Seven Song Spin: MLK & Change

Political protest songs haven't been my main interest or listening diet, but I'm not immune to their pull or their potency, even when they're ambivalent. As we celebrate a slain Civil Rights leader who, along with John Lewis and C.T. Vivian, might rightly be called an American founder, and look forward with some mix of trepidation, eagerness, and relief to the inauguration of a new president, here are some tracks that have made spoken to me at various moments and may speak to you.

This whole playlist can be found here.

I can see those fighter planes: With its word-painting evocation of America's dirty proxy wars in Central America, the U2 banger "Bullet the Blue Sky" is the most overtly political song on The Joshua Tree. But its explicitness may have backfired: I remember a show at the L.A. Coliseum in 1987 in which Bono closed the song's final spoken-word monologue, which on the record ends with the lines "into the arms of America," with a variation: "into the arms of Ronald Reagan." The callout got confused applause—at least, it confused me. I couldn't tell if folks were clapping for the incisiveness of the callout or if they were literally cheering the Gipper.

Now I wonder who's boss: "The Democratic Circus" is a sleek, sneaky, cynical groover from the Talking Heads' underrated final record.

Won't you say his name?: The most enraging thing about Janelle Monáe's "Hell You Talmbout" is that this nearly six-minute version from 2015, which names Black folks killed by police in the U.S., could easily be six minutes longer by now. (David Byrne's American Utopia version from last year added names, but even it's not complete; this list goes on, to our everlasting shame.) 

The seagulls, they'll be smiling: Despite his reputation, Bob Dylan's protest anthems are few and far between, and many aren't quite what they seem on first impression. "Blowin' in the Wind," to name one, is gnomic and arguably quietist, and a song like "Only a Pawn in Their Game" makes a complicated argument about white power that's easier to nod along than sing along to. I'd call "Masters of War," "Times They Are a-Changin'," and "Hurricane" his three clearest and best of the genre. And then there's something like this: a prophetic near-hymn about the arrival of justice. Its last line is very satisfying (yes, I've played this one in church a few times over the years).

Of rage and remembrance: John Corigliano's first symphony from 1990 famously commemorated friends he'd lost to AIDS. And its stirring, striking, anguished first movement still packs a wallop.

Our goal, indestructible soul: Fear of a Black Planet, Public Enemy's tendentious follow-up to It Takes a Nation of Millions, opened with "Brothers Gonna Work It Out," driven forward by a Prince guitar flourish and fresh reserves of anger as authentic in feeling as it was performative in affect.

If I have to swim the ocean: Nina Simone deserves the last word with her mic-drop response to John Lennon's "Revolution," with its blistering and still relevant final line: "The only way that we can stand in fact/Is when you get your foot off our back." A-fucking-men.