Neil Young
A blunt protest song built as a literal list of impeachable offenses against George W. Bush, set to the plainest possible music…
political dissent war and deception government surveillance
Sam Cooke
A first-person testimony of endurance under racial oppression, built around a single hope that refuses to die even as evidence…
racial injustice endurance faith and doubt
Solange
F.U.B.U. is a direct address to Black listeners, reclaiming the phrase 'for us, by us' as a statement of cultural ownership. The…
Black solidarity cultural ownership racial profiling
Public Enemy
This live rendition preserves Public Enemy's 1988 prison-break narrative, a first-person fiction about a Black man who refuses…
mass incarceration militant resistance state coercion and the draft
Mos Def
Mos Def builds a dense, statistics-driven indictment of American racial and economic injustice around the conceit of numbers,…
mass incarceration systemic racism economic inequality
The Pretenders
A restless, mid-career reckoning song in which Chrissie Hynde's narrator refuses both the comfort of settled domesticity and the…
compromise and aging class and global inequality celebrity exhaustion
Gorillaz
A prayer-like protest song set against the anxious aftermath of the 2016 US election, in which a Black narrator addresses a…
racial violence and police brutality political despair faith and doubt
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
Curtis Mayfield
A sermon set to music, this track has Curtis Mayfield addressing Black America directly about internal divisions that threaten…
racial solidarity colorism self-determination
King Crimson
A blast of distorted vocals and jagged riffing that catalogues the horrors of modern civilization in fragmented, almost…
dehumanization war and violence political corruption
Minutemen
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
Sonic Youth
A satirical dialogue between a rock star's ego and a skeptical female voice, "Kool Thing" stages a flirtation that curdles into…
gender and power celebrity worship racial politics
Bessie Smith
A direct address from the working poor to the wealthy, this 1928 blues sides a plea for economic justice with an implicit…
class inequality economic desperation war and sacrifice
Michael Jackson
A protest chant built almost entirely from one repeated grievance, this song stacks fragmented images of police violence, media…
police brutality institutional neglect racial injustice
Fairport Convention
This is the Fairport Convention electric-folk arrangement of the ancient English/Scottish ballad about adultery, betrayal, and…
class inequality adultery and its consequences honor and vengeance
Roberta Flack
A furious, jazz-inflected protest song that catalogs the hypocrisies of American life—consumerism, war, religion, race—and keeps…
social hypocrisy war and dissent religious skepticism
Stevie Wonder
A deceptively simple birthday singalong that Stevie Wonder uses as a political vehicle, campaigning for a U.S. national holiday…
civil rights memory collective celebration as protest racial justice and equality
Billie Holiday
A protest song built on a single sustained metaphor, comparing lynched Black bodies hanging from Southern trees to fruit ready…
racial violence and lynching complicity of the pastoral South witness and testimony
Nina Simone
A ballad built on a single, sustained metaphor that forces the listener to see lynched Black bodies hanging from Southern trees…
racial terror and lynching complicity of the pastoral South witness and testimony
Otis Redding
Otis Redding's cover of Sam Cooke's civil-rights-era anthem strips the original's orchestral polish into raw, gospel-inflected…
racial oppression and hope endurance and exhaustion fear of mortality
Nina Simone's "Blackbird" is a bleak lullaby-like address to a bird who is repeatedly told it cannot fly. Beneath the simple,…
racial identity and constraint internalized despair isolation and abandonment
Mitski
A love song that turns into a quiet refusal, tracking the moment a relationship's cultural and familial mismatch becomes…
cultural and racial difference self-worth versus assimilation unrequited or incompatible love
Gillian Welch
Gillian Welch turns Elvis Presley's death into a meditation on American folk mythology, tracing his rise as a synthesizer of…
fame and its costs racial synthesis in American music mortality and mythmaking
The Staple Singers
A gospel-soul anthem written as a marching chant, tracking the Civil Rights Movement's literal and spiritual momentum. The…
civil rights and racial justice collective resolve gospel faith as political power
De La Soul
De La Soul use a mirror-gazing conceit to push back against critics and industry types who wanted to pigeonhole them as hippies…
individuality vs. conformity authenticity in art resistance to stereotyping
Muddy Waters
Muddy Waters restages his own 1955 declaration of manhood as a late-career victory lap, spelling out the word itself to leave no…
masculinity and self-definition aging and vitality racial dignity ('man' vs 'boy')