Protest Music of the Bush Era

it was just over 90 minutes beyond President Bush's deadline for Saddam Hussein to leave Iraq that US warships and planes launched the opening salvo of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The year is 2003. America prepares for war president george w bush has declared that iraq is building weapons of mass destruction with which to attack america and that the only possible response is a preemptive invasion the administration's case is transparently flimsy and dishonest both on the evidence and the ethical justification and though the country is still reeling in shock from 9/11 the anti-war movement manages to organize massive protests roughly 32 million people participate worldwide over the course of four months to no avail America invades against all good judgment or reason a tragic boondoggle that would eventually prove everyone's worst fears completely true and spark a new dark era of global politics there is despair among the anti-war left but they did have one silver lining not much of a silver lining in light of historic crime unfolding but a silver lining nonetheless a silver lining we heard many many people clinging to in those awful days at least we're going to get a lot of great music hello yeah hi I was just listening to the video did you literally just steal the entire intro from my Madonna train records video like verbatim? no well yes but you totally ripped off the format for the introduction to my rent video oh yeah I guess I kind of did ok um does that make this a collaboration I I thought people didn't do video collabs anymore no see it turns out that like most youtubers never stopped doing that we just did because you know you never know who's gonna have a Twitter meltdown and you don't want to have to be doing like apologies by proxy oh yeah yeah that is why we stopped and no other reason. No other reason. so anyway well it's been a minute hasn't it so I have this book coming out next month pre-order link in the description and one of the more common questions I get besides what the hell is wrong with you is why did you decide to set it in the 2000s, instead of you know, the nebulous present now you know whatever this is and to that I say you know besides the fact that nothing makes sense in our current hell world it makes sense in context it was a very different time so the idea for this episode came about while I was actually writing it and I was making all these playlists for you know mood there's also a link to my main playlist in the description it's full of mid-2000s cheese if that's what you need to get you through this time and listening to that sort of thing made me think a lot about you know the resistance music of that era or lack thereof so while I had been working on this for a while I was going to put it out later you know to be more like a tie-in release thing but then the topic of protests had to go and get all topical so this got bumped up so obviously the topic of music and music history isn't exactly my wheelhouse so I wrote this with some consulting from our good friend Todd in the shadows thank you for the plug and if you like books check out the new novel Axiom's End by my close personal friend Lindsey Ellis gee thanks so before we get into the era at hand first let's take a quick look at the history of protest music protest music can be found in pretty much every culture throughout the world but you're much more likely to find it in cultures that are you know like oppressed and colonized Ireland for instance has a very long proud history of protest songs from Irish language songs like Oró, Sé Do Bheatha 'Bhaile to more recent ones like Kevin berry For I fought for Ireland's freedom on that cold September morn and it ranges all over the world to the anti-apartheid music movement spearheaded by black South African musicians like Hugh Masekela all the way to broader genres of music like British punk rock ala The Clash all the way to Yankee goddamn doodle Dandy yes an early American protest music was like basically taking British diss tracks and being like yeah our hats are stupid we're proud of that now protest songs have been written and attached to movements of all sorts from anti racism to feminism to gay rights to literally nothing you know a revolution praying for it every day stop singing this at karaoke but the common thread between most protest songs is that they for obvious reasons tend to come about in times of mass disenfranchisement or injustice so the assumption that hey shit might be bad and we're all in agreement about that therefore it's time for some great art that captures the zeitgeist of the now is not unfounded but what is the basis of this assumption in America specifically? Out there the enemy is creeping in he will try to overrun the American positions when people think of American protest music in pop songs they're probably thinking of the music of the late 1960s and early 1970s specifically music surrounding the Vietnam War but what was it about this war that was different from that which came before and after? Well, the roots of the Vietnam War stretch back into the 19th century and it was one of those conflicts that even now people have a hard time explaining what it was really about other than like you know the vague proxy war something-something communism and that's not you know completely wrong but like most war related topics taking a complex issue and simplifying it is not easy so to keep it simple we have this really long nebulous war nobody really knows what we're fighting for it results in the deaths of millions of Vietnamese people by some counts and 58,000 US troops I think all the decent people in this country have decided this war is I'm sorry to you in an immoral and it's time to bring it to a halt We spend three hundred and twenty-two thousand dollars for each enemy we kill in Vietnam As you can imagine this sits very poorly with people all over the world including people inside the United States who genuinely do not understand why this is a conflict that should involve the US military at all and that brings us to there was a wide array of protest music that came out of this war bands like Creedence Clearwater Revival artists like Donovan John Lennon and Cat Stevens are all letting it out some of this music is critical and angry of the war effort in the military but on the whole the esthetic trends more towards pleading for peace Creedence Clearwater Revival's fortunate son is of course emblematic of the audio aesthetic when we think of music of the Vietnam War even the succinctly titled by Edwin Starr is pretty broad and less about America as a military machine but again all of this reflects a general sense that we don't know why we're fighting in Vietnam and this is a problem to this day like this is completely anecdotal but both of the writers of this episode whenever it got to Vietnam time in our history classes we spent like maybe one day on it and that was it moving on let's get to Watergate so with Vietnam not only did you have a wildly unpopular draft you had a war where most American randos didn't really see that the cost was worth it there wasn't really a cause and effect for why we should be there in the first place contrast this with 2001, where... This is as close as we can get to the base of the World Trade Center you can see the firemen assembled here the police officers FBI agents and you can see the two towers a huge explosion now rating 9/11 was one of the most collectively traumatic events in US history and unlike combat in Vietnam it was witnessed in real time by virtually everyone in the country so rational or no and it was not rational there was a specific thing that was being responded to before the war in Iraq which was why it was so easy for Bush to get so much of the public at large on board in the first place American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger so you know what that means we saw it in the 60s and 70s and we're about to see it again it's not just our direct action in our protest that's going to change the world it's our music it's our art Let's go. What do we got? hmm probably should've seen that coming for the last few months of 2001 and early 2002 there was this strange sort of sincerity that was I don't know kind of like the same vibe that was kate mckinnon cosplaying as hillary clinton singing Hallelujah on the first SNL after the 2016 election there were songs like Paul McCartney's freedom neil young's let's roll and hey bruce springsteen made an entire album that was basically him processing 911 but processing the thing through art did not come without resistance to the you know resistance the above example is called courtesy of the red white and blue parentheses be angry Americans end parentheses end quote and was released in the spring of 2002 and was much more emblematic of music of the era than in the months following 9/11 we saw a lot of jingoism bleed into the arts I a lot of kiss my American ass we're number one sentiment hit the airwaves most pervasively in top 50 country music there were songs like Steve Curtis Chapman's remember the day Darryl Worley's Have you forgotten and of course Toby Keith's courtesy of the red white and blue parentheses the angry American close parentheses and that was kind of new with Vietnam there wasn't really like a pro war movement in America it was more like anti anti-war like these hippies and Jane Fonda need to shut up and get off my lawn and even during World War two which had a much more concerted and organized government propaganda campaign much of the music of the era was about like you know teehee soldiers are cute the music of that war wasn't really marked by a thirst for revenge so with this jingoism comes a sort of reluctance to make any kind of mainstream art about the thing that is critical of the United States government in any capacity for example Michael Moore criticizing Bush at the 2003 Oscars got him booed We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons whether it's the fictition of duct tape or the fictitious of orange alerts opposing the war in Iraq got him booed at the Oscars by these people so this was around the same time the Congress cafeteria stopped selling french fries and started calling them freedom fries because France did not want to join the invasion you know not like our buddies the British over here they were all about it our friends the British with us at every stupid turn the special relationship but these transgressions were all minor cultural blips compared to so right before the Iraq invasion Texas country trio the Dixie Chicks who were at the height of their popularity we're kicking off their 2003 world tour in London and opened their concert with this and it all went to hell from there thousands of phone calls flooded country music radio stations from Denver to Nashville calls demanding that the Dixie Chicks be removed from the station's playlists. Their single at the time a cover of Fleetwood Mac's landslide dropped off the charts almost immediately the American Red Cross refused a promotional partnership with them. The Red Cross wouldn't take a million dollars from us. Fans burned CDs and of course death threats lots and lots of death threats says Natalie Maines will be shot dead Sunday July 6 lead singer Natalie Maines tried to apologize but the damage was done marking the Dixie Chicks as a cautionary tale for people who tried to oppose the president and they didn't even sing about anything and although it turned the Dixie Chicks into the literal face of the resistance and they have released some new music fairly recently their careers never really recovered to the pre Bush Bad glory days but the short-term result at least as far as the next several years went was that musicians were extremely bearish about criticizing the status quo which brings us to the audio aesthetic of the early 2000s compare this to the late 1960s where the sound is you know kind of gritty and raw and honest but also kind of tongue-in-cheek and clever if I had to like succinctly describe the mood of pop music of that era I'd say it was dumb it was big and dumb and loud big and dumb and loud. You didn't have these moody thoughtful pop stars like you have now and the ones you did have we're like I don't know Evanescence in the months and years that followed the Dixie Chicks-ening, pop stars kind of responded to the thing by not really saying anything Madonna released her lead single from her album American Life comma American Life in which she sings about how hollow the American dream is because she's not satisfied with her life despite having like agents and nannies and soy lattes all set to this backdrop or rather this was originally the music video it got scrapped because Madonna chickened out after the invasion went ahead cynic A cynic might say there's got to be some money involved here hey but wait they took the Dixie Chicks CDs and they smashed them in the streets and rec and radio stations now stop playing them you got a brand-new important album coming out what if people don't buy it that's not the reason I give you my honest to god promise but that is not the reason so what was released was just her in front of a bad green screen and you know flags similarly we have Jewel's album track from her album 0304 simply titled America literally we live in his society so arguably the best we got out of 2003 was the black-eyed peas you know it was more in the vein of protest songs that sort of vaguely plead for peace so one might say that this was the last gasp of the thoughtful Peas. you know before the My Humps era but was that it was everyone else too scared to try? No. Attempts were made. in 2004 there was an entire double album called Rock against bush of course the albums consist mostly of artists that were either no longer relevant or you had never heard of Plus that cover art is fantastic it's like oh no not the rock n' roll! And while they did have some songs written for the album many were repurposed from earlier albums like this offspring song from 1992 perhaps one of the more fondly remembered efforts comes from System of a Down with their song BYOB or bring your own bombs This is funny here in hindsight considering what the drummer currently feels compelled to share for something even more on the nose a perfect circle released a single called counting bodies like sheep to the rhythm of the war drums in 2004 Subtle. yeah I don't get it I don't get I don't get what you're trying to tell me it's too vague Neil Young released an album called living with war and wrote a song straight up called let's impeach the president there's a similar call in the Beastie Boys 2004 song it takes time to build from Pearl Jam we got Bushleaguer the song is also terrible even Eminem got in on it and for all of Eminem's early controversies I feel like everyone has forgotten the fact that Eminem was investigated by the Secret Service for some of his lyrics Yeah, totally out of character for Eminem to fantasise doing murder in his raps a single with a video mosh was released in 2004 before the election as a plea to vote Bush out of office and we see stuff like this from Eminem now But at the time, the music video was incredibly serious in somber for him for comparison this was released right after just lose it Eminem's goofiest and worst song ever yeah might be going with ever so yeah you might notice that this is mostly white dudes and alt-rock and white dudes doing alt rock there was indy darling Nellie McKay who I think was meant to be a big pop star sort of anti Norah Jones but then the label kind of pulled funding for the marketing of her album probably because of lines like this but these were not mainstream the aforementioned were not exactly top 40 singles with one notable exception yep it's the moment you've all been waiting for yes the definitive anti-war album of the Iraq war era comes from aging garage Punk guyliner burnouts Green Day at least that's how I felt at the time I say aging but you know fuck's sake Billy Joe Armstrong was 32 so for a quick Green Day rundown this was their breakout hit their brand was like extremely young and not very smart return of the bratty snot-nosed Punk they were a lot less miserable than grunge more just bored and frustrated lazy and aimless trapped in the dirt town with nothing to do the perfect encapsulation of mid-90s ennui and then came the huge hit the sellout of all sellouts. Punks writing a prom theme and it's funny to think that this was like actually a thing that people cared about in the 90s but after that they had kind of one middling album and then they fell off the radar for several years and I'm including all of this because Green Day is just about the last band you would ever expect to be like political the voice of the resistance especially in an atmosphere where the most successful political music is there's a lot to unpack here the tone the aesthetic and exploration of an entire generation and country feeling duped but you know a happy one like the album is it's a grenade but you know a heart-shaped one a lot of the tie-in art Marketing music video used a lot of wartime imagery but you know like a punk Hot Topic version the lead single of course was American Idiot and when you compare it to stuff like the System of a Down or perfect circle's song this one kind of hits the combination of upbeat and angry that was just where we were in 2004 a time when the top 40 was aggressively apolitical the song succeeds in the same way that Creedence did by being kind of tongue-in-cheek so you could make the argument that Green Day is our generation's Creedence American Idiot is our fortunate son less remembered but more deliberate is the single holiday and the chorus's refrain was according to Armstrong intended to reflect the average Americans apathy on the issues of the day and then there's the really big hit up that album perhaps the obvious parallel the time of your life wake me up when September ends the more sincere counterpoint to American Idiot and one of their biggest hits of all time it's basically a song about not wanting to live through the time you're in Wow good thing we don't have that ennui anymore if holiday is anger at the apathy September kind of leans into it although the music video seems less anti-war than the previous ones as it has a lot more sympathy for the soldier aesthetically it's not that far from Toby Keith's American soldier American Idiot and Green Day in general had a musical which did have a soldier goes to war element I didn't see it it wasn't a complete failure but it didn't really stick around which might be indicative of it not belonging in the time it was released in the 2010s like imagine a credence musical in the 1980s I never thought I'd end up doing Broadway me neither Billy Joe so I guess my hot take is maybe Green Day is good actually even relatively popular artists like Eminem and System of a Down didn't really figure out how to make any art that stayed in the popular lexicon the way Green Day did and part of it like with the black-eyed peas was that Green Day was palatable to the mainstream because they don't mention Bush or Iraq by name but this isn't a bad thing they have this in common with a lot of protest music from Irish music that made allusions to the British All the way to the music of the Vietnam War just the complete on-the-nose-ness like of calling people sheep while Bush serfs through a river of blood just feels preachy this was just not an era for political activism through art and music leaving Green Day the only act that managed to thread the needle and get a big hit out of it before the 2004 election speaking of which thank you all for coming voters turned out and record numbers and delivered a historical Bush gets reelected and I guess the trend of anti-bush anti-war punk rock seemed just kind of like a waste of time like this is it this is where we live now you see less protest song so much as generally being resigned to this being the way things are not a lot of fighting the establishment in the music Sheryl Crow gave us god bless this mess Dar Williams gives us a less optimistic interpretation of the new America with Empire Pink has a much more empathetic plea with dear mr. president There's got to be a human man in there somewhere. LL Cool J had a similar song called Mr. President which similarly made an empathetic plea enquiring just what is going on in your head? and Tori Amos had a short album track called yo George but on the whole especially after the election of 2004, most mainstream art couldn't seem to bring itself to wholly or even partially condemn the establishment that the majority of people by now pretty much agreed was bad To me the sound and the attitude of that era is best embodied with music like John Mayer's waiting on the world to change a bad song that is bad and I hate it so here in 2006 one of the biggest hits of the year is effectively about riding out the bullshit somehow john mayer invented the opposite of a revolutionary song and if it reminds me of anything it reminds me of a song from Avenue Q called for now so songs like waiting on the world to change and for now we're gonna back up this idea that you know we tried we fought it didn't work so right now we just have to wait it out we will survive this so where does that put us today how do we equivocate that era with this one? well the struggle is a lot more nebulous the issue isn't this war is unjust the issue is more everything is unjust much more common is the identity based protest song like Lady Gaga's Born This Way or Taylor Swift's you need to calm down so it's not that protest music has gone away but the thing that is being protested has become extremely broad protesting a war is a problem with a clearer solution but today's big issues are harder to solve than send the troops home or vote this guy out of office but from Taylor Swift all the way to celebrities singing Imagine, We can say this: at least there's no trend of songs proudly proclaiming their disengagement or reassuring themselves that it'll be fine we'll live through this because I think that most people finally get that no not everyone will live through this actually and there is no guarantee that this is for now so to bring this thing full circle in December of 2016 former Dresden Dolls front woman and musician Amanda Palmer wrote the following being an optimist there is a part of me especially having studied by Weimar Germany extensively I'm like this is our moment Donald Trump is going to make punk rock great again we're all gonna crawl down staircases into basements and speakeasies and make amazing satirically political art similarly author Joyce Carol Oates wrote artists thrive on turbulence and estrangement from establishment / authority so Trump presidency would not be a total disaster for some For some? well that's a caveat so here's the thing that happens in times of great cultural stress there's this sort of impulse to try to give meaning to the badness and the suffering like if you put one suffering unit in you get one art unit out and I understand that impulse you need to give meaning to you know the badness but I think it's kind of misguided to give meaning to suffering by saying hey at least we'll get great art out of it Amanda Palmer's comment about Weimar Germany rings particularly tone-deaf in this context like yeah hey the Holocaust sucked but we got the producers didn't we and this tends to put stress on people that's also kind of unnecessary like I'm at home I haven't gone outside in months there's a pandemic and why have I not written the Great American Novel why have I not found a way to turn my suffering into art which is like perfectly encapsulated in this onion headline man not sure why he thought most psychologically taxing situation of his life would be the thing to make him productive but moreover art and music you know it's great and all but it's not a substitute for direct action And there's no better evidence for that than these last couple weeks. As he slides into position and goes straight into another really up song and I hope that we're kind of turning a corner on this mindset because while yes a lot of incredible meaningful art has come out of suffering we should not think of suffering as a prerequisite for interesting and meaningful art and we certainly shouldn't try to put a silver lining to people suffering because consumers might get a good art out of it again the pre-order link for my book is in the description it has nothing to do with this topic except for being set in the 2000s well I guess it doesn't have like some protesting in it and george w bush is an extremely minor character to be clear this is the book about aliens yes so again pre-order link in the description and if you want a signed copy by which I mean like I sign this and then they stick it in like a page in the book the instructions for that are also in the description you have to do a whole thing that involves screenshots thank you for watching and the video I was originally going to put up right now will be out soon soon

Channel: undefined

Views: 1,089,683

Rating: 4.9250507 out of 5

Keywords: lindsay ellis videos, lindsay ellis video essay, lindsay ellis review, lindsay ellis protest music, lindsay ellis bush era, lindsay ellis todd in the shadows, lindsay ellis music videos

Id: ehbgAGlrVKE

Length: 37min 47sec (2267 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 12 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Itsthatgy]

I'm not usually a country music person, but the Dixie Chicks kick ass.

I also loved the clip of Michael Moore getting booed. I have my issues with some of his documentaries, but he's consistently been right about the big issues.

[u/SettraDontSurf]

I'm glad she made this video, I think it's really important for people in younger generations (and frankly older ones who seems to have forgot) caught up in the current insanity to see just how absolutely batshit the Bush years actually were.

[u/Chrristoaivalis]

Would have been nice for a nod to the Labour protest songs of the pre-Vietnam era

[u/Genoscythe_]

Can someone explain the backstory for Lindsay and Todd? I only know that they are both from Channel Awesome.

[u/RedditsBillionthUser]

New Lindsay Ellis. Very exciting

[u/acoustic_wave]

When I think of protest music of the bush era, I'm more inclined to recall rise against and flobots, although I suppose neither were popular enough for her to mention them? idk I guess I'm trying to say that there is some really great protest music if you look past the top 40 and expand to any group that was active during that 8 year span rather than just focusing on pop that hinted at rebellion in the years closest to the war declaration.

[u/LizardOrgMember5]

This video is a spiritual follow-up to her Rent critique - or an examination on popular bourgoesis media with pseudo-rebellious message. And also an extension of Anthony Fantano's comment about the press' hype for punk rock revival.

[u/Frostav]

This is mostly unrelated, but this topic makes me think of a tankie on twitter I saw who said that music and media in general, no matter how progressive or leftist, was fundamentally worthless unless it literally sparked a communist revolution all on its own and I think about that statement a lot more than I should.

[u/El_Giganto]

Her take on Green Day was pretty weird, to be honest. I'm not sure why they were described as dumb and why she couldn't see American Idiot coming from a band like that. Like, at that point they were also on the Rock Against Bush album.

Which she even mentioned in the video, and described as "irrelevant" rock bands. But... They're punk rock bands. Like Green Day. Bands that have always had lyrics like this. It's full of bands that are on the left.

With Green Day's history and roots, was anyone really surprised they wrote a somewhat political album? No one ever heard Minority? Walking Contradiction? Not like American Idiot had all that many strictly political songs on it.

It's a good video, but the bit about Green Day was a little strange. And honestly, I'm missing quite a bit of protest music. I guess it's very focused on mainstream music, but I would have liked to see a bit more mention of NOFX and even Sleater-Kinney.