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THE 100 BEST PROTEST SONGS OF ALL TIME  
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Rolling Stone
January 27, 2025
Rolling Stone
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_ From Pete Seeger and Billie Holiday to Beyoncé and Rage Against
the Machine, musicians across genres have spoken truth to power
through their songs _

, Photo Illustration by Matthew Cooley. Images in illustration by Gie
Knaeps/Getty Images; Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images; Michael Ochs
Archives/Getty Images, 3; Al Pereira/Getty Images/Michael Ochs
Archives, 2; Paras Griffin/Getty Images; Kevin Mazur/WireIma

 

To see and listen to the entire list please go to
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When Chuck D of Public Enemy famously called hip-hop “the Black
CNN,” he was touching on a universal truth that goes beyond genre:
Music and protest have always been inextricably linked. For some
marginalized groups, the simple act of creating music at all can be a
form of speaking out against an unjust world. Our list of the 100 Best
Protest Songs spans nearly a century and includes everything from
pre-World War II jazz and Sixties folk to Eighties house music, 2000s
R&B, and 2020s Cuban hip-hop. 

Some of these songs decry oppression and demand justice, others are
prayers for positive change; some grab you by the shoulders and shout
in your face, others are personal, private attempts to subtly embody
the contradictory nature of political struggle and change from the
inside. Many of our selections are specific products of leftist
political traditions (like Pete Seeger’s version of “We Shall
Overcome”), but just as many are hits that slipped urgent messages
into the pop marketplace (like Nena’s anti-nuclear war New Wave bop
“99 Luftballons”). 

This is probably the only _Rolling Stone_ list to ever feature Phil
Ochs, the Dead Kennedys, and Beyoncé side by side, but each of those
artists is a vital participant in the long story of musicians using
their voices to demand a better world. 

# 100  Bonzo Goes to Washington, ‘Five Minutes (B-B-B Bombing
Mix)’ Nuclear anxiety never sounded so funky. Appearing in the
lead-up to the 1984 election, the mysterious Bonzo Goes to Washington
— actually Talking Heads guitarist Jerry Harrison teaming with
P-Funk bassist Bootsy Collins — made mincemeat of a Reagan
soundbite, turning the Gipper’s offhanded joke (“My fellow
Americans, I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed
legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five
minutes”) into a stuttering parody. The song truly became a mutually
assured dance-floor destructor after it was remixed by Sleeping Bag
Records owner and dance-music visionary Arthur Russell.

# 99 Xenia Rubinos, ‘Mexican Chef’ When most people think of
resistance, they think of taking the streets. Xenia Rubinos — a
Cuban Puerto Rican artist who grew up in Hartford, Connecticut
— takes it inside the homes and kitchens of New York City’s
elite: “Brown walks your baby/Brown walks your dog/Brown raised
America in place of its mom,” she sings against the taut, funky
groove and sharp guitars of “Mexican Chef,” a witty reminder that
without the painstaking labor of Black and brown people, the United
States would grind to a halt. The song is a highlight of Rubinos great
album _Black Terry Cat,_ which set politically charged lyrics to
dance-party tracks that mixed R&B, rock, and Latin sounds.

# 98. Heaven 17, ‘(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang’
What better way to protest Reaganism, Thatcherism, racism, nuclear
anxiety, and the creep of fascism than with a raucous synth-pop hit
that bleeps by at 150 bpm? Featuring two expats of electro-punk
pioneers Human League, Heaven 17 were a socialist-pop concoction
obsessed with American funk bands like Cameo, the Burroughsian
“cut-up” technique, drum machines, disco slang, and criticizing
capitalism. When combined, it yielded their first single, “Groove
Thang,” which vocalist Martyn Ware called “this really bizarre
hybrid of politics and dancing and comedy and Black American soul
influence.” Something between arch protest and utter nonsense
(“Counterforce will do no good/Hot U.S. I feel your power”),
“Groove Thang” was banned by the BBC, but still lit up dance
floors.

# 97 Midnight Oil, ‘Beds Are Burning’  In 1986, Sydney
college-rock band Midnight Oil and Aboriginal country-rock group
Warumpi Band toured the Australian continent, bringing their music to
some of its most remote and isolated settlements. Moved by the
Aboriginal struggles for land rights, the band wrote a song that
seemed focused on Australian geography (“Four-wheels scare the
cockatoos/From Kintore east to Yuendumu”) but nonetheless ended up
an international hit, hitting Number One in Canada and South Africa.
Though the concern was local, the hooks about the fight for
reparations — “It belongs to them, let’s give it back” —
proved universal. “We were very determined that our band would be
seen as an Australian band, in an international context,” drummer
Rob Hirst told _Songwriting Magazine_
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“Land rights are something that appear in so many countries around
the world … but we were determined that Midnight Oil wouldn’t be
seen as one of those international bands, writing songs that could
have come from anywhere.”

# 96 McKinley Dixon, ‘Run, Run, Run’ Inspired by Toni Morrison’s
writings on memory and personal narrative, jazz-rap upstart McKinley
Dixon mines his childhood for a rumination about running from the toy
guns held by friends and running from real guns held by police. The
ecstatic song teams his mix of trauma and hope with electric
jazz-funk, Zora Neale Hurston references, and a shining chorus.
“Holding heavy hearts really makes it worse,” he raps. “‘Til
we found the only way for us to lift this curse/If we run to a place
where they know our worth.”

# 95 The Byrds, ‘Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)’ Woody
Guthrie was infuriated by the media coverage in 1948 after a plane
deporting 28 migrant farm workers back to Mexico crashed in California
— newspapers printed the names of the four Americans who died, but
left the immigrants’ names a mystery. The folk icon penned an
outraged poem: “Who are these friends, all scattered like dry
leaves?/The radio says, ‘They are just deportees.'” A California
schoolteacher gave it a melody, Pete Seeger gave it legs, but
psychedelic folk icons the Byrds gave it the definitive performance, a
languid country-rock arrangement wailing with mournful slide guitar.

# 94 Molotov, ‘Gimme tha Power’  “_¡Viva México,
cabrones!_” Rap-rock stalwarts Molotov became legends in their home
country for a swagger that was profane, juvenile, sarcastic, and
politically incorrect — their debut album, _¿Dónde Jugarán las
Niñas?_,_ _wasn’t banned for its message, but for its risqué title
and cover art. Yet their mosh-pit manners were hand in hand with a
loud-and-proud revolutionary streak, as evidenced by their crowning
achievement, “Gimme tha Power.” The track confronts Mexico’s
economic inequality and places the aim squarely on the government, all
in this band’s wry, booger-flicking style: “_¿Por qué estar
siguiendo a una bola de pendejos?” _(“Why follow a bunch of
assholes?”)

# 93 Team Dresch, ‘I’m Illegal’ Olympia, Washington, queercore
rebels Team Dresch break down the intolerance, confusion, and daily
hassle of lesbian life in the Nineties in this jangle-punk cry to be
heard. In less than three minutes, guitarist Kaia Lynn Wilson
dismantles the illegality of gay marriage (“You say you have a ban
on affection, did I hear you right?”), opens up about the internal
trauma of unwanted police attention (“Sometimes I think I’ve even
done something wrong”), and navigates employment discrimination
(“I’m not sure whether I didn’t get that job/Because my hair’s
parted on the wrong side or because I’m a flaming S&M rubber
dyke”).

# 10 Asked what “Fuck tha Police” meant to him three decades after
he wrote it, Ice Cube said the song “was 400 years in the making,
and it’s still just as relevant as it was before it was made.”
After the authorities hassled Cube, his friends, and his family
throughout his school years because of their skin color, he decided to
exact lyrical revenge in 1988 with a six-minute mock trial. Judge Dr.
Dre presides as prosecutors Ice Cube, MC Ren, and Eazy-E present their
evidence, accusing cops of racist car searches, frisks, and home
invasions. Judge Dre, of course, hits the dirty cops with a ruling
that has been spray painted on walls ever since: “Fuck tha
Police.” With the rise of Black Lives Matters protests against
police brutality, the song has continued to resonate; streams of the
track surged nearly 300 percent in the weeks after George Floyd was
murdered.

# 1 Sam Cooke, ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’  Half a year before
Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, soul singer Sam Cooke
broke off from singing feel-good pop tunes to record one of the most
powerful indictments of racism ever recorded — an unparalleled
moment in the fusion of pop music and progressive politics. Taking
inspiration from Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” and drawing
from the anger he felt when he was denied a room at a Louisiana hotel
because he was Black, he penned heartfelt lyrics, pleading for an end
to discrimination. Over a gorgeous orchestral arrangement, he sings
plaintively about being turned away from movie theaters and threatened
just for walking around downtown. As sad as he sounds, though, he
maintains hope. Cooke died only a few months before the single became
an unlikely Top 40 hit, but the song has endured. Aretha Franklin,
Otis Redding, and Beyoncé have all covered it, and Bettye LaVette and
Jon Bon Jovi performed it at President Obama’s inauguration concert
in January 2009. 

Contributors: David Browne
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Martoccio [[link removed]], Rob
Sheffield [[link removed]], Simon
Vozick-Levinson
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Christopher R. Weingarten
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* protest music
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INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

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