Otis Williams, the quiet leader of the Temptations and its only surviving member from its '70s heyday, thinks he knows why. Pop punkers Green Day earned a Grammy in 2005 for the chart-topping protest record American Idiot.īut there seems no contemporary counterpart to classic protest hits such as Bob Dylan's The Times They Are A-Changin', Marvin Gaye's What's Going On?, Curtis Mayfield's People Get Ready, and a string of Temptations songs that included Ball of Confusion and Papa Was a Rollin' Stone.

True enough, artists such as Neil Young and Pearl Jam have recently released antiwar tunes. Which raises a pointed question: Where are the classic modern protest songs? It captures the song’s worldwide popularity among all ages.Nelly Furtado's Promiscuous.

The version below was performed in Grote Markt, Haarlem, in the Netherlands in May 2016.

Blistering guitar solos are a hallmark of any live performance. The song was originally recorded in E and played at a fast tempo of 132 bpm. Pearl Jam has performed the song live numerous times, as Young has been the band’s long-time protege, first performing with them in 1993 at the MTV Video Music Awards, where the song “Jeremy” ruled the night. Released a few months before the fall of the Berlin Wall, the song became an anthem as freedom spread across Eastern Europe. Dealing with the news of the theft that would prevent Young and his band from traveling to Russia, one member said, “Well, I guess we’ll just have to keep rockin’ in the free world.” Young wrote the song in response to the problems in the world, with the title inspired after a Russian promoter absconded with money intended to promote a cultural exchange concert between the US and Russia. Written in response to the first Bush Administration, the lyrics mock trite political slogans of that era, with “thousand points of light” and “kinder, gentler” woven in. These days, lounge music and vocal/producer collaborations dominate popular music, with little room for protest songs of the caliber of Neil Young’s 1989 classic, “Rockin’ in the Free World.” In previous times, protest music was an important element shaping the responses to insults, corruption, and inequities. We’re in the midst of stressful times, as powers of various kinds - authoritarian, economic, reactionary, and religious - attempt to constrain humanity in cages of various designs.

Protest songs by pearl jam