Whither the protest song in 2026? In January 1970, John Lennon wrote and recorded \u2018Instant Karma!\u2019 in a single day and had it in the shops a little over a week later \u2013 no mean feat given the mechanics of physical record production at the time.<\/p>\n
Nowadays, when the practicalities of releasing music are infinitely more streamlined, it has never been easier for artists to react to current events within moments of them occurring. And with the febrile news churn packing a year\u2019s worth of drama into each week, there is certainly no shortage of material.<\/p>\n
A small man with big ideas and a loud voice, Bono is a veritable magnet for ridicule<\/p>\n
Yet in an online culture already gerrymandered along algorithms of age, gender, political bias and nationality, it is far easier to speechify on Instagram or X than write a song, and harder than ever for marginal voices to preach to anyone other than the converted. With apologies to any thrusting Greenlandic rappers flying under my radar, when it comes to protest music, it has of late been left to those with the largest footprint \u2013 and, often, the most hefty \u2018old media\u2019 presence \u2013 to cut through.<\/p>\n
Last month, over the course of a weekend, Bruce Springsteen wrote, recorded and released \u2018Streets Of Minneapolis\u2019. It landed while the city remained in a siege state following the killings by ICE of Ren\u00e9e Good and Alex Pretti. Springsteen knows his onions, and kept things simple. Musically, the song is a turbo-charged version of a Woody Guthrie folk broadside, with simple chords and a fist-pumping tune. As a direct response to ongoing events, its most obvious precedent is \u2018Ohio\u2019, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young\u2019s angry elegy for four students shot dead at Kent State in May 1970.<\/p>\n
Springsteen is steeped in this stuff and understands that protest music is a blunt instrument. \u2018Streets Of Minneapolis\u2019 is far from his best song \u2013 it doesn\u2019t hold a candle to \u2018Streets Of Philadelphia\u2019 \u2013 but it marks a significant moment, offering a point of focus not only for those who agree with its sentiments, but also for those who do not.<\/p>\n
U2 have taken a little longer to post their response to world affairs. A six-song EP, Days Of Ash, was rush-released last week and includes tracks commemorating activists killed while protesting in Iran, Palestine and the US; in the latter case, Ren\u00e9e Good is again referenced directly in the lyrics.<\/p>\n
These are among the first new songs U2 have put out in almost a decade. They will be dismissed as the usual wishy-washy liberal hand-wringing by those on both the ideological right and left, for whom Bono provokes an allergic response. A small man with big ideas and a loud voice, he is a veritable magnet for ridicule. And yet, admirably or otherwise, he keeps on going.<\/p>\n
Far more than \u2018Streets Of Minneapolis\u2019, \u2018American Obituary\u2019 devolves to spray-can sloganeering to make its point. Even as reportage, the lines concerning Good are objectively bad writing. \u2018Ren\u00e9e Good, born to die free\/ American mother of three\/ Seventh day January\/ A bullet for each child, you see.\u2019 Elsewhere, Bono sings, \u2018I love you more than hate loves war\u2019, and \u2018The power of the people is so much stronger than the people in power\u2019.<\/p>\n
This is the childlike vernacular of Lennon\u2019s protest songs. Even 50-odd years ago their naivet\u00e9 was easy to deride; now they seem almost insultingly banal. The great curse of baby boomer bands is to believe that rock\u2019n\u2019roll can still change the world.<\/p>\n
Yet the inconvenient truth is that the songs on Days Of Ash are rather good \u2013 punchy and melodic. Where \u2018American Obituary\u2019 is appropriately rowdy, \u2018Song Of The Future\u2019 is lithe pop which wears its intent lightly. Written for teenage women\u2019s rights protester Sarina Esmailzadeh, killed by Iranian forces in 2022, it boasts funky bass and a slinky chorus.<\/p>\n
The great curse of baby boomer bands is to believe that rock\u2019n\u2019roll can still change the world<\/p>\n
There is a shadow side to U2 which, admittedly, isn\u2019t easily apparent to those not minded to pay attention beyond the surface noise. At times, the EP stirs memories of the woozy grace and beauty of early songs such as \u2018Promenade\u2019 and \u2018Running To Stand Still\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u2018The Tears Of Things\u2019 is musically and lyrically closer to the labyrinthine ambiguity of Leonard Cohen than the UN lectern. \u2018One Life At A Time\u2019 commemorates the death last year of nonviolent Palestinian activist Awdah Hathaleen. The best song here, it is elegant, ambient rock music, and acknowledges the seed of self-doubt in Bono that is often missed. \u2018You say you want to save the world\/ Well, how you gonna get that right?\u2019<\/p>\n
He never will, of course. Like \u2018Streets Of Minneapolis\u2019, Days Of Ash will change nobody\u2019s mind about the state of the world or the qualities of the man singing about it. So why bother? Because, presumably, to bother is the entire point.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Whither the protest song in 2026? In January 1970, John Lennon wrote and recorded \u2018Instant Karma!\u2019 in a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":505777,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[342,39995,20525,49,48,75,341,2742,14138],"class_list":["post-505776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-albums","tag-bono","tag-bruce-springsteen","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-pop","tag-u2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=505776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505776\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/505777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=505776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=505776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=505776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}