I feel like there are lots of parallels between the eighties and now (recession/inflation, yuppies/inequality, skin-heads/fascists, hot-cold wars etc.) but there used to be protest music! Where is that stuff now? Music that’s intelligent and outraged - like we should be!
I’m out of touch now, so if it exists, educate me! Or have the protest songs been removed from tiktok by the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act (UK specific, but suppression of protest seems to be everywhere)? (I’ve linked to the Levellers - maybe it really was better back in the day?)
Big difference: we’re too tired to protest, and that’s only the ones who are capable of doing it in the first place. Rich bitches have made us stupider and more complacent as a whole, as well, at least where they haven’t divided us and pit us against each other.
Another big difference: we don’t have a whole lot of hope for the future anymore. A lot of that whole protesting thing stems from the hope for things to be better, and with climate change, massive polluting corporations very obviously distracting people with manufactured outrage, the rise of authoritarianism, and several massively public wars, there ain’t a whole lot of hope to go around.
Frankly, I wish there were some people making protest songs. This current crop of people needs a good kick in the ass, myself included. But I don’t have the energy or hope or talent to do it myself.
Excuse me, GenX chiming in. We had that exact same list, with the sort-of-maybe exception of climate change (pollution was really really bad though). Then again , we had the daily doom of nuclear war on our heads.