number of their songs -- such as "The Butcher's Share", "Freedom is a Verb", "March of the Jobless Corps", "Arbeter Froyen", and "Vampirn" -- qualify.

** ''...BECAUSE IM YOUNG ARROGANT AND HATE EVERYTHING YOU STAND FOR'' is a protest ''album'', with pervasive themes of raging against the system and destroying the out-of-touch, fascist, racist, ineffectual powers that be.

* Many artists from both UsefulNotes/{{Ukraine}} and UsefulNotes/{{Russia}} have written songs to protest the Russian invasion of the former since early 2022; Russian artists have been especially vocal about their distaste for [[UsefulNotes/TheNewRussia their government]]'s actions. Stand-out examples include "Generation Cancellation" by Music/LittleBig -- whose music video combines the group's traditional absurdist humor with clear references about the war in Ukraine, "1984" by Music/SlaughterToPrevail -- in which the band explicitly calls Ukrainians as their brothers and refers to UsefulNotes/VladimirPutin as a backstabber who is too blinded by his delusions of grandeur to understand the wrongness of his actions, and Yuri Shevchuk's "War Funeral".

* Music/DepecheMode released "Going Backwards", "Where's the Revolution", "The Worst Crime", "Scum", "Poorman" and "Fail" on their 2017 album, ''Spirit''. All of them discuss the topic of societal corruption, though human corruption in itself plays a part too, as they also discuss the nihilistic idea that [[HumansAreBastards humanity is a failure]]. Most of this was influenced by current political events at the time, such as the rise of UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump, among other things.

* A number of songs by Music/BobDylan: "Blowin' in the Wind", "Masters of War", "Oxford Town", "The Times They Are A-Changin'", "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall", "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll", "With God on Our Side", "Hurricane", etc.

** And lest you think Dylan was just another hyper-serious protest singer, he also wrote some of the most hilarious protest songs ever written. Check out "Talkin' World War III Blues" or "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues".

** "Rockin' in the Free World", which attracts a certain amount of MisaimedFandom from people who don't listen past the chorus.
** Music/LynyrdSkynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama", meanwhile, was a counter-protest song written in response to "Southern Man" and "Alabama". It serves as an interesting example because Young and the members of Lynyrd Skynyrd were actually good friends.

** "Street Fightin' Man", from ''Music/BeggarsBanquet'', was inspired by the 1968 student protests, but actually takes on a more cautionary position

*** "Salt of the Earth", also from ''Music/BeggarsBanquet'' can be seen as a semi-subversion, undercutting its paeans to the screwed-over working classes with an admission that "they don't look real to me" from Jagger's jet-setting rock-star perspective.

* The 1915 anti-war song [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Didn%27t_Raise_My_Boy_to_Be_a_Soldier "I Didn't Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier"]] became very successful in the United States among those who opposed the country's potential entry to UsefulNotes/WorldWarI.

* Many artists from both Ukraine and Russia have written songs to protest the Russian invasion of the former in 2022; Russian artists have been especially vocal about their distaste for their government's actions. Two stand-out examples are "Generation Cancellation" by Music/LittleBig -- whose music video combines the group's traditional absurdist humor with clear references about the war in Ukraine, and "1984" by Music/SlaughterToPrevail -- in which the band explicitly calls Ukrainians as their brothers and refers to Vladimir Putin as a backstabber who is too blinded by his delusions of grandeur to understand the wrongness of his actions.

---->''Tell the truth

Name a recording artist from between 1964 and 1978. Chances are he, she, or they have at least one protest song, and it's a folk song about the UsefulNotes/VietnamWar. More recently, common subjects include racism (especially [[PoliceBrutality police brutality]], racism, and profiling, which has created its own subtrope, the AntiPoliceSong), the [[UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror Iraq War]], [[ScrewTheRulesIHaveConnections corruption]], [[BannedInChina censorship]], [[GreenAesop environmental issues]], and [[HelpHelpThisIndexIsBeingRepressed big governments controlling lives]]. LyricalDissonance often arises when a director fails to appreciate that a sufficiently-subtle protest song is not in fact the upbeat anthem he believes it to be. Or sometimes it's entirely intentional on the part of the writer. If the song is in protest of a job, than it's a WorkingClassAnthem.

* Bashar Murad is an interesting example. Most of his music is about the Israeli occupation of Palestine, but unlike a lot of protest music, it's heavy electropop with high tempos and thumping bass. "Intifada on the Dance Floor" is the most obvious example of this.

* Music/BlackSabbath had a lot of these on their early albums before their lyrics [[TrueArtIsIncomprehensible started becoming more and more cryptic]]: "Wicked World" (from ''Music/{{Black Sabbath|Album}}''), "War Pigs", "Electric Funeral", "Hand of Doom" (all from ''Music/{{Paranoid|Album}}'') and "Children of the Grave" (from ''Music/MasterOfReality'') all come to mind.

* Music/ElvisPresley's ''Music/FromElvisInMemphis'' has the one ProtestSong in his career: "In The Ghetto", which shows Elvis' compassion for inner-city youth, born in poverty.

* While Music/TomLehrer would parody protests songs and the people who sang them, his work was not devoid of politics, most pointedly "The MLF Lullaby" which is concerned with the inclusion of West Germany in NATO's Multi-lateral Force that had access to Nuclear Weapons, while [[FormerRegimePersonnel still having ex-nazis in command]].

** 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. The same album includes songs like "Send the Marines" (American foreign policy) and "[[MadScientist Wernher Von Braun]]" (a TakeThat against the titular ex-Nazi rocket scientist who worked on the US Space Program). However, he was always careful to make clear in interviews that he didn't possess the delusion that singing angry songs was going to change the world by itself, which seems to have been one of his main grievances against folk singers (along with the idea, spoofed above, that good intentions excused bad songwriting).

* Music/{{Crass}}. No, really. Just about everything the band has ''ever'' written was a protest towards someone or something. For a small list of examples:

* Wings' first single, "Give Ireland Back To The Irish". [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Three guesses as to what it's about.]]

* Music/PaulMcCartney and Music/{{Wings|Band}}'s 1972 song "Give Ireland Back To The Irish", which was written in response to [[UsefulNotes/TheTroubles the Bloody Sunday massacre]].

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Animaniacs}}'' has [[LouisCypher Ol' Scratch]] sentence the Warners to whiny protest songs from the '60s:

* When it was canc-- [[LastSecondWordSwap we mean "put on hiatus"]] in 1985, Ian Levine gathered many of Series/DoctorWho's stars, such as Creator/ColinBaker, Creator/NicholasCourtney, Anthony Ainley and Nichola Bryant to record [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ege9lQecazo "Doctor in Distress"]] to convince Michael Grade to bring Doctor Who back. Whether or not it actually helped, we might never know. Colin Baker, at least, has since openly admitted that he considers his participation in the song an OldShame. Ian Levine has gone on record with similar feelings, calling the single "pathetic and bad and stupid" and claimed that it almost "ruined" him.