Protest songs have been around just about as long as music itself. Rock and roll—rebellion and revolution in its DNA—has a long history of pushing back against the status quo. Music brings people together, and if you’re wanting to make change happen, you’re going to need a large coalition.
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Many rock artists borrow from the folk music tradition for writing protest songs. An acoustic guitar and a voice can be played anywhere—they don’t even require electricity. But electric guitars and a band are loud, they demand attention—and enough noise just might force those in power to pay attention.
Let’s look at some wide-ranging classic rock songs that have political messages, whether they’re overt or not.
1. “Rockin’ in the Free World” by Neil Young
Crazy Horse guitarist Frank “Poncho” Sampedro came up with the title in 1989 after a proposed gig in Russia ended when the promoter took the money and disappeared. Neil Young and Poncho had been discussing global events at the time; the Ayatollah’s fatwa on Salman Rushdie for writing The Satanic Verses (a fatwa that one peace-loving folk singer named Cat Stevens also supported); George H. W. Bush’s presidency; the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan; and climate change.
Young took Poncho’s title and wrote the song in a hotel room in Portland, Oregon. He used irony to punctuate the anthem: “Keep on rockin’ in the free world.” With corporate greed destroying the planet, and a country no longer investing in the most basic needs of its citizens, Neil Young implies the question: Free for whom?
We got a thousand points of light for the homeless man
We got a kinder, gentler machine gun hand
We got department stores and toilet paper
Got Styrofoam boxes for the ozone layer
Got a man of the people, says keep hope alive
Got fuel to burn, got roads to drive
[RELATED: 3 Songs You Didn’t Know Neil Young Wrote for Other Artists]
2. “Born in the U.S.A.” by Bruce Springsteen
Maybe the most misunderstood of all protest songs, “Born in the U.S.A.” is the story of a Vietnam veteran who’s been alienated and left behind by the very country he fought to defend. The song looks at America’s history of plucking future soldiers from blue-collar neighborhoods, then abandoning those neighborhoods and creating a hopeless cycle of producing low-income bodies for war.
“Born in the U.S.A.” has become a rock and roll national anthem with its arena-sized chorus. The misperception of this song as blindly patriotic has led to right-wing politicians, whom Springsteen strongly opposes, to use “Born in the U.S.A.” during their rallies. The Boss is prolific at blending triumphant sounds with down-and-out lyrics:
Come back home to the refinery
Hiring man said, “Son, if it was up to me…”
Went down to see my V.A. man
He said, “Son, don’t you understand, now?”
3. “Working Class Hero” by John Lennon
Here is John Lennon, on his first post-Beatles solo album, turning class consciousness into a truly revolutionary song. The song is musically similar to Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War” and features Lennon alone accompanied only by an acoustic guitar.
Several radio stations in the United States banned the song. For Lennon, the song was about the working class—his class—trying to move up into the middle class. “Working Class Hero” speaks to how extreme wealth is built on the backs of the lower classes as they’re distracted by other shiny objects like dope, sex, and TV.
The recording is a combination of two takes spliced together. An edit is even audible beginning with the line, When they’ve tortured and scared you for 20-odd years. The song then returns to the previous take at the next chorus with an obvious change in the acoustic guitar tone.
They hurt you at home and they hit you at school
They hate you if you’re clever and they despise a fool
4. “God Save the Queen” by Sex Pistols
The title of this Sex Pistols classic is an acerbic take on the British national anthem. “God Save the Queen” is a protest against people debasing themselves to the monarchy or any other establishment demanding unequivocal reverence.
The band referring to Queen Elizabeth as “fascist” was controversial in 1977. The BBC banned the song, but that didn’t keep it from reaching No. 2 on the British charts. The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame included “God Save the Queen” in its list of 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll.
The Sex Pistols released the song at the same time as the queen’s Silver Jubilee celebration—a marketing plan dreamed up by the band’s manager, Malcolm McLaren. What resulted was a punk rock Streisand effect—the more institutions that tried to ban or silence the song, the more popular it became.
God save the queen
The fascist regime
They made you a moron
A potential H-bomb
God save the queen
She ain’t no human being
There is no future
In England’s dreaming
5. “Killing in the Name” by Rage Against the Machine
The whole point of Rage Against the Machine is protest. Tom Morello’s guitar riffs are a protest. His guitar says: ARM THE HOMELESS. “Killing in the Name” was inspired by the 1992 Los Angeles riots that erupted after the police officers who beat Rodney King were acquitted. The song didn’t receive much airplay in the United States because of its explicit lyrics, but that hasn’t stopped it from becoming one of the most popular protest anthems of its generation.
The single’s artwork includes a Malcolm Browne photograph of the self-immolation of Quảng Đức, a monk protesting Buddhist persecution in Saigon. “Killing in the Name” contains one of the clearest protest lyrics of all time. It’s unambiguous, and Zach de la Rocha’s pronouncement requires no clarification. If you are a songwriter and you need only one line for a protest song, you probably won’t improve on this one:
Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me
Photo by Richard E. Aaron/Redferns
