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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. “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, Jon Dolan, Suzy Exposito, Andy Greene, Kory Grow, Brian Hiatt, Christian Hoard, Angie Martoccio, Rob Sheffield, Simon Vozick-Levinson, Christopher R. Weingarten
