Randy Newman
Randy Newman adopts the voice of a wounded, petulant American nationalist who responds to global disapproval by proposing…
American exceptionalism imperial arrogance nuclear anxiety
Minutemen
A brief, blunt piece of political arithmetic disguised as a song. Minutemen reduce the Vietnam War to numbers, bureaucratic…
war and bureaucracy dehumanization by statistics imperialism
A terse, two-minute political sketch that moves from a stark statement about poverty and inherited injustice to a small, almost…
economic inequality inherited guilt survival
The Fall
This is The Fall's 1988 cover of the Kinks' 1969 song, a mock-anthem that impersonates Victorian-era patriotic sentiment so…
empire and nationalism class and inequality irony and pastiche