Blog #2

Politics and Popular music, while seemingly polar opposites, are in fact closely related. The most obvious connection between the two is political influence in music.

There have been many cases in which politics appear in music. These appearances range from protest movements to supporting presidential campaigns. In fact, music is very commonly used in politics to sway the public's opinion of a given topic.

Although I do not have an extensive knowledge of music, I can recall many times in which songs included political movements, presidential campaigns, and protests.

U2 is a perfect example of the influence of music on politics. In the early 1980s, the band released the album "War". This album was concentrated with political songs, including "Sunday Bloody Sunday", "New Year's Day" and "Seconds".
"Sunday Bloody Sunday" was a song intended to protest and lament the turmoil that was taking place at the time in Northern Ireland. It was mostly focused on Bloody Sunday, in which innocent Irish protesters were shot and killed by British troops. This song is considered one of the best political songs of all time, and is among the band's most popular songs.
"New Year's Day" was inspired by the Polish Solidarity movement, which was the first non-communist party controlled trade union in the "Warsaw Pact" countries. This led to the downfall of communism in much of Europe, which in turn weakened the Soviet Union as a major power.
"Seconds" illustrated nuclear proliferation, or the influx of nuclear weapons amongst many nations that was occurring at that time. It expressed the fear of nuclear warfare and the apocalyptic aftermath that could occur as a result of the possession of items of mass destruction.

The band's name itself stemmed from political events. The U-2 incident was an event that occurred in the 1960s, when an American U-2 spy plane was shot down by the Soviet Union. This incident caused extreme tension between the two nations and could have caused a nuclear war.
In 2006, U2 collaborated with fellow punk band Green Day to record the song "The Saints Are Coming". This song expressed both of the groups' extreme distaste at the Bush Administration's lack of help towards the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Green Day has also produced a number of songs that address political and social issues. In 2004, the band released the album "American Idiot", which expressed their disapproval of the United States government. The titular song "American Idiot" showed the band's views on the state of the nation. The lyrics displayed the United States to be a somewhat Orwellian society, in which the nation was "controlled by the media" and brainwashed by "propaganda". Green Day's other songs show parallel views towards the events that were occurring at the time. Because they lashed out at the Bush Administration, Green Day consequently ended up supporting the Democratic side in the next election. This most certainly gathered a considerable amount of votes for the Democratic party in the election (although this proved to be not enough).

There are countless other musical artists that have contributed their views towards politics and have influenced the state of politics as a result. Many punk rock bands expressed anarchistic views, rock n roll bands played a major role in political statements during hard times (John Lennon's "Imagine" and Bob Dylan's "Times They Are a-Changin"), and folk songs were instrumental in protests and rallies, such as the song "We Shall Overcome" in the Civil Rights Movement, and "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" by Peter Seger as a protest to the Vietnam War.

Songs have greatly influenced political culture and will continue to do so in the future.