By: Pola Michałek
Even though the world has experienced a huge surge in the number of war outbreaks and a myriad of controversial policies and politicians, the musical scene has largely remained quiet about it. Besides siding with one part of the conflict or attending protests, politics seems to have left today’s popular Anglo-Saxon musicians’ area of interest. Why is that? Are the protest songs, the main connector between the art and politics of the ’60s, a thing of the past? Should we expect their comeback to be even more effective than their initial period of grace?
The short history of political songwriting
The significant time for the protest songs was the ‘60s, when English-speaking countries experienced a lot of changes and resistance in the political sphere. Mandatory military service due to the Vietnam War, the assassination of the 35th American President, the Cold War, or the Second Wave feminism movement were only a bunch of events taking place in this busy decade. All of these brought singer-songwriters such as Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, or Lesley Gore to the mainstream, effectively making them, as well as the other protest singer-songwriters, the voice of the generation. Looking back, the ‘60s seemed to be an era of reactionary expression of opinions in pop culture. What is more, everyone in society could find a voice in the music industry that fits their views, making the pop culture scene a place where political debate could more or less peacefully take place.
As a musician today, being explicitly political has become passé. To draw on an example, when the Dixie Chicks spoke out against the Bush presidency in 2006, referring to his controversial move to begin a war in Afghanistan, their career was largely deemed as over. Only later in their career, and after a long period had passed by, they returned as “the Chicks.” Did the band’s opinion about the president become deemed by the public as righteous? When now-famous Taylor Swift was talking about her political views in the 2020s, she referred to this incident as a reason why she hadn’t openly talked about her political stances at the beginning of her career. An earlier example can be seen in the public bashing of John Paul II, the then pope of the catholic church, by an Irish protest singer-songwriter, Sinéad O’Connor, when in the early 90s she tore his picture on a night show airing live. The notion was made in protest of the catholic church being complicit in many molestation cases being made against the members of diocesan curies around the world. Because of that, the artist herself admitted that the move was what ended her mainstream career at the ripe age of 26. The very vocal social opposition towards public political statements of musicians ended the era of protest songs.
Why so shy?
Is the lack of protest songs caused by the overall change of our collective approach to politics? In the last 20 years, as a society, we have become more polarized. That alone might have caused the withdrawal of musicians from taking a political stance. Moreover, the stances that the modern-era musicians have taken are more passive than active. For example, as soon as Donald Trump used a famous rock band’s, Queen’s, song “We are the Champions” in his 2016 presidential campaign, their member refused to be associated with the current president’s presidential campaign. This move resulted in pulling the song out from all of the upcoming appearances in his campaign. Musicians such as Neil Young and the band R.E.M. had followed the British bands’ lead.
Thus, a society’s desire for a strong stance against the current U.S. president’s supporters by their favourite artists may be seen as a shock. More specifically, it may seem so to those who lived through the counterculture and have experienced the decline of an era of musicians integral to the political scene. A musician is suddenly expected to align with the political views of their listeners without a previous mention of any political subject in their work. But, once again, the American fans of certain bands or pop artists are more for the artists’ lack of support for Republicans than anything else. The notion of boycott does not equal sudden expectations of integrating politics into the artists’ work.
In the current world of polarization and family dinner fights over choices we’ve made in the voting booths, it is understandable that no one, including the artists themselves, is expecting the musicians to open this political can of worms. More than ever, due to the modern political reality, we see art as a form of rescue from the everyday events taking place in the world. But maybe, to agree on some things, we need a common figure such as an overly liked popstar to get people on the same page on issues that need to be agreed upon by the whole? For that, unfortunately, an artist should be made ready to sacrifice their entire career if necessary. In cases of most stars nowadays, that seems to be an unlikely risk.
Picture: Gayatri Malhotra via Unsplash
