Can’t Get No Satisfaction

Why “radical” rockers need to write better lyrics.

By Ben Adler, Campus Progress

Throughout my childhood, nearly every family car trip featured the same music album played on an endless loop. (The only non-musical exception was when we would listen to a book on tape, like From Beirut to Jerusalem — seriously, my family is that uncool, or cool, depending on how you look at it.) The album, Precious Friend, consists of Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie, son of the great Woody Guthrie, singing classic folk songs. I knew every word by heart. When I was around 10 my family went to see Seeger in concert, and the average audience member was six or seven times my age. (“Just follow the gray ponytails,” my dad joked, as we searched out the location.) Years later Seeger came to play at my college, and people lined up to get in. What is it about the folk music Seeger sang that made it appeal to such a wide range of age groups across such a long time span? And why does it seem that, despite the upsurge in politically engaged artists since Bush took office, no one is making music like that today?

One of the things that distinguish Seeger’s songs from the current spate of protest music is the timeless nature of the lyrics. Though Seeger and other folk singers did write and sing about specific issues (that album from my childhood featured a whole track about the Chrysler bailout), they mostly were about more general conditions. Obviously songs about poverty, the horrors of war, the struggle for racial equality, the value of nature and the importance of unions have political implications. In fact, they often are intended to point to a specific conclusion about a current issue (e.g., passing the Civil Rights Act, or ending the Vietnam War.) But they change minds through the power of poetry, not talking points.

Perhaps that’s why so much of this year’s biggest protest album, Neil Young’s Living With War, falls flat. The music is good, but when the lyrics are looked at plainly, they read more like the casually oversimplified criticism of the current state of political affairs that one might hear over cheap beers at any hipster bar. While I’m pleased to see Young voicing opinions I share (opposition to the Iraq war and wiretapping without a warrant), I find most of the album almost juvenile in its blog-like punchlines. (SNL ’s alternative title for the album, "I Do Not Agree with Many of This Administration’s Policies,” got it just right.) While Rolling Stone lauds Living With War for its sense of urgency (it was recorded in six days, and sure sounds like it), I wonder if a longer, broader view might have strengthened it.

Maybe that’s why the most moving song on Living With War is “Flags of Freedom.” Rather than discussing a specific war, much less a detail of it, Young’s lyrics speak to the broader human tragedy of war. The lyrics could be about any war (well, except for the references to flat screen televisions). Young sings about the pain of seeing loved ones go off to battle: “Church bells are ringing/as the families stand and wave/ some of them are cryin’/ but the soldiers look so brave.” This doesn’t zing the Bush administration the way Young’s mocking of the infamous “shock and awe” on a different track does. And yet its political implication is clear: War comes at a cost, and when the casus belli is as weak as the Iraq war’s has been, that cost is unacceptable.

Young himself was making music during the heyday of protest anthems. But he seems to be part of a larger cultural shift towards songs that are more snarky than sincere.

If I thought refrains like Young’s mantra on "After the Garden" — “We don’t need no stinkin’ WAR… Won’t need no haircut, won’t need no shoe shine” — were almost juvenile, I’m at a loss when it comes to describing the chorus from The Coup’s song “Head of State” on their new album, Pick a Bigger Weapon:

Bush and Hussein together in bed
Giving H-E-A-D head
Y’all motherfuckers heard what we said
Billions made and millions dead

OK, so I cracked up when I first heard it. But it also speaks to some of the major problems with protest music today. The first is the political viewpoint that much overtly political underground hip hop like The Coup represents (some of you may remember the controversy over their Party Music album cover, featuring images of the World Trade Center exploding shortly before September 11 which had to be pulled from stores). The Coup may have good intentions, but like so many of their predecessors, from the Poor Righteous Teachers and Public Enemy to groups like Dead Prez today, they espouse an extremist set of positions (anti-capitalist, filled with conspiracy theories, anti-every war, including Afghanistan, and in some cases anti-white) that, while perhaps useful in raising awareness, has little practical application in a country so far removed from their place on the ideological spectrum. Nor is The Coup’s sympathy for terrorists and sexist, homophobic theocrats particularly progressive. The song goes on to express support for the Iranian revolution and implies that Bush and Hussein are in cahoots. If your hope is to turn Americans against the Iraq invasion (which, to be fair, is clearly not the hope of The Coup), a reminder of the pain it causes back home, like Young’s, or a reminder of the pain of war generally, strikes me as the best way to do it. The Coup’s approach is guaranteed not to excite anyone but the radicals who are already convinced.

Perhaps that’s why the year’s best protest album, Bruce Springsteen’s collection of Pete Seeger covers, We Shall Overcome, is composed entirely of old songs. Even an older, immensely talented, current songwriter like Springsteen sees more value in reviving old classic progressive anthems than writing new ones. What’s unknowable to someone of our generation is whether Seeger’s songs were really the exception rather than the rule during his day as well. Maybe for every “If I Had a Hammer” there were 10 shallow, whiny songs about politics. But it is clear, if you look at the Vietnam era, when the government was spying on and lying to its citizens to justify an unjust war (sound familiar?), there were more great new protest songs than there are today.

Of the recent progressive albums, I think Springsteen’s has by far the greatest potential to open hearts and change minds. He chose a selection of songs about issues, not issues in the immediate newsworthy sense we, and Neil Young apparently, think of them today (e.g., Iraq war, the need for universal health coverage), but issues in the broader sense. The title track, “We Shall Overcome,” and “Eyes on the Prize” are about racial harmony and equality. “Mrs. McGrath” is a wonderful, under-recognized early 19th century gut-wrenching tune about an Irish woman who loses her son in war. Needless to say, a song about the Great Depression doesn’t explicitly say “George W. Bush is a bad president for failing to address domestic or global poverty,” but the inference can be made.

One of the most basic (if hardest to learn) lessons for any writer is that your reader will agree with your conclusion more strongly if you lead him to it but let him make the final logical leap himself, rather than stating it outright. Springsteen has learned this well from Seeger. If only more musicians would take note of it.

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