Is it the End for Politically-Charged Music and Lyrics in the Age of Obama?

When making comparisons to earlier decades with the first decade of the 21^st century, it isn't lost on most people that 2001-2009 was quite similar to the 1960's and early 70's in the forms of protest music against an unpopular war. Even former Hippies who wrote the majority of protest music back in the 60's had resurgences in the last eight years either singing their old protest songs or all new ones. 60's and 70's stalwarts such as Crosby, Still & Nash, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen were all out performing again and writing new material that displayed more anger at the Bush Administration than a single piece of 60's protest music did against Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. You even had the new generation joining the fray with the most notable being Green Day and their Grammy-winning overhyped behemoth "American Idiot."

Then you had Barack Obama come along and soothe everybody's temper in the frustrations of where government was heading. With that comes a new album from Bruce Springsteen full of happy music for a change along with silence from the bands who profited big time from being angry. It's that silence from them that puts a big question mark on protest music that's been around for too long and woven into the fabric of our musical heritage to just stop cold.

You'll see some critics out there who love the idea that Springsteen is writing happier music based merely on the excitement of a fresh new sound from The Boss. Whether all those other artists and groups who had their careers pumped or re-pumped will follow suit writing albums showcasing a state of bliss will be interesting to see in the next year or two. But it's too bad Rush Limbaugh can't sing and write poetic lyrics, because some conservative protest music would keep the genre of protest music alive.

Yes, Rush is angry; so, so angry.

Of course, that makes it undeniable that most artists who specialized in protest music out there were on the liberal side of the political spectrum. Clear back to the days of Woody Guthrie, the outrage was palpable against the injustices of being able to have a decent living in America without being overrun by the wealthy, even during Guthrie's peak period in the Roosevelt era. I've written here before about the watering down of Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land" from lyrical lines depicting the brutal honesty of America's governmental inner workings to a patriotic song that's played at governmental functions with all those controversial lyrics omitted.

If you want to see the true heart and soul of what protest music once was, it's through Guthrie who spoke the harsh realities nobody wanted to hear and arguably paid for it in the process. While some might accuse Guthrie of being a liberal realist protester, it was really more a non-political David vs. Goliath allegory in respecting equality of all American citizens. By the time of Guthrie's death in the late 1960's, most protest music was coming via the new Hippie movement that was decidedly liberal and ultimately ended up defining what protest music really was in America up to present day. It didn't help then when a Republican President was elected in 1969 and faced the musical wrath of revenge against government that lasted until the late 1970's when Punk defined the anti-establishment movement in music.

Then the surreal happened: Bruce Springsteen playing "Born in the U.S.A." for Ronald Reagan by the mid 1980's.

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Well, protest music was pretty much a minority musical genre during the Reagan, Bush and Clinton eras. Despite differences of opinion with Reagan's politics, there was a height of patriotism that even moved Springsteen to perform for the President. Considering Reagan kept us out of any major or unnecessary war through the 80's, he was spared of seeing protest music in the vein of the 60's making a comeback on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial or other prominent D.C. locations. But since we're always doomed to repeat history, it shouldn't be surprising then that the 60's seemingly repeated a mere 35 to 40 years later in the same places and through the same situations.

It might make us contemplate just how angry protest music would have become had George W. Bush been allowed to have a third term or someone with the same political ideas (not necessarily McCain) won the White House. You also have to wonder what those other groups and bands will do now that they seem to be satisfied with Obama and the direction of the country...at least for now. As of this writing, though, a huge conservative anger seems to be building already for Obama, and you have to wonder why there aren't more protest musicians out there with a conservative bent. Well, there might be, though obviously nobody famous.

That might just leave someone like Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity to the task of having to warble a protest song from the comforts of their radio studios--hence and subsequently destroying every American radio speaker in existence. The comforts of staying in a radio studio is quite telling anyway when a conservative protest musician wouldn't likely survive touring to outdoor arenas.

However, with the inevitable venom about to be spewed Obama's way just because he won't be able to fix the economy in the amount of time many want him to, and perhaps signing an economic stimulus bill that goes against many conservative wishes, you may just see a rise in a new musical genre of conservative protest music. How it'll go over is anyone's guess. Just don't expect it at massive arenas and instead on Youtube where all previous semi-negative Obama music videos were done during the campaign.

In the meantime, enjoy the more peaceful music from Springsteen, and likely all the other angry political musicians (what will Conor Oberst do?) who have nothing else to write about in the immediate term other than songs celebrating bliss. Nevertheless, hold tight, because the corollary of the repeating history once again repeating in an even smaller frame of time is bound to happen. By then, expect a slightly older Springsteen spouting anger--perhaps about things going wrong that may happen during our current President's occupancy and beyond his control...

Source:

http://uk.reuters.com/article/musicNews/idUKTRE50Q7XQ20090128