Top 10 of ...Truly Pitiful Political Songs

Everythingsgonegreen takes no issue with political and social commentary songs. Songs like ‘Respect’, ‘This Land Is Your Land’, ‘Free Nelson Mandela’, and ‘Get Up Stand Up’ were pivotal to the movements they supported at the time and remain classic examples of where political lyrics can hit the mark.

Unfortunately, sometimes it just doesn’t work and here are some examples – from the left, the right, and up the middle – from songwriters who should’ve kept to subjects like love and emotions. Craig Stephen pops his head above the parapet to take a peek … 

Extreme - Rest in Peace (1991)

All-American soft rock boys Extreme reached out to the redneck fraternity with this pro-war dirge that shouted ‘shut up pinkos and watch as our American heroes kill and maim’.

Dumb-ass right-wing sloganeering is nothing new and this was another crude attack on people who sang ‘Give Peace a Chance’. Extreme even reference Lennon’s song but, in that crazy right-wing delusional way, suggest that going to war is the only route to a world free of violence.

Here’s a snippet: “Let's talk of peace/ Sounds so cliché/ A novelty/ Catch phrase of the day.”

And another: “Make love not war, sounds so absurd to me/ We can't afford to say these words lightly/ Or else our world will truly rest in peace.”

Yes, that’s right by trying to stop wars, peace campaigners are actually making the world worse.

Plastic Ono Band - Give Peace a Chance (1969)

And of course, we all want love, peace and a world free of wars, but this effort was so cringy and inane that peace groups must’ve groaned with embarrassment.

‘Give Peace a Chance’ reduced global geopolitics into a hippy flower-waving slogan. As a result it’s irritating and banal.

It’s a song to sing to make you feel like you’re doing something about the state of the world even if you’re not.

Typical stream of consciousness line: “Everybody’s talking about/ Revolution, evolution, masturbation, flagellation, regulation, integrations, United Nations, congratulations.”

Eric Clapton - This Has Gotta Stop (2021)

Entitled white rich guy scenario in excelsis. Released during the height of the Covid-19 restrictions, Clapton takes the side of the conspiracy theory lunacy wing as he just wants his ‘freedom’ while millions of people were dying from the disease.

Here’s a portion of this whingeathon: “This has gotta stop/ Enough is enough/ I can't take this BS any longer/ It's gone far enough.”

Another veteran of the 60s turned tinfoiler Van Morrison meanwhile released a string of anti-lockdown songs, such as ‘Born to Be Free’ and ‘No More Lockdown’, with lyrics claiming that government control was over-reach, and that pandemic researchers were "making up crooked facts". 

The Cranberries - Zombie (1994)

The song is about the tragic death of two children in England during the Troubles (as a result of the 1993 IRA-Warrington bombing). A worthy sentiment and if they had left it that, who would’ve complained.

But in ‘Zombie’ Dolores O’Riordan and co take on the entire nationalist movement, decrying “It's the same old theme, since 1916/ In your head, in your head they're still fighting”.

The pointing to the date is the Easter Rising in Dublin, a rebellion that ended in defeat but ultimately played a prominent role in the events that led to the end of British colonial rule in Ireland.

It’s a significant moment in Irish history, but one which seems to be scorned at by The Cranberries, who hailed from Limerick in the Republic.

Merle Haggard - Okie From Muskogee (1969)

Merle Haggard is renowned for songs such as ‘Mama Tried’ and ‘Workin’ Man Blues’, but his lasting legacy is ‘Okie From Muskogee’, a joke that snowballed into an anti-hippie anthem.

It was hijacked by those who used it for their own means – such as then President Richard Nixon and, just like Springsteen’s ‘Born In the USA’, the meaning has been lost and misused. 

It was lyrics like "We don't burn our draft cards down on Main Street, we like living right and being free," that appealed to many and made Haggard a star.

In 1981 Haggard told media that the song made him “appear to be a person who was a lot more narrow-minded, possibly, than I really am.” Later still he would express regret at expressing his opinions in song.

Phil Collins - Another Day in Paradise (1989)

Written by a struggling musician, the song may have received a pass mark. But in the hands of a multi-millionaire and vehement supporter of Britain’s Conservative Party, it just seemed like a way of cashing in on a problem he would only see from the wheel of his expensive car.

It tells the tale of a homeless woman being blanked by those who would easily be able to help her. Collins may have meant well but the song was branded cringeworthy and worse. In 1997 the ex-Genesis man threatened to desert Britain for the more tax friendly Switzerland if a fairly timid Labour Party won the election. Labour won in a landslide and Collins made good on his promise. 

Toby Keith - Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American) (2002)

Proving that country and western music can result in some of the worst redneck malarkey is this dire ‘patriotic’ song that wallows in retribution.

The rally-around-the-flag anthem was released in the wake of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon - aka 9/11 - with cartoonish goon squad lyrics like “you'll be sorry that you messed with the U.S. of A / 'Cause we'll put a boot in your ass, it's the American way.” 

Oliver Anthony - Rich Men North of Richmond (2023)

Plenty was said about this song last year and Billy Bragg wrote his own reposte. It’s not so much the stance of the song, it’s the utter naivety that takes the biscuit.

Initially, Anthony rails against low pay and greedy politicians in Washington D.C. Then he turns away from the fat cats and the corrupt Congressmen and women to lash out at the very people he initially defended - those made unemployed by the greed of the system and forced to exist on welfare. Anthony seems oblivious to the connection between low pay and unemployment and how both are used as tools by the establishment to keep people down.

D:Ream - Things Can Only Get Better (1993)

The song wasn’t political, in fact it was a feel-good dance anthem about, well, how you can go from shit street to happy town if you persist.

But it became political when the British Labour Party adopted it and D:Ream gave it permission, either through loyalty to the Tony Blair project or just because they needed the cash.

The New Labour governments from 1997 to 2005 are synonymous with the illegal war in Iraq and the continuation of Thatcherism. The former may not have been predicted in 1997 but the latter certainly could have so the band were hardly innocents who were taken for a ride.

It’s also a fucking annoying piece of disco pap.

The Deplorable Choir - Real Women Vote For Trump (2020)

Do I even need to comment on this?

The Week That Was ...

There’s that bit in the blog subtitle or page description thingy (above) where I threaten to post random words about “life as we know it” … yet mostly I stick to boring stuff like album reviews and music-related snippets for blogpost material. Well, not today … I’m pretty exhausted by a number of things happening around me, and I’m hoping a wee rant might just prove cathartic.

This past week has been a fairly momentous one in many ways. Not only for the wider world and all of the barely anticipated political upheaval, but also for the small dot at the bottom of the South Pacific where everythingsgonegreen resides … aka The Shaky Isles, Aotearoa, New Zealand, which unfortunately, over the past 48 hours, has very much lived up to its former moniker after being rocked by a series of fairly large earthquakes. The largest of those measuring 7.5 on the Richter scale (or 7.8, depending on where you look), claiming two lives, cutting off a large chunk of the upper South Island, and causing major disruption to the nation’s capital. The more than 1,500-plus aftershocks continue as I type this.

 

Train to Doomsville

 

This kind of thing – seismic activity where you’re simply at the mercy of Mother Nature – certainly helps to provide perspective on all of those other rather insignificant issues in our daily lives, things we often deem to be important beyond all proportion. When in fact, in light of continually feeling unsafe and under threat from a power none of us has any real understanding of, those things aren’t really all that important at all.

The impact of the major earthquake was further exacerbated over the following 48 hours by a fairly large storm – torrential rain and 140kmph winds – which resulted in flooding, land slips (as the earth continued to move), road closures, and yet more mayhem. Without wanting to overstate it, or appear overly dramatic, it offered a (hopefully) brief glimpse into what it must feel like to live in a war zone, when you’re trying to go about your daily business and live life as “normally” as possible, but never quite know what to expect next. Nerves are frayed, loved ones are traumatised, and more significantly, all of the major emergency services are stretched in ways they’re never really fully designed to be. And people end up – by default – operating on very little sleep, which can become a serious issue in itself.

With the heavens opening from above, and the earth moving beneath our feet, it is a little bit like living inside an automatic washing machine permanently set on endlessly repeating the rinse and spin cycles.

None of that is meant to undermine or trivialise the real horror of life for people in places like Aleppo or Mosul, nor indeed the many hundreds of other war zones or hotspots across the globe, where serious loss of life is a daily reality. That, of course, is much worse. Natural disasters tend to come and go (fingers crossed), yet man’s own capacity to destroy his fellow man isn’t ever quite so relenting or forgiving … *waves fist at the sky*.

Which brings me to Donald Trump and the climate of fear he managed to successfully exploit in order to become the most improbable President of the USA we’ve ever seen.

The first thing we must acknowledge is that democracy – or at least a form of it – had its day, and if you believe in democracy, then you must accept that Trump was fairly elected. In the same way we would have accepted it if the flawed but not nearly as dangerous Hillary Clinton had been deemed worthy. Whether I think that was a wise move by the evidently hard-of-thinking wider American populace is irrelevant, but putting on my rather ill-fitting feminist hat, it’s hard to fathom that the most qualified woman in history missed out on the top job to a 70-year-old man with an orange face, unfeasibly bad hair, and absolutely no previous experience.

 

It's this big ... his job experience, that is

 

A lot has been made of the media’s role in the election and how a vote for Trump was not only a vote for change, not only a vote against the political “establishment”, but also a vote against the mainstream media, which, just as with the insular-looking Brexit debacle earlier this year, completely misread the mood of the people. There’s a school of thought that the media was biased in favour of Clinton and the status quo, and that’s actually difficult to argue with. The notion that people rallied against that is understandable, but Trump gave the media so much source material to work with he became “buffoon-by-numbers” and a walking talking parody who just kept on giving.

It’s easy to point to the media and snigger, but they put no words into Trump’s mouth when he suggested that Obama and Clinton founded ISIS, that climate change was “invented” by the Chinese, when he laughed in the face of the ordinary worker by suggesting it was smart to pay no tax – good luck with that one, with the welfare system, and with the much promised infrastructure investment. It wasn’t the media who promised to build a really rather improbable wall, who “joked” about grabbing women by the "pussy" (sic), who mocked the disabled, or accused minorities of being criminals. It’s not the media promising to ban vast swathes of world’s population from entering the USA based on little more than their choice of faith.

So good luck America, democracy has spoken, you bought the rhetoric, and the bigotry that came with it, so you’ll now get the President you deserve. I can’t add much more, other than to sincerely wish you all the very best with the much demanded “change” that you’re apparently so desperate to achieve. The signs so far don’t look good – he’s already starting to shift his position on a number of things, and clearly if Trump reneges on key election promises, it makes a complete lie of the notion that he's the breath of fresh air out to change our vision of the establishment or established political practices. It'll merely be a case of “new boss, same as the old boss" ... all of those who voted for "change" will end up getting exactly the same thing they voted against. If not something a hell of a lot worse.

Finally, one last thing. The media aren’t going to get off lightly here. This grumble is a little regional and any overseas reader (probably only a couple, to be fair) might not grasp the full context (click here if you must) but when a so-called current affairs programme like (Australia’s) 60 Minutes deems it appropriate to pay a certified creep like Gable Tostee some $150,000 for a “tell all” interview while a family grieves for their daughter, something is seriously wrong with our world.

Surely “all” was already “told” in great painful detail during the widely covered court case which cleared Tostee of blame for Warriena Wright’s death? What kind of world is it where a man can profit so handsomely from the tragic death of a young woman? A death he had – court verdict or no court verdict – some very real direct involvement with. All the while being given the oxygen to lament how traumatised HE is by her death? Poor little Gable. While a family grieves and is forced to fend off even more requests to make comment.

Shame on 60 Minutes, and shame on those who allow this to happen by supporting the sort of tabloid television which seeks to turn creeps into minor celebrities.

Isn’t it already bad enough that we now have a celebrity pretending to know how to run the free world?

Right, that’s me, rant over, moving right along, thank God or Elvis or Ms Deborah Harry that we still have music in our lives …