flatfourfan wrote
I know that this was a big thing in the 60's and 70's where songs actually had some meaning. Tracks that come to mind are (The Times They Are A-Changin' ,Turn, turn, turn; Purple Haze; Fortunate Son) to name a few, but has there been anything recent that really hits a nerve??? Or is it all the new stuff just garbage?
The 60s and 70s was hardly the start of it. There's nearly always been music that "meant" something - in fact there was probably meaningful song before there was banal mush. Songs used to be the way that history was recorded and news broadcast. Listen to guys like Martin Simpson or Martin Carthy who do old folk songs to hear the sort of punch that songs one hundred and two hundred years old packed - and still pack. Simpson does a great version of "Andre Lammie" which is ... I dunno, 200 years old and describes an honour killing (and the bare bones of the song are a true story).
Neil Young still gets pissed off. Randy Newman has got around to releasing a new album. Richard Thompson wrote a great song about the second Gulf War - "Dad's Gonna Kill Me" (the lyrics all couched in GI slang) and he also took a parodic shot at the likes of the Taliban with "Outside Of The Inside". Thompson tends to be a sort of introspective, personal type of songwriter. Loudon Wainwright III put out a whole album of songs inspired (if that's the right word) by the economic downturn.
I sing a Robbie Burns song (or actually a song that he rewrote) "Ye Jacobites By Name" which is amazing because it's so timeless in it's description of revolution and revolutionaries.
Bruce Cockburn gets pretty worked up from time to time - and generally is a fine, skilled songwriter. In 1984 he wrote and recorded the blisteringly angry "If I Had a Rocket Launcher".
I was at a fabulous one-off concert in London last year - "An Evening of Political Song". That had what then must have been the very latest protest song - protesting about a deal that David Cameron had signed the week before.
One of the performers at that show was Tom Robinson (now a late night radio DJ). He said that he gets asked a lot about protest song and political song and why you don't hear any of those songs anymore. He said people who ask him that have been listening to the wrong things. He said that if you want that sort of thing then listen to lots of rap and hip-hop - that's where it's happening. He then went some way to proving his point with a great performance of The Disposable Heroes of Hiphopricy's "Language of Violence". Wow!
People like Joni Mitchell, or Dylan once he'd got all the protest songs out of his system, gave everybody that followed license to write about their own lives and their own heartbreaks and happinesses. So songs with substance to them aren't necessarily oriented towards political issues.
I've been listening to World Party's "Goodbye Jumbo" which is centered around green issues. You don't have to agree with the songs, but Kurt Wallinger is taking a position and saying things beyond "ooh what a feeling, dancing on the ceiling".
Green Day.... Bruce Springsteen.... Dead Kennedies... Bright Blue... Johnny Cleg...Sting... Peter Gabriel... I'm not a fan of hers, but you have to give Christina Aguilera some credit for "You Are Beautiful".
There are clips on YouTube of Nick Lowe singing the song that he wrote for Johnny Cash in the 90s "The Beast In Me". Tell me that's not a great song.
Look for clips of Lyle Lovett singing "Natural Forces". Marvellous.
There's always songs where people are trying to say something meaningful. Always have been. You just don't necessarily hear those songs on the radio or playing in the malls.
