Artists who "get political" and are not preaching to the converted

In a Staten Island/Jersey sort of old fashioned sense; the type that think of most liberals as rich and over educated, I definitely think so. Judging from the type of people I've met who scream "Play some BRUUUCCCEEE" to guitar players at restaurants.

Only in a narrow sense, Dom. Surely a classic conservative, distrustful of any sort of large-scale interference in private affairs, fits that definition.

-- hstencil (hstenc!...), April 25th, 2005.

No, but a fair number of them might be the type that think Amadou Diallo "must have done something wrong."

Steve Earle.

-- Yngwie AlmsteenMay (stgert...), April 25th, 2005.

Uh, yeah, that's the point of the thread. NOT preaching to the converted.

-- Hurting

maybe, i dunno. the one time i saw him play i didn't think there was an avid amount of people in the 65k+ united center booing his political songs.

also, "born to run" was not used as reagan's theme song as bruce wouldn't allow it.

It was "Born in the USA," but only insofar as they could get away with using it without Bruce's permission. After all, if I throw a party, I can play any old song I want to for my guests, as long it is music that has been officially released into the public sphere. Bruce, needless to say, was none too happy with this.

(CNN) -- In the heart of his 1984 re-election campaign, Ronald Reagan made a speech in Hammonton, New Jersey, and took the opportunity to invoke the name of one of the Garden State's favorite sons.

"America's future rests in a thousand dreams inside our hearts," the president said. "It rests in the message of hope in the songs of a man so many young Americans admire: New Jersey's own Bruce Springsteen."

Reagan -- or his speechwriter -- was likely thinking of one song in particular: "Born in the U.S.A.," the title cut from Springsteen's No. 1 album of the time. The song, with Max Weinberg's thunderous drums, Roy Bittan's glittery keyboards and an anthemic chorus, was impossible to avoid that year: "Born in the U.S.A., I was born in the U.S.A. ..."

But look deeper, and there was another dimension to "Born in the U.S.A." The song was the ferocious cry of an unemployed Vietnam veteran.

"Down in the shadow of the penitentiary/Out by the gas fires of the refinery/I'm 10 years burning down the road/Nowhere to run ain't got nowhere to go," Springsteen sang in a working-class howl.

The singer wasn't amused by Reagan's appropriation of his work.

"I think people have a need to feel good about the country they live in," he later told Rolling Stone. "But what's happening, I think, is that that need -- which is a good thing -- is getting manipulated and exploited. You see in the Reagan election ads on TV, you know, 'It's morning in America,' and you say, 'Well, it's not morning in Pittsburgh.' "

The singer, who spent much of 1984 on a huge concert tour, dedicated "Born in the U.S.A." to a union local at one stop.

BOSS OTM

though he never openly stumped for candidates until recently, the boss has been overtly leftist almost from the start. no nukes, anti-war, anti-corporation, pro-union, blah blah blah. but he's always had a mixed audience because his best songs have never been about his politics. he's a storyteller, and you don't have to agree with his politics to like his stories and identify with his characters.

xpost -- Springsteen's politics are kind of a mix of leftist and straight blue-collar democrat. I think it's a sign of the shift in politics here that "pro-union" gets lumped in with a bunch of other lefty stuff, when it used to seem much more mainstream and centrist.

But I think you're right about the storytelling. At bottom, people identify with the guy Bruce Sprinsteen comes accross as, and he identifies with them through his songs.

He's a complicated one, that Neil, from supporting Reagan at the beginning of the 80s (was that just a joke?) to "Rocking in the Free World" at the end of the 80s, to Are You Passionate? (I swear "Let's Role" is sarcastic), to a full blown 'fuck Bush' musical revue for his last album.

Dixie Chicks count; not so sure about Steve Earle (it's been a decade at least since he had any "country" fan base).

In places where politics matter more, it may be easier to find examples. Rachid Taha is pretty direct in his opposition to Islamism and rejection of democracy in the Arab world, and I would guess that a good portion of Khaled's audience was uncomfortable with the feminist message of "Aicha". On the other side of the divide, Chava Alberstein is waaay to the left of all but an infinitesimal fragment of the Israeli political spectrum.

Absolutely right. I think where some people on this thread might be getting things wrong also is assuming 1) that Republicans are a monolith, and that 2) People are incapable of overlooking anything that clashes with their politics even if it's in the context of many other things they identify with.

Pradaismus OTM. There is so much homophobia and sexism in Rastafarian doctrine that would appall the hippie fanbase.

Except that, now that I think about it, Bob's audience nowadays is probably heavily fratty. Or like in that scene in "Kicking and Screaming" where the guy grabs the acoustic at the party and starts playing "Buffalo Soldier" and all the girls start to swoon.