Political Songs That Are Rubbish

The chorus of that track goes:-
"Do you like tennis?
Do you like tennis?
Do you like tennis?
Yes I do"

Also on the album is another rubbish "political" song about the miners strike called, I kid ye not, "Stick It!"

Wheel of Fortune, Sally Ride, heavy metal, suicide
Foreign debts, homeless vets, AIDS, Crack, Bernie Goetz
Hypodermics on the shores, China's under martial law
Rock and Roller Cola Wars, I can't take it anymore

Oh there he is.

Er...

The problem is that MJ thought making the change involved plastic surgery. He took his song too literally.

Worst of all for me, though, is Cast doing a gig live on XFM, and John Power substituting the chorus of one song for this horrid bleat of "Free Tibeeeeeeet". I somehow doubt we will ever know if the Dalai Lama appreciated the gesture.

as if she drew her muse from the bougoise militant rantings of amiri baraka.

Yeah the President sucks/he's a war pig fuck/his shit is outta luck!

Makes the Dead Kennedys (who I like, to an extent) sound like Woody Guthrie.

I've been walking through your streets
Where all your money's earning
For all your buildings crying
And clueless neckties working
Revolving fake lawn houses
Housing all your fears
Desensitized by T.V.

Overbearing advertising
God of consumers
And all your crooked pictures, looking good
Mirrorism, filtering information through the public eye
Designed for profit sharing
Your neighbor, what a guy

Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom,
Every time you drop the bomb
You kill the god your child has born
Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom

Modern globalization
Coupled with condemnations
Unnecessary death
Matador corporations
Puppeting your frustrations with a blinded flag
Manufacturing consent is the name of the game
The bottom line is money, nobody gives a fuck

4000 hungry children
Leave us per hour from starvation
While billions are spent on bombs
Creating death showers

Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom
Every time you drop the bomb
You kill the god your child has born

Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom

Why must we kill our own kind?

Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom
Every time you drop the bomb
You kill the god your child has born

Boom, Boom, Boom,
Every time you drop a bomb
You kill the god your child has born

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom
Every time you drop the bomb

Oh, and another one I really hate is "Red, White, and Blue" by Lynyrd Skynyrd. Fucking hicks.

Completly agree

"Why aren't there any good protest songs nowadays?"
I think the fact the everybody else has fucked the gengre anyways, makes any good decent artist think twice before attempting it.

Admirable sentiment for a No.1 single, but still a bunch of yoghurt-weaving-dire-6th-form-poetry mofo's.

Also, "Capitalism Stole My Virginity"? How about "Communism Stole My Freedom", or "Socialism Stole My Tax Dollars"?

maybe not just them but they helped. sorry off topic. maybe midnight oil politics = good for redneck 13 year olds. couldn't hurt them at least.

Dammit, i'm trying to give this place up but, here we go again. People constantly bring this up as an example of Wyatt's "Stalinism" but ignore the context of the song. "Stalin Wasn't Stallin'" is a World War II song, it was written when the US and UK AND Russia were allies engaged in fighting Nazism. This explains why the Golden Gate Quartet, who I assume were not Marxist-Leninists, could write a song praising Stalin's Russia just as it explains why my mother remembers cheering Uncle Joe Stalin (along with all her schoolfriends) whenever his cuddly choochy face appeared on newsreels at the time. Robert Wyatt is not singing the song because it praises Stalin but because, at the height of the Reagan/ Thatcher/ Cold War/ Evil Empire phase, it is slightly subversive to remind us all of a time when we were all allies and that the West owes rather a large debt to the "Evil Empire".., also it has a good tune and the words are great. Are these words apologist shit? I think they're pretty groovy myself:

STALIN WASN'T STALLIN'
Stalin wasn't stallin'
When he to1d the beast of Berlin
That they'd never rest contented
Til they had driven him from the land
So he called the Yanks and English
And proceeded to extinguish
The Fuhrer and his vermin
This is how it all began

Now the Devil he was reading
In the good book one day
How the lord created Adam
To walk the righteous way
And it made the Devil jealous
He turned green up to his horns
And he swore by things unholy
That he'd make one of his own

So he packed two suitcases
Full of grief and misery
And he caught the midnight special
Going down to Germany
Then he mixed his lies and hatred
With fire and brimstone
Then the devil sat upon it
That's how Adolf was born

Now Adolf got the notion
That he was the master race
And he swore he'd bring new order
And put mankind in its place!
So he set his scheme in motion
And he was winning everywhere
Until he up and got the notion
For to kick that Russian bear

Yes he kicked that noble Russian
But it wasn't very long
Before Adolf got suspicious
The he had done something wrong
Cause that bear grabbed the Fuhrer
And gave him an awful fright
Seventeen months he scrapped the Fuhrer
Tooth and claw, day and night

Then that bear smacked the Fuhrer
With a mighty armored paw
And Adolf broke all records
Running backward towards Cracow
The Goebbels sent a message
To the people everywhere
That if they couldn't hit the Fuhrer
Go down hit that Russian bear

-- Geir Hongro (geirhon...), November 5th, 2003.

I just noticed this. Talking of apologists, maybe the "Geir Is Not a Racist, Honest" apologists might want to ponder whether Geir's knowledge of the works of Skrewdriver (not a musical genre one would associate with Geir) is mere coincidence...

"Famine"? That's a dead-set classic. "Okay, I want to talk about Oireland!" Genius! There needs to be more rap like it!

Well that's nice of you Pash but I'm pretty fed up being misunderstood in here. I think being branded as a sort of Geir-in-reverse ('scuse the astonishingly apposite but entirely unintentional pun) is really the last straw, ha ha. No big deal.

You should listen to The Coup. There's some good, fun commie rap for you.

WAITAMINUTE - how do you know Geir is really quoting from Skrewdriver unless YOU TOO ARE A NAZI!

do not try to reply, ILX has a no-free-speech-for-fascists policy.

The "What's Goin' On" cover by Puff Daddy and Bono and like a hundred other people.

*sigh*
how predictable...

"The father, the son, and the holy shit!"