'Say it loud': The Power of Protest Songs

Dec 4, 20245 min read

EMMA SMELTZER waxes lyrical about three wise wordsmiths with songs that have got s**t to say

We'll remember the dead

So they know that we're sorry

And then carry on.

Indiscriminate killing, brutal colonization and racial injustice. Some singers with a conscience have a thing or two to say about our imperfect world. Coined in the 1950’s (OED online), the term “protest song” encompasses any such track which voices an opinion on social or political issues. There are a lot out there, but here are three handpicked certified bangers with shit to say.

‘British Bombs’ by Declan McKenna

The English indie singer-song writer dropped this lively tune in 2019 as a criticism of the U.K.’s global arms exportation. If we introduced an arms trading event at the Olympics, then between 2010 and 2019 the U.K. would have gained the silver medal (first place going to the U.S.) for the massive £86 billion made in arms deals. The year prior to McKenna’s ‘British Bombs’, £14 billion came from arms trading, with Middle Eastern countries as the primary customers (Campaign Against Arms Trade). McKenna expressed his desire to write an anti-war song stemming from a conversation with a friend about the reality of the U.K. participating in wars to this day because of the arms business. He stated that the government’s sale of weapons to fuel conflict is “pure bullshit” (Aubrey, 2019), so it’s unsurprising that anti-war anthem features the following lyrics:

The call you made to me you said

I fear

One day each year

For worry

We shall remember the dead

And we'll remember the dead

So they know that we're sorry

And then carry on.

Though it’s an upbeat and energetic track instrumentally, McKenna’s censure is clear. Each year, November 11th sees the U.K. recognise and honour all lives lost in conflict. Around the country, people wear a poppy to symbolise remembrance for the countless deaths and the hope for a future of peace (Royal British Legion), yet the government goes chucking kindling onto the already blazing fire that is global conflict with their arms sales.

Five years later, McKenna’s lyrics may as well be considered gospel for the absolute truth of them. The U.K. continues to export arms and licences to Israel (Gov.UK, 2024) when a simple Google search brings up a plethora of articles about civilian slaughter in Gaza as a result of a heavily armed Israeli Defence Force. We will remember our valiant dead who braved the trenches of WWI or the firing from Nazi jets in WWII, but will we remember that Palestinian/Yemeni/Iraqi child lying in the dusty road today with shrapnel from a British Bomb embedded in their heart?

‘British Bombs’ by Declan McKenna can be streamed here: https://open.spotify.com/album/18nvSHmOdaQNgpz7vsJKPr

‘Butchered Tongue’ by Hozier

Perhaps better known as “the Take Me to Church guy” or “the man behind the I’ll take my whisky neat TikTok sound”, Irish musician Andrew Hozier-Byrne released his third album, Unreal Unearth, in 2023. Featured on this lyrical masterpiece is ‘Butchered Tongue’, a mellow song exploring the loss of indigenous cultures and languages. Whether it’s regular old genocide or of the linguistic variety, Hozier has some valid thoughts on the matter. He reflects upon “the tragedy of cultures who have lost the meaning of their own words” in the face of colonisation (Holden, 2023). In ‘Butchered Tongue’, Hozier sings of hard to say placenames (for English speakers, at least). Though his own indigenous Irish language is well documented, there are plenty of languages which are not, with two such endangered languages being the vulnerable Native American Mikasuki and Choctaw – the tongues behind the placenames featured:

How the mouth must be employed in every corner of itself

To say ‘Appalacicola’ or ‘Hushpukena’ like ‘Gweebarra’

A promise softly sung of somewhere else

He equates the Irish ‘Gweebarra’ with Native American ‘Appalacicola’ and ‘Hushpukena’. And what do all three areas share historically? Just like the indigenous peoples of various nations, the British powers yearned for their oppression.

Hozier doubles down on his protest of British colonialism in particular with his depiction of the 1798 Wexford Rebellion. When Irish rebels opposed British rule, they were met with the unchecked brutality of British butchers. Those who fought against the leagues of soldiers from across the sea were subjected to having their ears cut off and being ‘pitch capped’, a form of punishment/torture in which scorching pitch was poured over the victim’s head (Bartlett, 2003):

The ears were chopped from young men if the pitch cap didn't kill them

They are buried without scalp in the shattered bedrock of our home

[…]

A butchered tongue still singin' here above the ground

Despite centuries of British tyranny, Hozier uses this song to prove that “a butchered tongue” continues to sing for justice.

You can stream ‘Butchered Tongue’ by Hozier here: https://open.spotify.com/track/2fuTf4PvkLWAAVHetDc5yL

‘Cassius, -’ by Fleet Foxes

Emerging in the indie boom of the early 2000’s, American band Fleet Foxes released the song ‘Cassius,-’ (comma and hyphen in the song title) as part of their 2017 Crack-Up album. After the murder of George Floyd, the importance of the Black Lives Matter movement was thrust into the eyes of the global public, but just four years earlier Alton Sterling and Philando Castile – another two black men – were also murdered by police in the U.S.A. Lead Fleet Foxes singer Robin Pecknold attended a Black Lives Matter protest in response to these killings, then wrote ‘Cassius,-’ from the perspective of a white observer criticising the social climate of America and its prevalent racism (Dean, 2017).

Set to a varying tempo, Pecknold takes issue with the silence of so many Americans, wondering how they can be immune to the dystopian horror of those who are supposed to uphold the law murdering innocent men. Exasperation shines through at the selfish “that doesn’t concern me - I’ll just go with the flow” attitude that Pecknold denounces in his verses:

As I went they're all beside us in silence

As if unaffected amid the violence

Oh, are we also tamed?

I was in a river, as if in water

Wife, a son, a son, a son, and a daughter

Oh, are we also tamed?

Pecknold then goes on to question “[a]nd who will lead us and who remains to die?”, because this man did not need a crystal ball to accurately predict that racially charged police brutality would not end with Sterling and Castile’s murders.