ICE T - Artists Agency Germany - Although considered as one of Westcoast rap's leading figures, Rapper Ice T was actually born Tracy Marrow on February 16, 1958 in Newark, New Jersey, USA. Ice T has said that his father gave him a girl's name in order to "teach a brother to fight." When he was in the third grade at school his mother died of a heart attack, then only four years later he then lost his fahter to a heart attack. After his father died, he went to live with his aunt in South Los Angeles' (more often referred to as South Central) Crenshaw district. South Central was were he became infatuated with the ways of "ghetto street life", eventually joining with one of the many sets of the infamous street gang, the Crips, as an affiliate of the "West Side Rollin 30s Original Harlem Crips". Ice T attended Crenshaw High School, and it was during his time there that he became obsessed with rap music, often reciting his rhymes for classmates. After leaving high school, he joined the U.S. Army.

He has stated that he did not enjoy the experience, saying, "I didn't like total submission to a leader other than myself." After leaving the army in 1983, Ice had intentions of starting a career in rap, but he once again became involved in the street life, first as a jewel thief then later as a pimp. A car crash in 1985 was the turning point in Ice-T's life, he decided to abandon the street life and became more focused on rapping. Ice-T began his extremely long career within rap by recording raps for various studios on 12", tracks which were later compiled on "The Classic Collection" and also featured on disc 2 of "Legends of Hip-Hop". His first rap was in 1982, entitled "The Coldest Rap"; this was also the first hip hop record to use the words "nigga" and "ho," although few recognize this early record as a record of "gangsta rap". His first official "gangsta rap" record was in the form of "6 in the Morning", one of the first gangsta rap records recorded.

Ice said he was influenced by the Schooly D record "P.S.K.", which is considered by many to be the first ever gangsta rap record (as it lionized the Philadelphia gang, Park Side Killers). His stage name, Ice-T, was originally his street moniker, styled after the famous ex-pimp turned author Iceberg Slim. In an introduction to the 1996 Canongate Books reprint of Iceberg Slim's 1969 autobiography 'Pimp', Ice T explained: "Although I never met the man, Iceberg Slim was to have a profound effect on my career and life... Like him, I wanted to be somebody who didn't just die there out on the streets. I wanted to be able to document some of my experiences, and that's what I've been trying to do in my music for the past decade. I took my rap name in tribute to him, and I've never regretted it. He was a real hustler." All of Ice-T's records on Warner Brothers spell his name Ice-T, while the spelling without the hyphen is more often used on more recent records, whilst his earliest 12" shows the spelling Ice "T".

Most recently, on his 2006 release "Gangsta Rap", he routinely refers to himself as "Iceberg" rather than "Ice-T", a nickname also used in the 2004 video game "Def Jam: Fight For NY", which has an Ice-T character, and in the 'story mode' section of the game, the character based on him says, "You cannot defeat the Iceberg, punk". Much of Ice-T's music is politically aware, like that of Public Enemy and more recently Tupac Shakur (2pac), although the political content within his raps has declined with time. Ice-T's "Killers" in 1984 includes comments on the death penalty, on nuclear war and on gang warfare. In 1986, "Squeeze the Trigger" was a seven-minute long political release by Ice-T, which later appeared on "Rhyme Pays". Ice-T's career saw comments on racism, police brutality, domestic violence, drug abuse, alcoholism, prison conditions, war and censorship. He was one of the very few rappers to condemn homophobia on tracks like "Straight Up Nigga" and "The Tower".

He also condemned anti-white bigotry amongst blacks on "Momma's Gotta Die Tonight", and he condemned the anti-immigrant racism of the 1992 Los Angeles riots on "Race War". He has voiced conspiracy theories regarding the involvement of the CIA in drug trafficking on tracks such as "This One's for Me" and "Message to the Soldier", and in sections of his book. Ice-T debuted as a rapper in the films "Breakin'" and "Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo" in 1984, only two years after his first 12", "The Coldest Rap," which appeared on the streets in 1982. In the mid 80's Ice finally landed a deal with a major label, in the form of Sire Records. Shortly after, he released his debut album Rhyme Pays, released in 1987. On Rhyme Pays, he is supported by DJ Aladdin and producer Afrika Islam, who helped create the rolling, spare beats and samples that provided a backdrop for the rapper's charismatic rhymes, which were mainly party-oriented; the record wound up going gold.

That same year, he recorded the theme song for Dennis Hopper's "Colors", a film about inner-city life in Los Angeles. The song -- also called "Colors" -- was stronger than his earlier tracks, both lyrically and musically, with more incisive lyrics, than anything he had previously released. Ice T then formed his own record label, Rhyme Syndicate, in 1988, which was distributed through Sire/Warner Bros. Records. From this label Ice-T released Power, a more assured and impressive record, earning him strong reviews and his second gold record. Released in 1989, "The Iceberg/Freedom of Speech...Just Watch What You Say" established him as a true hip-hop superstar by matching excellent abrasive music with fierce, intelligent narratives, and political commentaries, especially about hip-hop censorship. Ice T always managed to be the talk on the streets, whether it be for his political views in his muisc, his talent, or through controversy. He is believed to be the first rapper to have ever performed the notorious Crip Walk (or C-Walk) up on stage, in front of cameras, sometime in the '80s.

This added to his already controversial fame and gave rise to the C-Walk's mainstream presentation in other videos via more recent rappers such as WC, Snoop Dogg, Warren G, and many other Crip-affiliated rap artists. In 1990 Ice-T won a Grammy for 'Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group'. On 14th May 1991 he released his classic album "O.G. (Original Gangster)" which is regarded as one of Gangsta Rap's most defining albums. In 1998, the album was selected as one of The Source Magazine's 100 Best Rap Albums, and to this day it is generally considered as Ice T's best album. The Source magazine, considered by most as the 'Hip-Hop Bible' gave the album 4 out of 5 mics, and the All Music Guide rated the album as 5 out of 5 stating the album is "a sprawling masterpiece that stands far and away as Ice-T's finest hour." It was also on this album in which he introduced his heavy metal band Body Count.

Body Count's debut album Body Count (1992) attacked, in graphic terms, various aspects of racism and criminality in South Central Los Angeles (now South Los Angeles), including corrupt police officers. Ice-T and his band caused a nation-wide controversy with the song "Cop Killer", a track co-written by Ice-T, the group's vocalist, and Ernie-C, the guitarist. It was originally released as the final track on the group's debut album and provoked a national debate about freedom of speech, resulting in police groups, parent groups and other advocates protesting the song and its content. This track is the reason that Ice-T and the group were eventually dropped from the roster of Warner Bros. Records. Many people voiced their opinions on the highly controversial track, and it angered Dennis R. Martin, who is now the Former President, National Association of Chiefs of Police, he argued that: "The misuse of the First Amendment is graphically illustrated in Time-Warner's attempt to insert into the mainstream culture the vile and dangerous lyrics of the Ice-T song entitled Cop Killer. The Body Count album containing Cop Killer was shipped throughout the United States in miniature body bags.

Only days before distribution of the album was voluntarily suspended, Time-Warner flooded the record market with a half million copies. The Cop Killer song has been implicated in at least two shooting incidents and has inflamed racial tensions in cities across the country. Those who work closely with the families and friends of slain officers volunteering for the American Police Hall of Fame and Museum, are outraged by the message of Cop Killer. It is an affront to the officers—144 in 1992 alone—who have been killed in the line of duty while upholding the laws of our society and protecting all its citizens." In 1991, Ice-T embarked onto a serious acting career, playing a police detective, starring alongside the likes of Wesley Snipes and Chris Rock, in Mario Van Peebles' feature film "New Jack City". The film was an independant film released primarily for urban areas, however it recieved rave reviews for its cast, storyline, and soundtrack. New Jack City was produced with an estimated $8,500,000 budget.

The film initially premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 17, 1991, before being released nationally on March 6, 1991; it grossed $7,039,622 during its opening weekend. It became the highest grossing independent film of 1991, grossing a total of $47,624,253 at the US box offices. The soundtrack to New Jack City, which featured a track from Ice-T, the opening track on the soundtrack, reached #1 on Billboard's "Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums" charts, and #2 on "The Billboard 200". The single "I'm Dreaming" performed by Christopher Williams and "For the Love of Money" performed by Troop, Levert, and Queen Latifah, reached #1 and #12 on Bilboards "Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles" respectively.

Ice-T continued to portray his political views in the track "Escape from the Killing Fields", which portrayed a difference in views from those of rappers like Chuck D and Ice Cube, in that Ice-T did not see any virtue in staying in the ghetto, but rather encouraged Black people to leave the ghetto. The last track on O.G. Original Gangster is a spoken-word opposition to the Gulf War and to poor conditions in prisons. Ice-T appeared alongside the now the now deceased, but legendary rapper Tupac Shakur (2Pac), who at the time was only an up and coming star. Much like Ice-T, Tupac was also known for his passionate political views and he gripped many people with his lyrics, music, views and life in general. Because of Tupac's passion and pure talent, and his life constantly been surrounded in controversy, he lived his life in constant media coverage, all factors which may have resulted in his murder in a gangland style drive-by shooting in Las Vegas.

The song these two Hip-Hop legends performed together was entitled 'Last Wordz', a track taken from 2Pac's now multi platinum sophomore LP 'Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z.', released in 1993, spawning the hits, and now huge Hip-Hop classics, "Keep Ya Head Up" and "I Get Around". After Ice-T's album Born Dead was released in 1994, Ice-T's music has contained much less political commentary than before. In 1994, Ice-T wrote a book titled The Ice Opinion. The purpose of this was to provide clear answers to questions that he was constantly asked in interviews about his political beliefs, his life and the controversy surrounding his music. Having often voiced controversial statements about corruption, he goes into detail about his suspicions of police/CIA involvement in drug trafficking and of how certain businesses profit from prison-building. It lasted 196 pages, and had an extra 3 pages as a "Pimptionary" of pimp slang. The book has now been translated into Japanese, German, French, and Italian.

Ice-T then cotinued within his role as an actor, with a notable lead role performance in Surviving the Game in addition to his many supporting roles, such as J-Bone in Johnny Mnemonic (1995), and as one of the mutants in Tank Girl, also released in 1995. Ice-T was also interviewed in the Brent Owens documentary Pimps Up, Ho's Down, where he is quoted as saying "I can't act, I really can't act" and he raps at the Players Ball. In 1995 he had a recurring role as vengeful drug dealer Danny Cort on the television series New York Undercover, which was co-created by Dick Wolf. In 1997 Ice-T co-created the short-lived series Players, which was produced by Wolf. These two collaborations led Wolf to add Ice-T to the cast of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, where the rapper has portrayed Detective Odafin Tutuola since 2000. This can perhaps be considered an ironic role, taking into account the early controversy surrounding his group Body Count with their song Cop Killer. Ice-T also appears in the movie Leprechaun in the Hood.

Ice is a worldwide celebrity, particularly in the UK, where not only his music is successful, but where he has had a multi-season series on Channel 4 as the presenter of Ice T's Baadasss TV. The show is Ice T's personal guide to Blaxploitation movies and to black culture in general. Ice-T also voiced Madd Dogg in the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas as well as Agent Cain in Sanity: Aiken's Artifact. He also appears as himself in Def Jam: Fight for NY and UFC: Tapout fighting video games. Ice-T made an appearance on Chappelle's Show as himself presenting the award for "Player Hater of the Year." He was dubbed the "Original Player Hater." At WrestleMania 2000, Ice-T performed his song "Pimpin Ain't Easy" during The Godfather and D'Lo Brown's entrance. In the summer of 1996, Ice-T released his first rap album since 1993, Return of the Real. The album was greeted by mixed reviews and it failed to live up to commercial expectations. 7th Deadly Sin then followed in 1999.

In 2005 Ice-T launched a clothing line, IceWear, and a year later Ice-T released his first rap album since 1999, entitled Gangsta Rap, which landed in stores on October 31 2006. It has caused controversy over its cover, which showed him and his wife, Coco, lying naked, with Coco covering Ice-T's penis; many retailers have been reluctant to supply this. Early reviews of the album have not been too enthusiastic; many were hoping for a return to the political raps of Ice-T's most successful albums, but he seems to be continuing with the apolitical gangsta approach of the previous two albums. Politics and protest: part five of 1000 songs everyone must hear | Music | theguardian.com Artist Year · This table was amended on Monday March 23 2009. The Blue Mink song mentioned above is Melting Pot, not Melting Point. This has been corrected. Me and Giuliani Down By the Schoolyard (A True Story) !!!

2003 Rudolph Giuliani’s tenure as mayor saw New York nightlife all but stamped out; his taskforce would close down venues without a dance licence if people so much as tapped their foot. When the bar Nic Offer was working at fell victim to Giuliani’s clampdown, the !!! frontman was driven to write this nine-minute punk-funk epic, which attempts to start a dancefloor insurrection. AN Another World Antony and the Johnsons 2008 There’s perhaps no other current artist who could pull off an apocalyptic lament that sounds like a gentle hymn. This lead track from last year’s EP and highlight of new album The Crying Light is a plea for escape from a world “nearly gone” through war and ecological disaster. That unique, soulful voice sounds utterly bereft, as it waves us a resigned goodbye: “I’ll miss the things that grow/ I’m gonna miss you all.” GM Arcade Fire 2007 Arcade Fire’s second album, Neon Bible, was full of bad vibrations. On Windowsill, Win Butler turns refusenik, driving salesmen from his door, repudiating consumerism and watching the flood waters rise.

But even with Armageddon nigh, Windowsill feels like a victory, as voices and brass mass to a climax. Conclusion? With enough instruments, we might just make it. It’s a compelling argument. KE (What Did I Do To Be So) Black And Blue Louis Armstrong 1929 Friend to the world he might have been, but Pops didn’t hide behind that smile. Listen to this 1929 performance of a Fats Waller number, on which he sings “I’m white inside but that don’t help my case,” and “My only sin is in my skin.” Little wonder that the protagonist of Ralph Ellison’s classic novel Invisible Man dreamt of listening to five versions of the song simultaneously. CLS Roy Bailey 1979 Leon Rosselson has been Britain’s most consistently savage and articulate political songwriter for four decades, but none of his songs have put as many noses out of joint as this epic, rip-roaring deconstruction of popular Christian perception of the Gospels.

Part inspired by Hyam Maccoby’s book Revolution in Judaea, Rosselson’s detailed contention that Judas was a heroic political revolutionary subverting the Roman occupation while Jesus was effectively a passive collaborator comes with a blinding chorus fully utilised by Bailey’s impassioned delivery. CI A Day in the Life of a Tree The Beach Boys 1971 By this point in his career, it was said of Brian Wilson that he was crazy. But this number, from the album Surf’s Up, co-written and sung by Jack Rieley, made up in anguished sentiment what it risked in eccentricity. And now that we’re all hip to global warming, how nuts do the lines “But now my branches suffer/ And my leaves don’t offer/ Poetry to men of song” sound exactly? CLS I Was Born This Way Carl Bean 1977 “Say it loud,” the lyrics might have read, “I’m out and I’m proud.” This disco stormer, the genre’s first gay anthem, was given its definitive treatment in this cover of Valentino’s 1975 original. “I feeeeeeeel good! I feeeeeeeel good!” sang Bean, his gospel roots never more in evidence.

It’s not the most widely feted Motown single, but it remains one of the most inspirational. CLS Stand Down Margaret The Beat 1980 A highlight of the Beat’s debut album, I Just Can’t Stop It, this unambivalent demand feels like a brash cousin of Ghost Town, the Specials’ more complex, downbeat song of social protest. Released just 12 months after Thatcher came to power, the Brummie ska outfit had already seen straight through the new regime: “I see no chance of your bright new tomorrow/ Our lives seem petty in your cold grey hands.” GT The Beatles 1967 With its “semolina pilchard climbing up the Eiffel Tower”, this anguished howl is easily dismissed as a piece of nonsense – and was written by John Lennon as a riposte to the news that a teacher at his old school was now analysing the Beatles’ lyrics in class. But this masterpiece saw him vent his spleen on establishment culture writ large, and few bands ever sounded quite so menacingly psychedelic.

(Just don’t believe that the walrus really was Paul.) CLS Revolution The Beatles 1968 On this wild, distorted B-side to Hey Jude, John Lennon insisted that, if 1968’s revolutionaries wanted destruction, they could “count me out”. On the slower, quieter version (Revolution 1) on the White Album, the line is “count me in”. Lennon’s honest confusion drew much flak from those who wanted him to be a political figurehead. The screeching, unsettling production was Lennon’s riposte to his fellow Beatles’ refusal to release Revolution 1 as a single. GM War Pigs Black Sabbath 1971 Long before Ozzy became a clown and heavy metal a joke, Black Sabbath’s War Pigs was like a Hieronymous Bosch painting come to life. Ripe with rot and rich with musical detail, this seminal outpouring of pacifism noir brought Birmingham’s infamous hippie-haters intriguingly close to their flower-powered, anti-Vietnam war peers. But there is no mistaking the animosity in Bill Ward’s apocalyptic hoofbeats, or Tony Iommi’s acidulated guitar.

KE Blue Mink 1969 This debut single by the veteran Brit sessioneers fronted by Madeline Bell had long since jumped the shark when Alan Partridge jumped around his Travelodge room singing it, stopping only to question whether “Chinky” was still an acceptable term. It’s dated, then, but winningly guileless, with – as the sight of a pub full of old socialists singing along to it on the jukebox will attest – a wonderfully uplifting chorus. MH Cop Killer Body Count 1992 Ice T’s in-character reaction to the 1991 police beating of Rodney King begins with the stated desire to shoot every corrupt cop in the face. That’s one way to get your audience’s attention. The pummelling, consciously over-the-top piece of speed-metal that ensues was a significant piece of steam-letting on behalf of a community teetering on the brink; following the 1992 LA riots, Cop Killer was removed from the first Body Count album and remains devilishly hard to find.

GT And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda Eric Bogle 1971 There are a thousand anti-war songs, most angry, some sad, others defiant, but none with the novelistic scope and detail of this first-person tale of the battle of Gallipoli, written by a Scottish folk singer who emigrated to Australia while that country was fighting alongside the Americans in Vietnam. Told through the eyes of a rambler who answers his country’s call and returns minus his legs, it skews patriotic fraud like nothing else. Impossible to sit through its seven minutes with dry eyes. SY Boogie Down Productions 1988 Having lost his DJ partner Scott La Rock in a street shooting, Bronx rapper Lawrence Krishna Parker, aka KRS-One, rejected his previous gangsta persona and reinvented himself as a self-styled teacher and voice of hip-hop’s conscience. His second album, By All Means Necessary, featured KRS posing as Malcolm X on its sleeve, and this anthemic plea for social justice and a peaceful rap scene. Hip-hop listened intently to the digital reggae beats but ignored the message.

GM When the President Talks to God Bright Eyes 2005 Conor Oberst, aka Bright Eyes, campaigned for John Kerry on 2004’s Vote for Change tour, although his records made sure his political persuasions were never in doubt. This B-side, which he chose to play on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno rather than promote an album, was as furious an attack on George Bush as any. Riffing on Dubya’s imagined relationship with God, Oberst lists (and it’s a long list) all the president’s failings with a brooding intensity and anger. WD Bronski Beat 1984 Written for a film sponsored by the Greater London Council called Framed Youth – Revenge of the Teenage Perverts, Bronski Beat’s debut dealt with the story of a gay man’s attempts at escaping suburbia. Not the most obvious material for a Top 10 hit, then, and nor did Jimmy Somerville conform to everyone’s idea of a pop star. But his bravura vocal performance and the kind of synthpop backing that’s only now coming back into vogue helped propel it to No 3 in the UK charts.

Those who preferred the 12” version found the telephone number of the London Gay Switchboard etched into its inner groove. CLS Billy Bragg 1985 During the miners’ strike, the Bard of Barking travelled to the coalfields, playing gigs to raise money for the miners and their families – and in the process, discovered a rich seam of traditional folk song. For this EP, the proceeds of which also went to the cause, he essayed versions of Which Side Are You On?, an American pro-trade union song from the 1930s, and Leon Rosselson’s The World Turned Upside Down (itself an update of the 17th century Diggers’ Song). But the title track was his original, and just as powerful in its assertion of workers’ rights and dignity. Nor, of course, have lines like “I’ll give my consent to any government/ that does not deny a man a living wage” gone out of fashion.

CLS Say It Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud James Brown 1968 The first record credited to the Godfather of Soul as a solo artist captured the positive side of 60s black militancy with brilliant, funk-driven, call-and-response simplicity. But in his 1986 autobiography, Brown insisted that the song was “misunderstood” and that it “cost me a lot of my crossover audience”. Perhaps it was the socialist implications of Brown’s rap about black self-sufficiency that disturbed Wasp America, but the single still hit the US top 10. GM Ian Campbell Folk Group 1964 The power of subtlety in protest music is brilliantly expressed by one of the earliest anti-nuclear songs, an unofficial anthem of the CND movement and Ban the Bomb marches. Originally sung with innocent clarity by his sister Lorna – and later covered by Simon and Garfunkel – Ian Campbell’s clever descriptiveness gradually subverts a scene of idyllic normality into a shocking climax as the sun falls to earth and “death comes in a blinding flash of hellish heat”.

CI Company Policy Martin Carthy 1988 Martin Carthy claims only ever to have written two songs, but he’d be hard pushed anyway to match this damning analysis of the cause and effects of the Falklands war. At the height of his powers both as an expressive singer and innovative acoustic guitarist, Carthy adapts the traditional song form to knit a particularly harrowing human tragedy into the context of a cold commercial enterprise and the gruesome triumphalism of the victory parades. CI Rainin’ in Paradize Manu Chao 2007 Critics might scoff that Chao is little more than the patron saint of scruffy Eurorailers. But there’s little denying the strident urgency of this lead track from his most recent album, with its shrill guitars and provocative statements such as: “In Baghdad, it’s no democracy/ That’s just because… it’s a US country!” Never mind that the chorus sounded as if it might have been esperanto: “Go masai, go masai, be mellow/ Go masai, go masai, be sharp.” Anyone?

CLS John Coltrane 1963 The murder of four girls in the Ku Klux Klan’s bombing of the Sixteenth Street baptist church in Birmingham, Alabama, on 15 September, 1963, proved a turning point in the civil rights movement in America, and inspired Nina Simone’s Mississippi Goddam, Richard Farina’s Birmingham Sunday and this elegiac masterpiece. Coltrane apparently patterned his saxophone playing on Martin Luther King’s funeral speech, and Elvin Jones’ drumming rises to a crescendo that sounds like the surging tide of the struggle. CLS A Change Is Gonna Come Sam Cooke 1964 Barack Obama’s speechwriters knew where to go for inspiration on the night of his election success: “It’s been a long time coming,” said the president, borrowing directly from this greatest of all civil rights anthems, before “but tonight, change has come to America.” Alas, Cooke died before he could witness the commercial success of this record, which was released as a single following his death in 1964.

CLS All the Blowing-Themselves-Up Motherfuckers (Will Realise the Minute They Die That They Were Suckers) Julian Cope 2008 The erstwhile Teardrop Explodes frontman isn’t necessarily the first person you would turn to for a dose of sanity, but you might well expect some forthright views – and this great slab of a song with its nagging chorus certainly delivers in that respect. “It’s strictly verboten for them to have a laugh,” Cope sings of his subjects, while also observing that: “Our western experience was not built to last.” The result is a funny, catchy and – alas – rather brave endeavour. CLS Tramp the Dirt Down Elvis Costello> 1989 Whether you feel it’s fair or not, when Margaret Thatcher finally dies, this bitter lament from Costello’s Spike album will find itself on every ageing leftie’s stereo. The former Declan MacManus taps into both his Irish folk roots and early Dylan to ask whether the former Conservative prime minister can live with every “tiny detail” of her crimes against the working class, before stating that he’s only living to be able to dance on her grave.

Possibly the most personally vituperative song ever recorded. GM Brother Can You Spare a Dime? Bing Crosby 1932 Yip Harburg and Jay Gorney’s parable about the human indiginity of hardship may have come out of the American Depression of the 1930s, but it’s a telling soundtrack for any era of economic suffering. The gorgeous tune and the crooner’s effortless art enhance the bewilderment of someone grappling with shattered pride, but the song’s underlying bitterness is there in the opening line: “They used to tell me I was building a dream…” CI The Decemberists 2005 Colin Meloy and his gang of hardy Oregonians had spent their first two albums singing songs about rueful actors and Keith Waterhouse plays; but their breakout 2005 record, Picaresque, and this, its breakout hit, lifted them into a firmament of young American musicians sick of war and lies. The story of a feckless media and the men being sent to fight dumb wars is encapsulated in Meloy’s spruce denigration of facile 21st-century American culture.

WD Television: The Drug of the Nation The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy 1991 Gil Scott-Heron declared that the revolution would not be televised. This San Franciscan hip-hop crew set out to explain why. Ranting with an aged-wood authority reminiscent of Public Enemy’s Chuck D, frontman Michael Franti charges the box with corroding freedom and popularising ignorance, as keyboard player Rono Tse unleashes samples of adverts and warfare beneath. But Franti’s stern sloganeering is hitched to a loose-limbed, rolling rhythm, making it one of the catchiest lectures ever delivered. KE Not Ready to Make Nice Dixie Chicks 2006 Now George Bush is widely considered the worst US president in history, it’s easy to forget that when Dixie Chicks criticised the impending invasion of Iraq in 2003, he was an American hero. It provoked a vicious backlash, resulting in the de facto blacklisting of the band. This was their response. The music is standard mid-pace pop-country, but the lyrics crackle with anger. A genuinely moving song by three women brave enough to say what they thought when few others would.

CC Bob Dylan 1963 According to Dylan this is a pacifistic song against war and not an anti-war song, though the distinction might be lost on many listeners. Taken from The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, it is certainly the work of a young man, one who puts himself front and centre to denounce those that “build the death planes”. “I just want you to know/ I can see through your masks,” he whines, but in its arrogance the song carried a real power; one that was to find popular expression as the 60s wore on. PMac The Times They Are a-Changin’ Bob Dylan 1964 Although a little stiff and self-conscious, this remains, next to Blowin’ in the Wind, Dylan’s most significant anthem. Quickly adopted by the civil rights movement, it was taken as a comment on everything from the generation gap to the rise of the liberal left; today it simply stands as the ultimate articulation of the seismic cultural shifts of the early 60s. “I didn’t mean it as a statement,” Dylan later said.

“It’s a feeling.” GT When the Ship Comes In Bob Dylan 1964 A fine example of personal pique inspiring a song of universal relevance. Refused entry to a hotel – Joan Baez eventually vouched for the scruffy, obscure folksinger – Dylan stomped upstairs to vent. Channelling both Brecht and the Bible, he foresees the day when the “wise men” of the world will rise up to deliver a terrible judgment upon meddling, incompetent figures of authority: “And like Goliath, they’ll be conquered!” Truly rousing. GT Steve Earle 2002 One of the most significant political songs of recent times, and a notable attempt to dig into the mindset of John Walker Lindh, the alienated “American boy” who fought for the Taliban forces before his capture late in 2001. In doing so, Earle unearthed some uncomfortable home truths about US complicity in 9/11: “I’m trying to make clear that wherever he got to, he didn’t arrive there in a vacuum,” he said. GT Role Model Eminem 1999 Marshall Mathers’s greatest gift is his ability to couch morality tales in superficially offensive rhymes.

This Dr Dre co-production from debut album The Slim Shady LP hits the listener with a deluge of gross and puerile images. But the point is the ridiculous pressure on rappers to be “role models”, and our moral guardians’ insistence that our children will “tie a rope round my penis and jump from a tree” if a pop star tells them to. A satirical protest classic. GM Frankie Goes To Hollywood 1984 “When you hear the air-attack warning, you and your family must take cover…” Producer Trevor Horn reworked an insipid white funk version from a Peel session, and despite the vagaries of the lyrics, at the height of nuclear proliferation paranoia, this certainly sounded like a Very Important Thing. The sleeve depicted the US and USSR’s respective nuclear arsenals and it came with Annihilation, Carnage and Surrender mixes, but it was the video that really rammed the point home: depicting Ronald Reagan and Russian leader Chernenko knocking lumps out of each other, it’s still seldom seen on TV in full. MH Respect Aretha Franklin 1967 When Otis Redding wrote it, he was asking for respect, and a little female succour.

When Aretha Franklin sang it, she was demanding respect for an entire put-upon gender and, indirectly – thanks to the backdrop of the civil rights movement of the late 60s – an entire race. But there’s plenty of the naughty in the mix too, as Franklin’s sisters whoop it up on backing vocals and this polyvalent soul classic canters breathlessly to a close. KE Dick Gaughan 1985 Anyone doubting the political power of song might ponder the brutal murder of the great Chilean activist Víctor Jara, whose music was considered sufficiently subversive to warrant his killing by General Pinochet’s junta during the bloody, US-backed military coup of 1973. Adrian Mitchell’s moving poem – which recounts the story of Jara’s life and death – was set to music by Arlo Guthrie, but Dick Gaughan’s cold fury best captures its angry despair. CI Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology) Marvin Gaye 1971 Eerily prescient.

It’s a measure of the breadth of Gaye’s vision that he was able to turn his gaze away from the inner-city travails documented on the rest of What’s Going On and venture into eco-activism. The languid melody and lush production sit at odds with the stark depiction of a world rapidly choking itself to death through overpopulation, pollution and general lack of environmental respect. You suspect that’s the whole point. GT Cast of Grange Hill 1986 The spearhead of the BBC’s “Drugwatch” was a wonderfully appalling pop single based around Zammo’s heroin addiction storyline from the kids’ soap Grange Hill. Inspired by Nancy Reagan’s much criticised Just Say No campaign, the single was plugged by a legendary video starring an embarrassed cast rapping, doing bizarre hand movements and dancing in leotards. Despite the song reaching the Top 10, British youth reacted to the advice by embracing the drug-fuelled warehouse parties of acid house two years later. GM American Idiot Green Day 2004 More popular in the UK than the US, this lead single from the album of the same name was an open and uncomplicated assault on the policies of the Bush administration and the attitudes that sustained them.

“Well maybe I’m the faggot America,” sang Billie Joe Armstrong, “I’m not a part of a redneck agenda.” Despite obvious pop overtones, this track, in its simplicity and ferocity, can lay legitimate claim to being punk music in the original sense. PMac This Land Is Your Land Woody Guthrie 1944 It’s not a little ironic that every American schoolchild learns this song, the communist sympathiser’s riposte to the unctuous God Bless America. Guthrie is on a magical realist hike across America’s promised land, endorsing a Native American belief that the land cannot be owned. A little-sung alternate verse makes explicit his disdain for private property; another verse sympathises with the unemployed, making This Land… a secular hymn laced with political dynamite.

KE Okie from Muskogee 1969 Ostensibly deriding the back-sliding treachery of the counterculture – “We don’t burn our draft cards down on Main Street” – Haggard’s hippy-baiting redneck anthem is in fact an affectionate satire on the citizens of Middle America, for whom short hair, manly footwear, respecting authority and unquestioning patriotism stood as the nation’s guiding principles. The fact that the song sold millions at the height of the Vietnam war suggests that its subversive intent wasn’t always recognised. GT Mick Hanly with Christy Moore 1980 Ireland’s powerful history of rebel songs gained some notable new additions during the hunger strikes of the 70s and 80s. None was more formidable than this outraged, deeply emotive protest about the treatment of the Maze prisoners demanding political status and refusing to wear prison uniforms. “If we stay silent we’re guilty, while these men lie naked and cold,” sang Moore and Hanly with quiet intensity – at personal risk to themselves on the frontlines of Republican rallies and marches.

CI 19 Paul Hardcastle 1985 Paul Hardcastle was a little-known English musician before he sampled dialogue from Vietnam Requiem, a documentary about the Vietnam war, over his stripped-back early-house backing track. The 19 in question was the alleged “average age of a combat soldier” in Vietnam. The song went to No 1 in the UK for five weeks. Hardcastle’s manager, Simon Fuller, renamed his company 19 Management and went on to manage the Spice Girls and David Beckham, and create Pop Idol. None of them received a hero’s welcome. LB Jimi Hendrix 1969 Less a protest song than rock’s greatest tone poem, recorded for posterity at the Woodstock festival in 1969. Hendrix uses his mastery of feedback, distortion and guitar effects to deconstruct the US national anthem, impersonating the sounds of human screams and “The rockets’ red glare/ Bombs bursting in air”, in protest at the Vietnam war. It remains a terrifying sonic experience and the precursor to some of rock’s most cynical tilts at American patriotism.

GM (We Don’t Need) This Fascist Groove Thang Heaven 17 1981 Early 80s irony in excelsis, as former Human League members Ian Craig Marsh and Martyn Ware and vocalist Glenn Gregory simultaneously protested against the rise of the right and poked fun at funk and their own electro-disco pretentions. The Sheffield trio’s debut single featured over-the-top slap bass, exhortations to “Hot yo’ ass!” and puns about Cruise missiles while being 100% sincere in its loathing of Thatcher and Reagan. Radio 1’s Mike Read didn’t get the joke and banned it. GM The Jam 1980 “You’ll see kidney machines replaced by rockets and guns.” With that line Paul Weller crystallised the feelings of many as Margaret Thatcher’s government plunged the nation deep into recession and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan placed the cold war in the microwave for a quick reheat. It was angry, but no rant, and the music (especially Bruce Foxton’s glowering bass) packs a punch that transcends the times. The first single to go straight to No 1 since Slade’s Merry Xmas Everybody, but a very different beast.

SY The “Fish” Cheer/I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag Country Joe and the Fish 1967 “Country Joe” McDonald would lead audiences in a call-and-response chant, spelling out the nickname of his partner, Barry “the Fish” Melton. Except sometimes – as memorably captured during his performance at the Woodstock festival – he’d swap “fish” for another word starting with “F”. The segue into the rest of the song then made more sense. “One, two, three, what are we fighting for?” he asked, and a generation railed against the war in Vietnam. CLS The Village Green Preservation Society The Kinks 1968 “God save strawberry jam and all the different varieties,” they sang, adding to that list little shops, china cups and virginity, tudor houses, antique tables and more. No, it wasn’t John Major in old-maids-cycling-to-work mode, but Muswell Hill’s finest. Deftly, Ray Davies made you pine for the old ways now being abused – while also creating the impression that he might never sign up to this vision of Middle England.

CLS Zombie Fela Kuti 1977 Taken from the album of the same name, Zombie is a 12-minute assault on the Nigerian government and it soldiers that brought about violent reprisals by state forces and led to the death of Kuti’s mother. The lyrics – “Fall in, fall out, fall down, get ready” – were sung in English in order to reach a broader audience but are backed by the fabulously rich mix of Afrobeat at its most heady. Horns, guitars and vocals weave in and out, but the rhythm section remains constantly frenetic throughout. PMac John Lennon 1969 Although nobody was talking about Bagism, apart from John and Yoko, Give Peace a Chance became as recognisable a call to disarm as Guernica or the CND sign. Lennon had used the phrase as an answer to a reporter during the Montreal bed-in. He liked it so much that he set it to music on a cheap four-track with the help of Allen Ginsberg and others. Even Lennon admitted the song wasn’t his finest, but as a peace chant, it’s untouchable.

WD The Ballad of Sharpeville Ewan MacColl 1960 On 21 March 1960 a peaceful black demonstration against apartheid in the Transvaal township of Sharpeville ended in massacre when the police turned their guns on the unarmed demonstrators, killing 69 and wounding hundreds of others. MacColl’s response was immediate: he sat down and wrote one of his most epic songs, coldly recounting the distressing details of the tragedy in the manner of the old broadside ballads. XX Eve of Destruction Barry McGuire 1965 Presented to the Byrds as the sort of Dylanesque tune they might like, the Los Angeles band turned down PF Sloan’s song, leaving a fledgling rock singer from Oklahoma with one of the defining hits of the 60s.

War in the Middle East, nuclear proliferation, the civil rights struggle (“Think of all the hate there is in Red China/ Then take a look around to Selma, Alabama”): it all added up, although McGuire later argued this wasn’t a protest song per se, telling one interviewer: “If you go to a doctor and he tells you that you have a melanoma that needs to be removed, do you call him a protest doctor? I don’t think so.” CLS Madonna 1985 If Gordon Gekko’s assertion that “greed is good” in the film Wall Street seemed to sum up the worst aspects of 80s yuppiedom – well, what about Madonna here? It wasn’t simply the vulgarity of the lyrics, it was the smug way in which she sang them, sneering at her fictive suitors and by extension anyone who wasn’t “the boy with the cold-hard cash who’s always Mr Right”. Problem was, this prime slice of pop was so damned catchy.

CLS Suicide Is Painless (Theme from M*A*S*H) Johnny Mandel 1970 With lyrics written by Robert Altman’s then 14-year-old son Mike (who reportedly made more than his dad did from directing the film M*A*S*H), this melancholic theme tune is one of those odd songs that’s more familiar as an instrumental. Would people be quite so fond of it if they were singing along to lines such as: “The sword of time will pierce our skins/ It doesn’t hurt when it begins/ But as it works its way on in/ The pain grows stronger, watch it grin”? RV Redemption Song Bob Marley 1980 ”Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery,” Marley sang, borrowing from a Marcus Garvey speech. “None but ourselves can free our minds”. Given a sparse acoustic treatment, this was the last track on his last studio album, Uprising, and as such his perfect testament. It addressed his Rasta beliefs, but the message that’s echoed down is universal.

CLS The Mothers of Invention 1966 “Well I’m about to get upset from watching my TV/ Been checking out the news until my eyeballs fail to see…” Tucked alongside the hippie parodies, sonic experiments and songs such as Help, I’m a Rock on the Mothers’ debut Freak Out! came Frank Zappa’s bluesy analysis of watching the Watts riots in Los Angeles on “that rotten box”. It still sounds like one of rock’s most articulate – and prescient – takes on the issue of media manipulation. What would he have made of Sky News? RV Police and Thieves Junior Murvin 1976 In 1976, Junior Murvin pitched up at Lee Perry’s legendary Black Ark studio to audition for the maverick producer. The song he brought with him became the rude boy anthem of the year in Jamaica and a huge sound system hit in Britain. On Police and Thieves, Murvin’s extraordinary falsetto, modelled on Curtis Mayfield, floats on a shimmering, otherworldly Perry production that remains one of the high water marks of reggae music.

Reworked by the Clash on their debut album, and its rhythm used for countless Jamaican DJ outings, the original remains untouchable. SOH NWA 1988 More than three years before the LA riots – provoked by the LAPD’s filmed assault on Rodney King – this track from Niggaz With Attitude’s Straight Outta Compton album expressed the growing anger towards police brutality among black youth in Los Angeles. Presented as a furious, gangsta-funk court case that the one representative of the LAPD has no chance of winning, the prosecution testimonies of Ice Cube, MC Ren and Eazy-E were so violent that the FBI sent a protest letter to their label Ruthless. GM I Ain’t Marching Anymore Phil Ochs 1965 Written as the Vietnam war was starting to escalate, Ochs’s defiant soldier-song ties together centuries of bloody US military history to powerful effect, told over a simple folk strum.

The lyric prises the generation gap wide open – “It’s always the old who lead us to war/ Always the young who fall” – while Ochs provocatively described his signature tune as bordering “between pacifism and treason, combining the best qualities of both.” GT Primal Scream 1990 Classic soul and the American civil rights movement meant as much to Bobby Gillespie as the acid house scene, so it made sense to let producer Andy Weatherall preface this alternative rave anthem with a sample of Jesse Jackson declaiming: “This is a beautiful day, it is a new day, we are together.” Church organ and police sirens helped build something rapturous over the 10 minutes that followed. Never mind that Gillespie later blotted his copybook, writing Star, by talking about Rosa Parks as if she, like Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, had already gone to visit that great gathering in the sky. CLS John Prine 1971 Rather than protest the war in Vietnam directly, singer-songwriter Prine addressed its aftermath at the human level.

The song’s protagonist returns home to his wife and family with a shrapnel wound that leaves him needing morphine and soon enough – as the chorus repeats to us – “there’s a hole in daddy’s arm where all the money goes”. It might have been the soundtrack to The Deer Hunter. CLS Bring the Noise Public Enemy 1987 Blessed with a rapid-fire Chuck D lyric so stunning that half the lines became hip-hop slogans, Bring the Noise is as bewildering as it is exhilarating. Taking the re-emergence of black militancy as its launch pad, the song sees production team the Bomb Squad reach their peak of organised noise; a wall of sampled beats, horns, guitars, voices, sirens and subsonic bass taken at punk-rock tempo. Its shout-out for Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan is still contentious. GM Rage Against the Machine 1992 Though it proved easy to lampoon, the climactic “Fuck you/ I won’t do what you tell me” refrain was genuinely exhilarating at the time, particularly when Bruno Brookes mistakenly played the uncensored version on primetime Radio 1.

The band’s debut single and signature statement, the song and sentiment arguably overshadowed everything else they’ve ever done. Trivia note: Bill Hicks used it as his exit music towards the end of his life. GT How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live? Blind Alfred Reed 1929 Looking for a soundtrack to economic woes? Reed was a contemporary of Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family and penned this standard, which was later covered by Ry Cooder and Bruce Springsteen. “There was once a time when everything was cheap, but now prices nearly put a man to sleep,” he sang, adding with mordant humour: “When we pay our grocery bill, we just feel like making our will.” CLS Diana Ross 1980 It was fitting that such a perfect example of the subversive qualities of manufactured pop happened on Motown. Ross’s biggest album, Diana, was her last for Berry Gordy’s legendary label and was famously written and produced by Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards of disco kings Chic.

Knowing that the former Supreme had a large and loyal gay following, they gave her a thinly disguised gay liberation anthem and looked on proudly as it hit the US Top 5.GM Now That The Buffalo's Gone Buffy Sainte-Marie 1964 Herself a Cree, Buffy Sainte-Marie has written a whole raft of superb songs about the plight of the First Nation and Native American peoples – but this painful yet poetic account of a history of broken treaties and promises ranks as the best. Sainte-Marie’s naturally tremulous voice and the simplicity of the melody add further poignancy to the shame loaded into the song and the plea for help and understanding she demands to right the wrongs. CI Nitin Sawhney 2008 How to respond to the events of 7/7 and the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes in London? Rather than serve up a slice of polemic, Sawhney set a simple acoustic melody against the narrative of a young MC called Natty, who’d followed de Menezes on the next train into Stockwell station. The refrain “it all went slow motion... now we’re all in slow motion” freezes the action but also captures the confusion that followed “the days of fire”.

CLS Whitey On the Moon Gil Scott-Heron 1970 One of Scott-Heron’s most memorable rhymes, and one that surely touched many white liberal nerves. How dare the US federal government, Gil wondered over little else but a drum beat, spend incomputable amounts of money sending people into space when so many African-Americans can’t afford healthcare? Shockingly, with the monetary disparity between black and white in America still vastly disproportionate, the song still resonates. Except this time, Whitey’s being bailed out by the Fed. WD Pete Seeger 1963 Pioneering folkie Pete Seeger helped popularise We Shall Overcome – which had already evolved from an old slave chant into a Methodist hymn – as a civil rights anthem, belting it out in 1963 to a crowd of 300,000 during Martin Luther King’s March on Washington. The simple message of hope and endurance retains its power. When Bruce Springsteen recorded his 2006 album of protest songs made famous by Seeger, this was a shoe-in as the title track.

GT I’m Gonna Be an Engineer Peggy Seeger 1973 Avoiding the aggressive dogma and ranting soundbites that dulled political doctrines in later eras, Peggy Seeger constructed a folkie story song of such cogent morals and lyrical wit it proved the perfect soundtrack for the march of feminism and a telling anthem for the international women’s movement. Beneath the jauntily engaging narrative about one woman’s quest to break into a man’s professional world, she takes a scathing scalpel to society’s sexist indoctrinations. CI Sex Pistols 1977 Starring Johnny Rotten as the little boy from “The Emperor’s New Clothes” with Queen and Country in the all-together while Britain tried to celebrate the Silver Jubilee, the target of God Save the Queen’s ire wasn’t Her Majesty, but “England’s dreaming” of ancient empires and class deference while the truth was that there was “no future” for most of its subjects. Did it change anything? Well… does anyone remember the Golden Jubilee? GM If the Kids Are United Sham 69 1977 It’s easy to forget just how violent late 70s youth cults were.

Sham 69’s plea for unity can seem a tad laughable but they effectively had their career stymied by an over-lairy audience. Over a riff recyled from the Stooges’ No Fun, Jimmy Pursey seizes his chance to wax idealistic – “Take a look around you/ What do you see/ Kids with feelings like you and me” – but it’s that terrace bruiser of a chorus that gives Kids its dumb genius. The video has Pursey hugging a black youth (“All right, mate?”); the NF skinheads whose stage invasions prematurely halted Sham’s live career weren’t quite so chipper. MH Sheffield Socialist Choir 1992 Originally written as a defiant rallying call in 1871 by Eugène Pottier in response to the crushing of the Paris Commune, its rousing tune was added 17 years later by Pierre de Geyter and it was set to become the international socialist anthem. Translated into hundreds of languages, notable versions include those by Ani DiFranco and Utah Phillips, Carla Bley, Robert Wyatt, Billy Bragg and the suitably stirring Sheffield Socialist Choir.

Come the revolution, they won’t be singing “Here we go, here we go, here we go…” CI To Be Young, Gifted and Black Nina Simone 1970 Composed by Simone - with lyricist Weldon Irvine - as a posthumous tribute to her friend, the black playwright Lorraine Hansberry, this is a heady hymn of affirmation, urging the world’s black youth population to view their ethnic heritage as a blessing rather than a curse: “There are a billion boys and girls/ Who are young, gifted and black/ And that’s a fact!” Later covered, somewhat bizarrely, by Elton John. GT Don’t Call Me Nigger, Whitey Sly and the Family Stone 1969 This dark, hard psychedelic soul track from the Stand! album prefaced Act Two of Sly Stone’s profound impact on soul and rock music. The song is not a shaken fist at white racists, but sees Sly’s sister Rose singing a one-verse observation of a fight where she “heard two voices ring/ They were talkin’ angry to each other… And neither one could change a thing”.

An enlightened pessimism that fuelled Sly’s seminal 1971 album, There’s a Riot Goin’ On. GM Spacemen 3 1989 While their British indie peers were largely content to peruse their shoes, Rugby’s finest drone-rock avatars spent the late 80s perfecting the connections between lysergic introspection and rock’n’roll radicalism. Peter “Sonic Boom” Kember and future Spiritualized mainman Jason Pierce reached their hypnotic peak on this stunning, space-age-Stooges single, with Kember reasoning, convincingly, that it takes “just five seconds” for the enthralled listener to commit to overthrowing the status quo. A record to burn stuff to. GM Ghost Town The Specials 1981 The 2-Tone stars’ peak moment famously hit No 1 in the UK charts in the very week that riots tore through the poorest boroughs of Britian’s inner cities.

Inspired by the 20% unemployment rate reached in 1981 in their hometown of Coventry, Jerry Dammers’s haunting reggae anthem described the ensuing social chaos with devastating accuracy, warning that “the people getting angry”, but also despairing that the violent anger that should have been aimed at Thatcherism was turning the young working class against one another. GM Stiff Little Fingers 1978 John Peel heavily supported this Belfast punk band’s vicious debut single, featuring a lyric (co-written by music journalist and SLF manager Gordon Ogilvie) that compared angry Belfast youth with the bombs that ripped Northern Ireland apart at the height of the Troubles. The other star was the sandpaper-throated howl of frontman Jake Burns, who reached a state of near-apoplexy as he imagined himself “the suspect device the army can’t defuse”, set to “blow up in their face!” GM The Man Don’t Give a Fuck Super Furry Animals 1996 Like many songs with a rude word in the chorus, Super Furry Animals’s unofficial anthem is an outburst poised between anger and joy.

Sampling Steely Dan’s Show Biz Kids to mantric effect, The Man… was dedicated to impolite Cardiff City footballer Robin Friday. But like James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause, singer Gruff Rhys takes unfocused aim at pretty much everything (TV, the downtrodden masses), making SFA’s prize pogo moment a one-size-fits-all rebel song. KE Cat Stevens 1971 Forget the banal lyrics (“Why must we go on hating, why can’t we live in bliss?” are questions that remain unanswered) and cast aside cynicism (Cat Stevens himself would introduce this song from the stage by saying “It’s made me a lot of money”); banish, too, thoughts of Salman Rushdie and Yusuf Islam’s unfortunate remarks pertaining to him. The melody and a performance of wide-eyed innocence combine to make believers of anyone. CLS The Killing of Georgie (Part I and II) Rod Stewart 1976 “In these days of changing ways, so-called liberated days, a story comes to mind of a friend of mine,” sang Mr Da Ya Think I’m Sexy, before embarking on this tale of the murder of a pal whose only crime was his sexuality.

The melody leans first on Bob Dylan’s A Simple Twist of Fate, and then on the Beatles’ Don’t Let Me Down – but the tenderness that Rod brings to bear makes it its own affecting statement. CLS System Of A Down 2005 The most committed agitprop band ever signed to a corporate label, these Armenian-Californian metalheads hit satirical paydirt with this protest single against the Iraq war. The dark comedy comes from the boy-band pop chorus and its invitation to a desert party where, as the title implies, American soldiers bring their own bomb. But the point is the song’s rabid positing of the age-old question: “Why don’t presidents fight the war? Why do they always send the poor?” GM Dad’s Gonna Kill Me Richard Thompson 2007 In his long and illustrious career, Thompson has seldom written anything that could be construed as a protest song before this searing indictment of the Iraq war. The “Dad” in the title is Baghdad and, over searing guitar, Thompson’s novel ploy is to use the actual language of serving soldiers to paint a gory picture of their misery, fear and bewilderment.

Its raw power has earned equal measures of hatred and gratitude from the families of those he’s singing about. CI USA for Africa 1985 The year after Bob Geldof’s Band Aid asked the western world “Do they know it’s Christmas?” the assorted grandees of American popular music issued their, far superior, response. Incorporating solos by everyone from Michael Jackson to Bob Dylan via Huey Lewis, it was a starrier effort, but also took the sensible option of not talking about victims of the Ethiopian famine as if they lived on another planet. As Diana Ross sang, if a little cryptically: “There’s a choice we’re making/ We’re saving our own lives.” PMc Get Up, Stand Up The Wailers 1973 One of the last songs recorded by the original Wailers trio, Get Up, Stand Up is a signature tune of both Bob Marley and Peter Tosh, who shared lead vocals. Though notionally a rejection of Christianity and assertion of their own Rasta faith, it works instead as a rallying cry for the oppressed. After their first Island Records album pandered to rock audiences, this showed the Jamaican icons restaking their own ground, defiant and inspirational.

SY Tom Waits 2004 A gently swaying ballad telling the tale of a 21-year-old Illinois soldier posted in Iraq, yearning for the comforting banalities of life back home: sweeping snow, raking leaves, the simple life. Released on Waits’s Real Gone album, the song refuses to take sides or hector, instead deriving its considerable emotional power through poignant understatement. “Tell me, how does God choose?” asks the bewildered soldier. “Whose prayers does he refuse?” GT The Old Man’s Back Again (Dedicated to the Neo-Stalinist Regime) Scott Walker 1969 Probably the closest Noel Scott Engel ever got to being funky, this highlight from the acclaimed Scott 4 album takes protest against the oppression of the Soviet regime on an unlikely trip into cool and mellow lounge crooner territory. Walker’s rich baritone carries a poetic lyric about the USSR returning to the excesses of Stalinism, where a woman watches her lover taken away, while “Teardrops burned her cheeks/ For she thought she’d heard/ The shadow had left this land”. GM Wham Rap! (Enjoy What You Do) Wham!

1982 By the time of Club Tropicana, Wham! looked to have bought into the Thatcherite dream, but George Michael’s heart (as he proved later with solo hits such as Shoot the Dog) was always in the right place. This slice of white-boy funk, with its very 80s rap celebrating dole culture, proved utterly infectious: “Say DHSS, now the rhythm that I’m given is the very best!” indeed. CLS The Who 1965 The invention of punk rock 10 years before the fact. The Who’s most totemic song was allegedly inspired by Pete Townshend’s anger that his 1930s hearse had been towed from a street in Belgravia at the behest of the Queen Mother.

But its status as rock’s most influential youth rebel song lies with the Neanderthal two-chord thrash, the censorship-baiting “F-F-F… fade away!” stutter, and the arrogance with which Roger Daltrey insists: “Hope I die before I get old.” GM You Haven’t Done Nothin’ Stevie Wonder 1974 No artist has ever made agitprop sound as celebratory as the former Stevland Judkins Morris. And this furious deep-funk sneer at the presidency of Richard Nixon, featuring the Jackson 5 on backing vocals, saw Wonder at his most relevant. Released as a single and on the album Fulfillingness’ First Finale, it demanded: “We want the truth and nothing else.” Both hit the US No 1 spot just as the Watergate scandal finally forced Nixon’s resignation. GM Chris Wood 2008 Nominated for Best Original Song at this year’s BBC Folk awards, Wood’s viciously wry morality tale wraps a multitude of sharp edges into one conversation between the owner of a cottage in the Cotswolds and a bloke in a 4x4 trying to buy it off him.

Adapted from a Frank Mansell poem, it has plenty to say about English heritage and modern mores, and is made all the more delicious by Wood’s teasing delivery. CI Asbestos Lead Asbestos World Domination Enterprises 1985 Emerging from the same squatter culture as art collective the Mutoid Waste Company, Keith Dobson and co took a blowtorch to 80s yuppiedom. Snarled phrases – “Equal opportunity! Except if our pedigree dogs don’t like the smell of your children…” – emerged from squalls of guitar, bolted to a rhythm section that would bring Sly and Robbie to mind if the Jamaican double act were the types to walk their dogs on strings. CLS Shipbuilding Robert Wyatt 1982 Written by Elvis Costello in response to the Falklands war, Shipbuilding is that rare thing: a protest song full of nuance and subtlety. The slice-of-life lyric acknowledges the terrible paradox of the conflict providing jobs for those at home and body bags for those off to fight, but there’s little in the way of hysteria or dogma, just a general sadness reflected in the careworn vocals of 70s avant-garde veteran and committed Marxist Robert Wyatt.

GG Harrowdown Hill Thom Yorke 2006 By his own admission, the Radiohead frontman’s first solo single is “the most angry song I’ve ever written in my life”. It concerns weapons expert Dr David Kelly, who committed suicide in 2003 on Harrowdown Hill near his home in Oxfordshire. Or did he, queries Yorke on this digital funk jewel whose tasteful beginning cloaks a burgeoning sense of dread. “Did I fall or was I pushed?” he wails, his tone betraying his disbelief of the official line. PM Rockin’ in the Free World Neil Young 1989 Inspired by a chance remark from Crazy Horse member Frank “Poncho” Sampredo, this stunning powerhouse protest anthem from the Freedom album signalled Young’s return to form after his 80s decline. Based on the same withering, faux-patriotic sarcasm as Springsteen’s Born in the USA, Young uses a surging Crazy Horse riff to launch into the domestic and foreign policies of the first president Bush. The song became an anthem for the fall of the Berlin Wall. GM

Question: Which controversial 1992 song by the punk band Body Count was co-written by the group's vocalist Ice-T and provoked a national debate about freedom of speech in the US?
Answer: """Cop Killer"""