Political Songs

In case you were wondering I've given up on trying to make 4 or 5 entries a month. No one reads this so I don't feel entitled to owe anything, and with school and work I just don't have the same amount of time I used to. As far as updates go, it'll basically be whenever I feel passioned to write something.

So onto this post, Ben Weasel does a weekly radio show for an ESPN station in Wisconsin called "Weasel Radio". It's him and a co-host named Owen Murphy mostly talking baseball, but they'll throw in some punk rock discussion. On the latest episode they were talking about political songs, which Ben didn't speak too kindly of. I felt obliged to send a counter opinion:

Owen and Ben,
I'd like to respond to the comment that political songs are "rich millionaires telling you what to think and do". First of all most of the great political songs aren't written by rich millionaires. "Holiday In Cambodia" was not written by millionaires. "Bonzo Goes To Bitburg" was not written by millionaires. I consider Bad Religion to be the greatest band at writing political songs, and with the exception of Brett (who owns Epitaph) I doubt those guys are in the upper class.

Regardless I don't see what the problem is with bands like Green Day who are rich and will write political songs. When you make a certain amount of money do you lose the credence you previously had to express how you feel politically? If you don't want to here rich millionaires telling you how to vote, then don't follow politics. Look at our politicians, they are not the common man, most of them are lawyers or business owners who ran for office after inheriting or making
millions. That's the way our system works unfortunately, so if you don't want millionaires preaching, don't keep up with whats going on and be ignorantly blissful.

Furthermore your statement that writing political songs is a cheap move to make your left wing fan base applaud is false. I'd think that any song, whether it be about something as simple as a relationship or
a car, is trying to get some sort of idea to its audience. God forbid a political song is trying to inform the audience about something that made an impact. Before I heard the two songs I mentioned in the first
paragraph, I knew nothing about Reagan putting a reef on a Nazi's grave, or about the killing fields. After I heard them I looked up more information, the same goes for Bad Religion and their song
"Sinister Rogue" about the Spanish Inquisition. I'd like to think years from now a kid would be listening to that Green Day song your show was playing and say, "Wow I can't believe America was run by a bunch of homophobic religious nuts who started a pre-emptive war without any evidence".

- David