There's just two weeks to go until Al Gore’s Live Earth extravaganza kicks off. But will the global concert – hyped as the biggest music event in history – actually make any difference?
It’s a noble cause, but so far the climate change movement is missing a rallying cry, a signature anthem to enshrine its goals. OK, there was Johnny Borrell’s Funeral Blues, but even he had to admit the lyrics had sod all to do with the environment.
It got us thinking how few truly great protest songs there are on any subject. Still, here’s our pick. Let us know what you think.
The Specials – Ghost Town
Written in recorded in keyboardist Jerry Dammers’ North London apartment, this desolate lament was written specifically about the decline of the band’s native Coventry… but, hitting Number One in summer 1981, it struck a chord with the whole nation.
Rage Against The Machine – Sleep Now In The Fire
A blazing polemic directed at a century of bellicose US foreign policy (“The agents of orange/The priests of Hiroshima”), Sleep Now In The Fire was accompanied by a brilliant, Michael Moore-directed video, part of which was filmed on the steps of the New York Stock Exchange.
The Good, The Bad & The Queen – Kingdom Of Doom
“Friday night/In the kingdom of doom…Drink all day/Coz the country is at war.” Damon Albarn at his most bitterly socially aware.
Sam Cooke – A Change Is Gonna Come
In 1963 Sam Cooke heard Bob Dylan’s Blowin In The Wind and marveled, Jeez… a white boy writing a song like that? A Change Is Gonna Come was his response. The ultimate civil rights anthem, it was also Cooke’s swan song, released as a single two weeks after he was fatally shot at an LA motel.
Neil Young – Rockin’ In The Free World
Released a few months before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Young’s full-bore rock anthem was championed by some as a celebration of Western democracy - but closer inspection revealed the song to be a savagely ironic critique of US domestic policy.
4:48 PM | 21/06/2007
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