Blog: Whatever Happened To The Protest Song?

US Blogger Lagrange explores...      22/02/14

One of the key difficulties in any kind of statistical analysis is data quality and with protest songs the difficulty increases significantly. Wikipedia for example records dozens of protest song categories and many songs that fall into an even bigger number of sub-categories. There are also song themes such as comedy or charity songs where arguably lyrical content could be argued as 'protest' in nature. I also read an argument where 'Do They Know It's Christmas' by Band Aid in 1984 could be considered a protest song by virtue of one particular lyric.

Even with this 'obscure' example, given how heavily steeped in charity this particular song was, you can appreciate the difficulties in determining a list of songs to pursue a data driven argument. As a starting point however there is one category of protest song that is pretty universal, the anti-war song. Again using Wikipedia as the source (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_anti-war_songs) for our chosen date range we can determine the following:


 

Now while we accept that our source data is incomplete at the very least there is a prominent set of observations that we can make from the above. There are clear peaks around the time significant conflicts were taking place such as the Vietnam War, the Falklands War and two Gulf Wars. Further the anti-war theme could overlap into the Nuclear Disarmament issue that dominated through the late 70's and well into the 80's.

At a general level you might argue that in this particular category musicians respond to feelings in society about war in general in significant numbers. The last peak which represents the second and more protracted Gulf War plus no doubt subsequent conflicts arising from 9/11 we can observe that the numbers increase which might lead to the view that today our social conscience demands that we respond with protest music even more. However there is potentially two other factors that temper these numbers.

Population generally has increased significantly in the last three decades. Technology has also made music a lot more accessible to a greater number of people. You could argue therefore that this social response is actually less as the numbers haven't increased pro-rata in line with the two factors I've just highlighted. The last peak in the graph above also highlights another factor, which alludes to artists in particular geographic locations that will respond more because the issue at hand is close to home.

This factor may also offset, in the other direction, any pro-rata analysis associated with population and accessible technology. Does this put us any closer to confirming or denying whether protest songs are less prominent today, unfortunately not with any great clarity.

What is at the heart of this discussion is an examination of our social conscience and how that is reflected by artists, and whether that social conscience is more or less significant today. One argument put forward to support the latter view is that the music business today is far more commercial and competitive than it ever was and that the Internet has created more pathways and options to selling and distribution.

These models are now more fragmented as a result and therefore the commercial imperative was never more pronounced. At the very core of this argument is the assertion that protest songs do not sell in significant numbers. I have no access to sales figures so I can't confirm or deny this but in the absence of that is it fair to say that at least given the often sensitive nature of the material that this assertion is true?

To further support this are artists more concerned about their reputation today than they might have been in the past? In other words having to work so much harder these days to build a following only to risk alienating your audience by releasing a protest song regardless of your conviction. Is crossing that line harder now?

 




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