Where are the protest songs

I've had this song on repeat for days now.

'Rich Men North of Richmond' by Oliver Anthony (Spotify).

If you haven't heard it, you should listen. I get tingles up my neck every time I listen.

If you study history, there's this recurring pattern—what Robert Greene would call the cycle of generations.

Every few decades, the pendulum swings. The establishment tightens its grip, the next generation pushes back, and suddenly you get an explosion of extremes on the left and the right. Rebellion, control, and chaos.

You see it today. Black Lives Matter, the trucker convoys, the campus protests, assassinations, the rise of populism and conspiracy theories.

As Mark Twain famously said, history doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme.

And right now it feels like we're rhyming with the late 60's/early 70's.

Back then, that tension produced some of the best music of all time. Protest music about what was happening in the country.

I'm thinking of songs like:

• Fortunate Son – Creedence Clearwater Revival (class hypocrisy and the rich sending the poor to fight their wars)
• For What It's Worth – Buffalo Springfield (civil unrest and generational tension)
• Give Peace a Chance – John Lennon (a call to end war and embrace unity)
• The Times They Are A-Changin' – Bob Dylan (a warning to those in power that the world and its values are shifting fast)

These songs are all incredibly melodic middle fingers to the system.

But unless I'm missing something, we are in a similar time right now and yet this type of music seems to have vanished.

Where are the Trump protest songs? Who is our generation's Bob Dylan or John Lennon?

Sure, people post their outrage on TikTok, but where's the SONG?

A song so good that even the most ardent Republican father can't help but sing along to it as he drives his kids to school.

This Oliver Anthony song feels a bit like that.

I don't know what it's like to grow up in poverty in the American South, and I doubt I align with his politics, but I can't stop listening to it.

It's so moving. I can't imagine that anyone with a heart could listen to his voice cracking and not feel something towards the struggling working class people he's singing about.

More songs like this, please.

Originally published in the I lost ten million dollars doing something stupid issue of Never Enough.