Sociopolitical issues in song

Bonzo goes to bitburg.

Sting - 'Russians' I'm joking of course OW OW GERROFF

Randy Newman's entire early '70s output all the way through "In Germany Before the War" (off "Little Criminals" if I remember rightly, whose title track addresses the pathos of class envy better than anybody EVAH), plenty of Kwesi-Johnson (though "The Eagle and the Bear" is pretty hamfisted), X-Ray Spex, some (early) BDP...but if your search is for a song addresses both sides of an issue without coming out in favor of either, no, I don't guess such a song exists. Nor would I be interested in hearing such a dull, dull song.

Maybe "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" would qualify.

I believe Dream Theater has a song which addresses both sides of the stem cell debate ("The Great Debate" I think it's called). But as the other JD says..

I wasn't specifically looking for a song that addresses both sides of an issue evenly, but now that I think about it, I'm kind of curious ("I Gotta Man," anyone?).

I started basically this same thread a while back as an excuse to talk about McCarthy and "Should the Bible be Banned."

(NB I am not implying that there's anything wrong with this thread, please continue.)

Several Momus songs, with completely different themes and styles of treatment, spring to mind : The Age of Information, Coming in a Girl's Mouth, Sex for the Disabled.

Also a lot of hip-hop is, what I'd call dialectical, acknowledging a debate internally to the song.

Digable Planets : Femme Fetale,

Disposable Heroes of Hip-hoprasy : Television, Has Everyday Life Become A Health Risk etc?

Consolidated : Virtual Reality :-) Ok, so this is a rant, but crammed with valid information, eg. against the Bushes. America No. One, No Answer for the Dancer. (The great thing about Consolidated was the way they chronicled their own downfall when the audience out-argued them.)

I Just downloaded Ms. Dynamite's "It Takes More" which is a great political tune.

Politics is largely about taking sides, so pretty much any political song will be viewed by those who disagree with it as "one-sided propaganda". I think there's a lot of really well-written songs with political overtones and themes, but that isn't what you asked.

Laurie Anderson - o'superman

Billy Bragg - Tender Comrade

The The - The first couple of tracks off Mind Bomb

Bob Dylan - The balad of the Hurricane and just about anything else he ever did.

Grand Master Flash and the Furious Five - the Message (amazing, mind blowing, sublime)

Yeah John D! "Rednecks" and I suppose "God's Song" too. Also I never really 'got' "Baltimore" until I heard that reggae version, then it totally clicked

THE THE!? Nuh-uh! Heh.

("If Jesus would return today he'd be gunned down cold by the CIA"! I thought people hated Americans because they're all bible bashers?)

Well, think the 'Grand Inquisitor' episode in The Brothers Karamazov with a new setting.

More and more obsessed with This Heat's "S.P.Q.R." lately, especially the way that it can work as an ongoing political critique. Lyrics:

We are all Romans, unconscious collective
We are all Romans, we live to regret it
We are all Romans, we know all about straight roads
Every straight road lead home, home to Rome
Two plus two equals four, four plus four equals eight
We organize via property and power
Slavehood and freedom, imperial purple, Pax Romana
Suckled by a she-wolf, we turn against our brother
Bella bella bella, bellorum, bellis, bellis
Veni vidi vici, I came, I saw, I conquered
We are all Romans

It's so coherent, both aesethetically and as a way of critiquing the imperialist bits of western culture! Plus situating them as built deep into the core and history of the west -- this notion that's we're eternally still Roman, "unconscious, collective!" Plus putting that same kind of historical recursion even on the Romans themselves, digging to their founding myth: "Sucked by a she-wolf, we turn against our brother!"

It's so so remarkably neat and tight, so perfectly constructed.

rnady newman's "rednecks," mentioned above, is a great example of a song that is simultaneously sympathetic to opposing points of view AND critical of opposing points of view. it starts out sounding like an easy put-down of redneck culture and turns into something much, much broader and smarter than that, all in the course of 3 minutes and 10 seconds.

Crass.
Propagandhi.

re: "S.P.Q.R."

I love that song. Musically too, the martial urgency and squareness of the thing offer the same message, the way "Two plus two equals four" is stretched and hammered out - it reminds me of the beginning of Hard Times: "Now what we want is, facts." Utilitarian. It's shocking when you first hear it, the realisation that yes, Western Europe is the continuation of the Roman Empire by other means.

I think New Model Army is quite capable of it in their more thoughtful moments. I rather like Solefald's stab at social and political satire, even if it's a bit over the top. I think Laibach says more than almost any straight political band. In general, politics are best done in rock and pop through the personal and the satirical.

I'll try to think of more.

The Coup fits too. Again with more personal and satirical material.

Killing Joke does a great job at addressing issues through the apocalypse. Dalek seems to have picked up some of that. But it's not exactly subtle is it?

Crass and early Napalm Death were both pretty self-critical, but both also indulged in sloganeering here and there.