Who will ship us from the silence?
Protest songs stir passions and metal nerves. Most of the finest ones are timeless anthems: Blowin’ within the Wind, We Shall Overcome, For What It’s Price, This Land is Your Land, The place Have All of the Flowers Gone ?
Given the animus and political dissent that has thus far stamped 2025, are there any new protest songs jockeying to affix these classics? None appear to have emerged. It’s fairly doable, after all, that potent, new anthems are simply ready to be found among the many 4 million songs launched every year. But when you think about what a profitable protest track should accomplish, it’s not stunning that so few make the grade.
CJ Baker, author, music fan, and creator of the The Ongoing Historical past of Protest Music, produced a response video (See beneath) to Rolling Stone’s checklist of the 100 finest protest songs of all time. Baker settled on three standards for achievement: message, cultural affect, and musical affect.
Amongst Baker’s key considerations about every track: Has it achieved mainstream ubiquity? Is it…
