{"id":2500,"date":"2008-04-17T10:12:59","date_gmt":"2008-04-17T10:12:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2008\/04\/17\/political-songs-that-dont-suck\/"},"modified":"2008-04-17T10:12:59","modified_gmt":"2008-04-17T10:12:59","slug":"political-songs-that-dont-suck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2008\/04\/17\/political-songs-that-dont-suck\/","title":{"rendered":"Political Songs That Don’t Suck?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I picked up the new Rustic Overtones album a week or two ago, partly on the strength of this review at 75 or Less<\/a>, but mostly because I really liked “Hardest Way Possible” off Viva Nueva<\/cite>, and can’t understand why it wasn’t a huge hit. (The self-cover on this album probably indicates that the band doesn’t understand it, either. Alas, like all self-covers, it’s nowhere near as good as the original). <\/p>\n

The record as a whole is pretty good, though I’m not as enthusiatic as Tom D. “Rock Like War,” “Oxygen,” and “Carsick” are really good songs, and most of the rest is solid. Unfortunately, it also includes a thing called “Letter to the President” that is, frankly, pretty awful.<\/p>\n

Lyrically, it’s about what you would expect from a song called “Letter to the President” these days, and serves as yet another example of wht I think may be a general rule:<\/p>\n

\n

Directly and explicitly political songs always suck.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The qualifier “Directly and explicitly” is meant to pick out songs referring to specific political events and conditions. There are some good songs that are political in intent, but filtered through enough metaphor that you can’t really identify a specific event or situation that they’re talking about. “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall” is a really good Bob Dylan song, for example, but “Hurricane” is not. “Powderfinger” is a really good Neil Young song, “Cortez the Killer” is not. “The Rising” is a great Bruce Springsteen song, “41 Shots” is not.<\/p>\n

As a general matter, political songs where you can easily identify the source incident or situation tend to be really trite and obvious, and sound dated about fifteen minutes after the tape stops rolling in the studio. The worst also tend to sound whiny and self-indulgent– see “Oberst, Conor.”<\/p>\n

I’m willing to entertain counterexamples, though, so have at it. “Ohio” by Crosy, Stills and Nash comes close, but it’s not that great a song. Does “Sweet Home Alabama” count as a political song?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I picked up the new Rustic Overtones album a week or two ago, partly on the strength of this review at 75 or Less, but mostly because I really liked “Hardest Way Possible” off Viva Nueva, and can’t understand why it wasn’t a huge hit. (The self-cover on this album probably indicates that the band… Continue reading Political Songs That Don’t Suck?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2500\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}