"I Am the Beast I Worship" - Songs that capture this strange moment in American culture

We're going through an interesting moment in our culture now in the United States. I'm curious to see what songs you all think capture this moment best. Say, in the 80s, it was songs about how much Reagan sucked, nuclear bombs, coke-fueled anthems of apex imperialism, whatever else the fuck. Or in the 90s with grunge to the hyper-optimistic pop during the tech boom.

I know things are a little different now with music and culture, but I'm curious, so I'm throwing it out here.

The question I want to answer here is, "what was life like back then?" to some imagined future person.

Here's my initial entry: Death Grips - Beware. To me this is the defining song of America right now. "I Am the Beast I Worship". Released in 2011, we now have Trump as president, the beast who worships himself, which is some seriously finger on the pulse shit. It's a song that's like a snapshot into our values and general "vibe" of things right now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqcTVVUFnKQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkZ5e94QnWk

Solange's A Seat at the Table captures this age pretty darn well imo

Kendrick Lamar - "Alright"

Nigga, when our pride was low
Lookin' at the world like, "Where do we go?"
Nigga, and we hate po-po
Wanna kill us dead in the street fo sho'

Body Count - No Lives Matter

Probably some vaporwave-esque, "repurposed" music. Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it, and whathaveyou.

I was thinking about that. We've been in the middle of 80s retro for 15+ years now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xjl0-sTg3tE

20+ years

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddSE9xbafPE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwS9_vqdHcQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awY1MRlMKMc

https://youtu.be/btePuqshHnY

I've listened to Ornette Coleman's Skies of America in its entirety every couple of weeks since the start of the year. It sounds how I've felt.

This thread should only have recent stuff in it, as per its purpose. I've always been fascinated by artworks in the past that captured daily life as it was lived, and that's what I'd like to see. Like minor, forgotten paintings of Renaissance Italy that captured daily life and fashion were always more interesting to me than works like the Mona Lisa.

That Satan stuff is what I'm talking about. I've noticed an upswing in Satanism/Occultism the past few years. It's funny, LaVeyan Satanism is basically just Ayn Rand's Objectivism with an occult gloss and a few tweaks, and that's the philosophy we're living under right now.

One of our current business/cultural leaders is publicly open about injecting himself with the blood of children to prolong his life. That's not even LaVeyan Satanism, that's like, Satanic Panic shit. And we're all OK with it!

We're in one fucking weird cultural moment here. It must be investigated and preserved.

Solange's A Seat at the Table captures this age pretty darn well imo

^^

Solange's A Seat at the Table is wonderful. I can't believe I almost missed it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mY0qOCUy27Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pL7x8Z-gSMg

this definitely feels like a product of our times. a diverse band with feminist themes and it fuckin slaps.

I nominate the latest Algiers album

also Jeff Rosenstock's Worry. came out right before the election and resonated with a lot of folks for pretty obvious reasons

One of our current business/cultural leaders is publicly open about injecting himself with the blood of children to prolong his life

lol ok david ike

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/08/peter-thiel-wants-to-inject-himself-with-young-peoples-blood

This is the bottom of the slippery slope, but reptilians weren't behind the Holocaust, or Native American genocide, or slavery, or developing the philosophy and practice of eugenics. That was people. And people went along with it and considered it normal, and defended it. Fought wars to defend and advance these causes.

Man, people really are afraid of seeing the dark side to reality, aren't they. We just happen to be in one of those dark moments in the US. I think it's dumb as shit to ignore it. There's nothing I hate more than cowards who can't face it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uyBjC4jblw

This is pretty self-service, so apologies in advance. But this one was pretty much inspired by BOC's "Astronomy" and current events.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8lYfQXd8sY

Singing sad trucker songs
On the convoy of the ruin
Wrecks litter the roads
All across the union
Riding the road to hell
Straight out of San Antone
The clock has struck doom
With no time to atone

Screaming fire horses
Ride along the burning frontier
The hangman himself
Calls the dead to arise
They run the road to Abilene
With madness in their mind
So raise your pistols to the west
An eighteen wheeled beast

The hammer or the nail
Are you the hammer or the nail?

Run The Jewels - "Close Your Eyes" - definitely captures the line between activism as branding (taking on Kanye in the opening lines) and punching Richard Spencer.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PkGwI7nGehA

I usually make these connections intuitively--both these songs resonated with me after Trump's election last year, although I'm not sure I could explain why.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdtUwzK1dWE
www.youtube.com/watch?v=oo4Sqt2Bmag

Twin Peaks denizen Little Jimmy Scott, back in 1969, interpreting Pat Boone's lyrics about the foundation of Israel, off-balance big showbiz arrangement, now like the interior monologue of a very twisted mind

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4ADbt5P-4M

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzZkhh4M4sQ

Second the nomination of Algiers, ditto at least some (incl. "Nothing Stays Permanent","Battlecries", "Numb") on new Dälek, going by my just-now first listen at First Listen:
http://www.npr.org/2017/08/24/545530932/first-listen-d-lek-endangered-philsophies

Also first listen to recent Burnt Sugar, which sounds seasick amidst blood curtains

I've thought a lot lately about (Albany, NY) band Drug Church's 2013 album "Paul Walker" as kind of a critical window into a certain strain of Trump-voting America: all toxic/wounded masculinity, rust-belt decline, the opioid crisis. From a safely blue bubble out on the West Coast it sounds like something beamed in from an entirely separate America, it feels almost anthropological.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BE7i9iJnJ8A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvsI9DPoOfE

Venom - Welcome to Hell
Venom - Warhead
Nirvana - I Hate Myself and Want to Die

Cass McCombs - Bum Bum Bum:

"The white dog of the farm still breeds
She's off her leash
To tear flesh and teach
Bum bum bum

You think you've heard it all before
Well, here's once more
We're all at war
Bum bum bum

Blood in the streets, our eternal river
I know the killer
He counts my silver
Bum bum bum

They ambushed them behind the reeds
These are our seeds
White dog still breeds
Bum bum bum

They say, “Buy when there's blood in the streets
Even if the blood is your own”
So they employed men far away
To turn against their home
Centuries in the distant mist
But it's not a dream

No, it ain't no dream, it's all too real
How long until
This river of blood congeals?
Bum bum bum

And eulogies poured from the stage
But nothing changed
The dog was caged
Bum bum bum

And white bread artists won't even look at you
When they know it's true
What you gonna do?
Bum bum bum

Thought I heard some woman screaming
And I sat up in my bed
And I went over to the window
And I saw him in the cold street, lying dead
Oh, please tell me, you academics
How do you wake up from a non-dream?

No, it ain't no dream, it’s all too real
How long until
This river of blood congeals?
Bum bum bum

Sent a letter to my congressman
The Ku Klux Klan
From my pierced hands
Bum bum bum

They sent me back an Apple phone
A fine-hair comb
And a bell tolled
Bum bum bum

The phone rang once and the line went dead
All blood runs red
White pups still bred
Bum bum bum"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dyx4v1QFzhQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfmAeijj5cM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmvmyCn4gqA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JthhlT-7UZ8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqM3MWzkSGo

when i'm really depressed music means nothing to me. i'm not really depressed and i listen to a lot of music, but there's no music, no sound, that can capture the rage and despair i feel over this world, its likely future, over being cursed to be a human and live through this shit.

We've lived in times like this, and worse before, and people had to die to change them. Whether any of us are willing to fight like that, I have no idea, I'm no better watching Youtube videos and smoking cigarettes in my minimal free time. It's the strange situation of being born into the tail end of prosperity, and a 180 happened and things went to absolute shit in the snap of a finger.

I think we're entering an unprecedented new age of civilization here, as far as the US goes. From Republic to Oligarchy, and it'll probably last at least a century or two... that's the most disheartening thing of all, that this god awful stuff may last beyond our own generation, and maybe a few of them. I hope I'm wrong.

Opposition to this new order is met with highly advanced military technology, communications and media technology, and vast amounts of wealth, and it's a combination unseen at any point in world history. We're living in some interesting times, at least!

one sentence just keeps rolling around in my head whenever i happen to encounter "news": "nothing good will come of this".

It sucks. No news outlet is really on "our" side ... not the New York Times, or Washington Post, or MSNBC, or any of them. And alternate news is infected with all sorts of other poisonous bullshit of its own. Things are fucking weird right now.

ok, sorry for the derail folks. am eating a lot of stuff right now.

today's answer: probably midday veil.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMgFI84X5PA