The song was originally composed as a poem by a white northerner named Abel Meerpol, who was moved by a disturbing photograph of a lynching. Committing the verses to music in 1937, Abel and his wife Anna began performing the song around New York, including a fairly publicized appearance at Madison Square Garden.

But the song truly found its muse in the tragically doomed Lady Day. Holiday was apprehensive to record the politically-charged song for fear of reprisal. In accounts of her decision to ultimately take on the material, Holiday has said she felt compelled to do so by the death of her father. Clarence Holiday, also a jazz musician, had developed lung disease from mustard gas exposure during World War I but was refused medical treatment while on tour in Texas. Though he sought care in the segregated black ward of the Veterans Hospital, the delayed treatment allowed pneumonia to set in, claiming the man’s life.

Clearly, Holiday channeled this inspiration in her tortured performance. This was in 1939, and the song’s uncompromising condemnation of racism was daring to say the least. Holiday had the guts to record it, but her label lacked the guts to release it. Columbia worried that record outlets in the South would have a negative reaction to the song. Her producer—the legendary John Hammond—also refused to record the song. 

Ultimately, Holiday was released from her contract for a single song, which she recorded for alternative jazz label, Commodore. “Strange Fruit” quickly gained importance among critics. For northern listeners in particular, “Strange Fruit” laid bare the realities of Jim Crow. It became a staple in Holiday’s live shows and, out of respect to its content, it would always be performed last and without an encore. 

The postscript on Holiday is a sad one, and as it happens, “Strange Fruit” was a factor. Holiday struggled with heroin and alcohol much of her life. It is not a coincidence that she received her first inquiry from the Federal Bureau of Narcotics just as “Strange Fruit” became a leading part of her repertoire. The notoriously zealous drug enforcement agency would harass Billie for the next 20 years, making their final arrest for narcotics possession as she lay dying from cirrhosis of the liver in a hospital bed in 1959. Like her father, she died in a haze of medical and legal negligence.

The postscript on Abel Meerpol is actually quite fascinating. Abel and Anna, closely affiliated with the communist party, adopted two sons when their parents, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, were executed for espionage.

As for “Strange Fruit,” it has been the source of tremendous influence and the subject of endless academic discourse. Time Magazine even named it the single greatest song of the Century as 1999 neared end. For all who aspire to protest through song, it remains the highwater mark for courage.

An Oklahoma native, Guthrie spent a portion of the 1930s traveling the route made famous in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. Like the Joad family, Guthrie joined countless other displaced farmers on the journey from the Sooner State to the promised land that lay in California. These experiences informed a catalogue of songs that remains among the most important in the lexicon of American songwriting. The social and political observations that run like high voltage through his material confronted head on the pressing conditions of the time, from poverty and famine to political corruption and capitalist greed. 

Guthrie’s guitar was famously branded with the phrase “This machine kills fascists.” Though Guthrie was not himself a member of the American Communist Party, he was a powerful champion for many of their ideals. At its essence, “This Land Is Your Land” is a missive that speaks to these ideals. Outside the framework of Western vilification or Soviet distortion, Guthrie boiled the communist ideology down to the most basic notion of inalienable human equality. 

This matter was most certainly on the man’s mind in 1940 when he sat down to write “This Land.” As he worked out the lyrics, he thought of it as a response to “God Bless America,” a truer anthem for the downtrodden. Woody recorded his version in 1944, creating a statement that on its surface seems innocent enough. The idea that America is a land that belongs to all of us should hardly seem controversial. 

Like many of the gospel-tinged folk songs that typified the Civil Rights era, this one traces its roots to the southern fields where black slaves sang spirituals to help ease the burden of their labor. In many instances, such songs existed strictly in oral tradition until ultimately being committed to parchment. In this case, a Methodist minister named Charles Albert Tindley was the first to publish music and lyrics. His 1901 composition was titled “I’ll Overcome Someday” .

With hits like “Chain Gang,” “Wonderful World,” and “Twistin’ the Night Away,” Cooke largely dealt in pop fare, though easily some of the most enduring ever made. Two events transpired to lead Cooke’s songwriting into the more topical matter confronted by “A Change Is Gonna Come.” 

The first event was the late summer 1963 release of Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ In the Wind.” To Cooke’s ears, this was a composition that addressed America’s racial hypocrisy with such clarity that he was at once stunned it had been written by a white man and ashamed that he had not himself sung on the plight of his own people thusly. Cooke immediately added Dylan’s song to his own repertoire. 

The second event came a mere two months later, when Cooke, his wife, and his touring retinue arrived at a Holiday Inn in Louisiana for a night’s lodging. Though Cooke had called ahead for reservations, the clerk told the all-black entourage that there were no vacancies. When the hotel refused to make accommodations for the group, Cooke became incensed. Though his party succeeded in calming him down, they departed with a flourish of insults and honking horns. When they arrived at the nearby Castle Motel, law enforcement was already waiting. Cooke and company were arrested for disturbing the peace. Headlines, the next day, read “Negro Band Leader Held in Shreveport.”

The incident infuriated black Americans and spurred Cooke into action. It was said that the words and melody veritably poured out of Cooke, that his most gorgeous and moving composition literally came to him fully formed. The lush orchestral production was handled by ace arranger Rene Hall. 

“A Change Is Gonna Come” was, to an extent, the rhetorical counterpart to “Blowin in the Wind.” Whereas the latter inquired about change in an open-ended way, Cooke assured, though in elegiac terms, that change was most definitely on the close horizon. Its intent as a missive for the Civil Rights movement could not be mistaken, even if Cooke would never live to see it adopted as such.

Cooke performed “Change” live just once in his career, debuting his defining composition on the Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson on February 7th, 1964. It might have been recalled as a monumental television event were it not eclipsed by the arrival of the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan stage just two days later. This largely forgotten broadcast would literally be the only time that Cooke would ever perform the song live. 

On December 11th, 1964, Cooke would be gunned down by a hotel clerk under mysterious circumstances. Surely, this only magnified the funereal vibe of “A Change Is Gonna Come” when it was released just 11 days later. It peaked at #31 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts and, more importantly, became a statement of purpose for the Civil Rights Movement. 

As Cooke’s biographer, Peter Guaralnick observed, “Generation after generation has heard the promise of it. It continues to be a song of enormous impact. We all feel in some way or another that a change is gonna come, and he found that lyric. It was the kind of hook that he always looked for: The phrase that was both familiar but was striking enough that it would have its own originality. And that makes it almost endlessly adaptable to whatever goal, whatever movement is of the moment.”

The imagery took on even greater significance for black Americans with the emergence of the Underground Railroad, a series of tunnels and safe houses that helped former slaves escape to freedom in the North.

For Curtis Mayfield—whose early life with steeped in gospel traditions—this imagery was a powerful vehicle for the notion of transcendence. And with the Civil Rights movement crescendoing in 1965, he channeled this transcendence into “People Get Ready.” In Mayfield’s take, the train was an unstoppable force, fueled by the determination, faith, and unity of its passengers. More than any other composition produced in the soul era, this Impressions release served as a call for participation.

Directing his message to Americans of all races ad religions, Mayfield urged listeners to get ready, assuring them that, like the inexorable forward movement of a locomotive, freedom and equality were soon coming. In his view, there was nothing to stop this evolution. Mayfield pressed his listeners:

Perhaps more than any de facto Civil Rights anthem, this one spoke of equality as a matter of inevitability so long as Americans “got on board.” Americans were indeed prepared to get on board, to the extent that the Impressions’ biggest hit reached up to #3 on the Billboard R&B Chart and cracked #14 on the Pop Chart.

Its appearance just as the federal government passed a series of Civil Rights laws into action made its titular provocation particularly pertinent upon its release in 1965. And the universality of its message makes it a common reference point for artists and activists in the present day.

In fact, the protest movement to which Buffalo Springfield hitched its wagon was one very specific to its home in Southern California. Buffalo Springfield was comprised of several members who would become far more famous in other bands (i.e. Stephen Stills and Neil Young (CSN&Y; Crazy Horse), Richard Furay (Poco), Dewey Martin and Bruce Palmer. This composition would be their first collective brush with true notoriety. 

As the self-appointed leader of the group, Stephen Stills wrote and sang “For What It’s Worth,” for the first time lending his laid-back rasp to a ‘60s anthem. I would argue that his voice—grainy like sand through an hourglass—is as evocative of this period in history as any.

This is perhaps why this song is often misinterpreted as a tribute to the anti-war movement. In fact, it related to a much more limited conflagration between police and protesters, though one that would predict greater civic unrest in the months to come. As the story goes, Buffalo Springfield had become a staple of L.A.’s ever more happening Sunset Strip music scene. By summer of 1966, they had become the house band at the now-legendary Whisky a Go Go. 

That esteemed position made them very much a part of the problem, as far as local residents and businesses were concerned. As a music scene grew organically around the Strip, crowds of young people converged each night, choking traffic and irritating squares. Said squares were successful in coercing the city to pass an ordinance, in November of that year, imposing a 10PM curfew. You can probably guess how that went over.

Young music junkies revolted and local FM radio stations egged them on. Though rallies in mid-November began peaceably, tensions ran high as protests continued late into the month. By December, protesters and police were engaged openly in violence. On December 5th, Stills wrote this song detailing the experience.

Funny side note on the name of the song, which is never actually stated in the lyrics: When Stills brought his demo to famed Atlantic record honcho Ahmet Ertegun, he said, “I have this song here, for what it’s worth, if you want it.” 

Released just a month after its composition, this one reached all the way up to #7 on the Billboard Hot 100 in early 1967 (which should tell you just how much Top 40 fodder has changed in the 50 years since its release). It also timed perfectly with the escalation of violence in Vietnam, the growth of the protest movement, the proliferation of the hippie counterculture, and that whole wave of patchouli-smelling goodness that we associate with the 1960s. Clearly, in uttering the immortal lines to open the tune, Stills tapped into something that was in the ether. “There’s something happening in here,” he said, “What it is ain’t exactly clear.”

Stills couldn’t quite put his finger on the broader implications of the Sunset Strip riots but he knew it was the prelude to something much bigger. Indeed it was. So while it wasn’t written with Vietnam specifically in mind, “For What It’s Worth” would be inextricably linked to the time, to the war, to the counterculture, and to the lexicon of modern protest.

If the ambition for black Americans had previously been to simply find a way to live within a white society, James Brown spoke of a different and greater ambition. He urged black Americans to live up to their own cultural and social expectations, to embrace a black American identity that to this juncture had been subordinated by the basic struggle for humane recognition.

Released just months after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., it captured all the fury and style of a culture long suppressed. Brown didn’t urge black people just to seek parity with whites. He urged self-empowerment. 

Its refrain uses the call and response technique that originated in the cotton fields and churches of the rural south. The song’s urgency is perhaps best captured by the chorus of children from the roughhewn Watts and Compton neighborhoods near Vox Studio in Los Angeles. The Godfather of Soul called, “Say It Loud!” The children, most perhaps being encouraged to express this sentiment for the first time in their lives, declared “I’m Black and I’m Proud!”

It’s also not insignificant from a musical perspective that this was the first appearance on any James Brown record of trombonist extraordinaire Fred Wesley.

“Say It Loud” was released as a two-part single and topped the R&B chart for a full six weeks. It reached up to #10 on the Hot 100. So immediate was its message that it was viewed by many as the unofficial anthem of the Black Panther Party. 

No doubt, many listeners who heard the song were also, for the very first time in their lives, being urged to declare their blackness with pride.

“Give Peace a Chance” is significant for a few reasons, not the least of which is that it was Lennon’s first solo release. He was still a member of the Beatles at the time but was on honeymoon in Montreal with Yoko Ono. They used their honeymoon as an opportunity to stage a peaceful protest against the war in Vietnam. Inviting members of the press, friends, fellow musicians, artists, comedians and a host of others to visit their hotel room, they held a bed-in.

When members of the press asked Lennon—who it should bear noting was at the height of his fame right then—why he and Yoko were determined to remain in bed throughout their honeymoon, he simply replied, “give peace a chance,” over and over again.

Reporters were flummoxed, so Lennon wrote a song to explain the idea more clearly. On June 1st, 1969, surrounded by revelers that included the likes of Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsburg, and Petula Clark, Lennon and Yoko recorded this one while sitting in bed. Comedian and war critic Tommy Smothers joined on guitar.

Released a month later, it hit #14 on the U.S. charts and was quickly adopted as an anthem of the anti-war movement. Its stomping tribal beat and the chanted refrain lent readily to repetition at the peace rallies occupying cities across the nation. On November 15th, 1959, half a million protestors sang its message in Washington D.C. on Vietnam Moratorium Day. Folk legend Pete Seeger led the proceedings and, in between refrains, shouted things like “Are you listening, Nixon?”

Turns out, Nixon was listening. As the Beatles splintered and the war became increasingly unpopular in the U.S., Lennon immersed himself simultaneously in a solo career and anti-war provocation. Lennon’s output in the 1970s was frequently confrontational and evocative. (Of course, you know the socialist-utopian message behind “Imagine,” but if you’re really looking for a political critique that remains as true today as it was then, check out “Gimme Some Truth”).

The Nixon administration was not amused by the Brit’s meddlesome public life, so much so that the FBI kept a pretty robust file on his activities. Indeed, in 1972, the Nixon Administration issued a deportation order that haunted Lennon through much of the rest of his life.

Though Lennon ultimately managed to win his right to remain in the U.S., one thing was clear. The U.S. government feared peace and Lennon’s unique power as a Beatle to fight for it. 

With one boot in each world, Fogerty was uniquely suited to examine the hypocrisies that flowed as an undercurrent beneath the march to war. 

After fronting a band called the Golliwogs alongside brother Tom with little success or attention, Fogerty joined the Army Reserve circa 1965 and spent time at Forts Bragg, Knox and Lee. He was discharged in July of ’67 and immediately rejoined his brother under the name that would make them famous. They notched their first hit, with a cover of Dale Hawkins’ “Suzie Q,” by 1968. It was that same year that Fogerty remembered witnessing news coverage of the flaring Vietnam War alongside coverage of a glamorous wedding between President Nixon’s daughter Julie and former President Eisenhower’s grandson David. 

Fogerty was struck by the immediate irony that these men who so passionately advocated for the war would never have to send their own children into danger. Fogerty observed, “The thoughts behind this song – it was a lot of anger. So it was the Vietnam War going on… Now I was drafted and they’re making me fight, and no one has actually defined why. So this was all boiling inside of me and I sat down on the edge of my bed and out came ‘It ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no senator’s son!’ You know, it took about 20 minutes to write the song.’”

“Fortunate Son” was perhaps the first rock and roll song to so perfectly articulate the inequality that feeds into war, the notion that rich men sit behind desks and sign declarations of war while young men are drafted to take up arms and die for that signature. Obviously, a lot of Americans felt the same way because “Fortunate Son” peaked at #3 on the Billboard Charts in December of 1969.

In addition to the fierce recognition in Fogerty’s refrain, the opening riff immediately conjures the image of helicopters touching down alongside rice marshes and thatch hut villages.

Neil Young viewed pictures of the incident in Life Magazine just days later and was immediately moved to write the lyrics to “Ohio.” Its ominous refrain, “four dead in Ohio,” was delivered with the same shock and horror felt by most Americans as they watched the stomach-churning events on the evening news.

Of the incident, Young said that the Kent State Massacre was “probably the biggest lesson ever learned at an American place of learning.” So important was the lesson that the supergroup rushed it to the studio. Though CSN&Y’s “Teach Your Children” was already burning up the charts, the group sent this one to market right away. It was released in June of 1970, following on the heels of the shooting by a mere month.

The torn-from-the-headlines approach and Young’s trademark sweet-and-sour vocal delivery channeled the nation’s growing disenchantment with the war and increasing sense of sympathy for protesters who had previously been dismissed as the fringe-left by everyday Americans. To see the blood of unarmed students spilled on their own campus, even politically-disconnected Americans were moved to sadness and anger. These feelings were palpable in “Ohio,” which in spite of its heaviness, landed at #14 on the Billboard Hot 100. 

That Neil Young name checked the president himself—“tin soldiers and Nixon’s coming”—made it a courageous political statement. Assigning blame in the deaths of the Kent State four to Richard Nixon was an important gesture, and one that endeared CSN&Y to the counterculture movement. As a matter of fact, this explicit charge was enough to see the song banned from play on AM radio stations. But the FM underground made it both a commercial success and a moment of unsurpassed cultural importance as the nation’s attitude toward war and protest gradually shifted. 

This impulse coincided with a 1969 Four Tops tour. Marvin’s hit-making stable-mates traveled through Berkeley in May of 1969, crossing paths with the infamous People’s Park anti-war protest. After witnessing the police brutality visited upon the peaceful protestors, Four Tops singer Obie Benson responded by writing an inquisitive set of lyrics questioning violence against youths in the streets of America and in Vietnam. Essentially, Benson was moved to ask “What’s going on?”

When he brought the song back to his bandmates, they rejected it, calling it a “protest song.” Benson insisted that it was, in actuality, a love song. But when he shared it with Gaye in 1970, Marvin heard both love and protest. This was the statement he so desperately hoped to make. Tailoring the song into something darker, moodier, and spilling over with the bittersweet groove of ‘70s ghetto life, Gaye reconfigured the title question into a title assertion. He wasn’t asking, “what’s going on?” He was telling you, the listener, “this is what’s going on.” There are too many mothers crying, too many brothers dying. 

The essence of “What’s Going On,” is the notion that:

The sessions which produced the tune were uniquely laid back given the rigidity that typified most Motown studio dates. Berry Gordy’s general bent toward studio perfection was absent here as Gaye produced his own session. The lilting saxophone that opens the song wafts through the composition like the marijuana haze that clouded the studio. The result was a masterpiece that Berry Gordy absolutely despised. He did everything in his power to stop Gaye from putting out the “protest song.”

The happy-go-lucky Hitsville did not, to this point, deal in topical themes with such musical or conceptual complexity. Gaye’s song belied the greater company mission of churning out chart-toppers. Lucky for Gordy, Gaye ran an end-around, releasing the song with the help of a sales VP and selling two million copies out of the gate. It was Motown’s fastest-selling single to that date, almost certainly because it spoke so elegantly to the experience of America’s racially and economically disenfranchised. 

And its plea—“Don’t punish me with brutality”—was a statement in clear solidarity with the young people marching in the streets and those being sent off to war. The folk singers and psychedelic rockers who took up the mantle of the protest era could be dismissed as part of a counterculture. By contrast, Motown was very much a part of the mainstream. This made Gaye’s statement—the defining moment of an always brilliant career—a bellwether of the nation’s changing climate. The protest movement that at first seemed to represent fringe agitators came increasingly to serve as a channel for the nation’s collective rejection of segregation and war. 

Once the song became a commercial success, Gordy not only relented but insisted that Gaye churn out an album to go with it. “What’s Going On” became the title track for an album that delivered a sweeping, panoramic, and unflinching look at black life in America. With evocative masterworks like “Mercy Mercy Me” and “Inner-City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler),” the 1971 release would become the most sophisticated full-length release in the Motown oeuvre and, arguably, the single greatest achievement in the history of soul music. 

Marley and bandmate Peter Tosh co-wrote “Get Up, Stand Up” after touring Haiti. Both were moved by the devastating poverty permeating the nearby island nation and produced this composition urging resistance and revolution. It was to become Marley’s most confrontational political message to this point and increasingly became the band’s statement of purpose. Though driven by Marley’s experience in Haiti, the message was a universal call to arms against racial inequality, oppression, police brutality, political corruption, and gang violence. 

Marley and his Wailers were not yet world famous at this juncture but this would set them on their path. “Get Up, Stand Up” would be the most important moment on the vitally important album, Burnin’, ushering reggae, and Jamaican music in general, into a new era of political purposefulness. Though its chart performance would be minimal (it made the Top 40 in the Netherlands for whatever that’s worth), it would become the closing statement in nearly every live Marley performance thereafter. 

As to Marley’s political influence, he was slated as the keynote performer for the 1976 Smile Jamaican concert. The concert was organized by Prime Minister Michael Manley as a way of bringing together to warring political groups. For his part, Marley had no political affiliation other than the pacifism dictated strictly by his Rastafarian faith. Manley’s political rivals felt differently though, and attempted to silence Marley by riddling his home with bullets two days before the show.

The courageous Marley, undeterred by his minor bullet wounds or the more serious injuries effecting his manager and his wife, made the scheduled appearance, forcing rival gang leaders to shake hands before the crowd.

Such was Marley’s power, charisma and influence, all movingly on display in “Get Up, Stand Up.” Today, this is an anthem belonging to resistance groups and freedom fighters the world over. It was, also, appropriately, the final song that Marley performed live before his death in 1981. Rarely has an artist departed with a more perfect final testament. 

When the legendary and legendarily self-destructive New York Dolls imploded, their their one-time manager Malcolm McLaren returned to his native England in search of a new vehicle. Bringing the Dolls’ recklessness and Richard Hell’s gutter fashion sensibilities back across the Atlantic with him, McLaren hitched his wagon to a group of snotty London pub rockers and helped craft the Sex Pistols. 

In addition to matching the band with the shredded threads and safety pin look that would become synonymous with punk, McLaren imbued lead singer Johnny Rotten with the radical left wing politics that would become the band’s calling card.

The Sex Pistols would quickly gel into a ferocious unit, proving a powerful outlet for explosive blasts of well-articulated political subversion. As the Sex Pistols merged a set of savage rock and roll covers with original tunes attacking British royalty, consumerism, and conservative politics, they attracted a growing following of future punk leaders and landed a deal with EMI, recording their debut single, “Anarchy for the U.K.” in late 1976. 

Early the following year, the Sex Pistols embarked on a 20 date tour but obstruction from local governments caused the cancellation of all but seven engagements. Trouble continued for the Pistols as EMI employees, disgusted by the band’s message, refused to ship its single. Their behavior during the tour was also covered substantially by the press, which developed a morbid fascination with the band’s proclivity for spitting, fighting, vomiting, and bleeding both in concert and while socializing. Under intense internal pressure by British government officials, EMI bailed on their contract with the Pistols. The band promptly celebrated a new contract with A&M by storming the label’s offices, terrorizing employees, destroying bathrooms, and bleeding in the hallways. 

Though they had already recorded and pressed their next single, “God Save the Queen,” A&M dropped the band and destroyed the run of records. The Pistols signed with Virgin two months later and, in spite of protest from packing employees, managed to ship “God Save the Queen.” Its subversive lyrics decried the Queen, resonating with countless young working class Britons disillusioned by the deeply classicist implications of the crown. It was thus that, in spite of having been banned from radio play pretty much everywhere in England, “God Save the Queen” reached the second spot on the sales charts. It was held from the top, according to most accounts, by government intervention.

Virgin released the Pistols’ one and only record,1977’s punk bible, Nevermind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols. The album was a #1 hit and only further magnified the group’s penchant for chaos and the degree to which audiences were receptive to this chaos. With “God Save the Queen” in particular, the Pistols tapped into the anti-establishment rage that so many disenfranchised Britons harbored toward the aging aristocracy. And the nihilistic rage that they themselves conveyed in their performance and promotion of the song left no doubt as to their authenticity. As the Pistols themselves would declaratively sneer in “God Save the Queen,” “we really mean it, man!”

It’s easy to mistake this one for a big pile of shiny patriotism. Its anthemic refrain and the stadium-sized success of the record bearing the same title sort of obscure the fact that this song is about the misery and disregard that often awaited Vietnam vets returning home from the war. This is basically the story about a hard-luck, working class guy who can’t find honest work, “gets in a little hometown jam,” ships out to Vietnam, loses his brother to the war, comes home to no job prospects, and, ten years after the war, has “nowhere to run” and “nowhere to go.”

Again though, as the title track of the biggest album of 1984, and the hit that delivered Springsteen from mere stardom to commercial immortality, it didn’t really feel like a protest song. That is, until it became fodder for a very public confrontation between a rock musician and a sitting president. (Ok, so, that kind of doesn’t seem like a big deal at our present moment in history, but it really was then).

As Ronald Reagan coasted to reelection in 1984, Springsteen arguably gave him far more difficulty than did Democratic challenger Walter Mondale. During a visit to Springsteen’s home state of New Jersey, Reagan attempted to co-opt the Boss’s soaring popularity, in spite of the fact that the Springsteen camp had already politely declined a request seeking his endorsement. In a campaign speech, Reagan declared that “America’s future rests in a thousand dreams inside your hearts; it rests in the message of hope in songs so many young Americans admire: New Jersey’s own Bruce Springsteen. And helping you make those dreams come true is what this job of mine is all about.”

For many listeners, Springsteen’s appeal was in his honest and unflinching exploration of the working class American experience. Reagan sought to capitalize on the connection but failed spectacularly. Springsteen was quick to retort. 

Two days after being namechecked by the president, he told a concert audience in Pittsburgh, “The President was mentioning my name the other day, and I kinda got to wondering what his favorite album musta been. I don’t think it was the Nebraska album. I don’t think he’s been listening to this one.”

He consequently launched into the decidedly bleak “Johnny 99,” about an auto worker who gets laid off, commits murder and gets the electric chair. It was an unmistakable shot at a president who Springsteen viewed as an enemy of the working class. 

If “Born in the U.S.A.” had been a statement of social observation, the Reagan flap made it a vehicle for genuine protest. Reagan had essentially given the most popular rocker in the world at that time a platform to criticize the president and his policies. To that point, Bruce had rarely been politically active or outspoken, but it served as a wakeup call that he would heed throughout his later career. Today, Springsteen is a highly visible and vocal champion of progressive causes, with later music like “American Skin” and “How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live” taking on pressing social issues even more explicitly. 

We may never know if Ronald Reagan ever actually listened to “Born in the U.S.A.” but he certainly assured its historical importance.

We include “Fight the Power” on this list with some reservation, largely because of the controversy surrounding its release. Naturally, the majority of songs included on this list advocate for inclusion or speak out against violence, hatred or prejudice. In the scope of its content, “Fight the Power” does this. Its release would, however, be clouded by the prejudices of Public Enemy’s own membership. 

The song was originally commissioned by director Spike Lee for use in his groundbreaking film, Do the Right Thing. In response to Lee’s request, Public Enemy produced this gritty and militant message of resistance against inequality. If the songs of resistance during the Civil Rights era echoed Martin Luther King, Jr.’s message of peaceful protest, Public Enemy’s composition was written more in the mold of the Black Power movement. It called for black Americans to resist institutionalized racism and police brutality with uncompromising ferocity. It was, indeed, the perfect mission statement for Lee’s film, which examined the tension and violence enveloping many urban black communities in the U.S.

Unfortunately, as the date of its release approached, group member Professor Griff regaled a Washington Times interviewer with his own deep-seated anti-semitic views. Though no such ideals penetrated the lyrics of the song itself, the controversy tainted its release, even leading to boycotts by Jewish advocacy groups. 

The consequence was, ultimately, Professor Griff’s temporary dismissal from the group. Under the haze of controversy, Public Enemy reached a one-off agreement with Motown for the song’s release. It consequently reached #1 on the Hot Rap Singles chart and was named as that year’s best song on the highly-regarded Village Voice Pazz & Jop critics’ poll.

The song was re-released in 1990 as part of Public Enemy’s Fear Of a Black Planet record and, ultimately, served as a statement of purpose for angry black youths. While groups like NWA shined a glaring light on police brutality, the crack epidemic, and gang violence, Pubic Enemy offered a political treatise on how to confront these things. When the police beating of Rodney King, the following year, exposed much of America to the reality of these conditions, Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” became a living document.