Political Studies Association's Best Political Songs: Mercy, Mercy, Me

As part of its 60th Anniversary celebration, the UK's Political Studies Association is polling its membership to compile a list of the top 'political' songs of all time.

They state that:

• the top ten songs voted by members and an additional ten chosen by a judging panel will be published by the New Statesman to coincide with the Association’s 60^th Annual Conference, which is being held in Edinburgh from 29^th March to 1^st April.

And here's the list of songs that they've chosen as being exemplary 'political':

Annie Lennox & Aretha Franklin: Sisters are doing it for themselves

Anon.: Bella Ciao

Barry McGuire: Eve of Destruction

Billie Holiday: Strange Fruit

Billy Bragg: Which side are you on?

Bob Dylan: The Times They Are a changing

Bob Marley: Redemption Song

Bruce Springsteen: Born in the USA

Carl Bean: I was born this way

Cecil A. Spring-Rice: I vow to thee my country

Charles A. Tindley: We Shall Overcome

Charly García: Nos siguen pegando abajo 

Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle: Le Marseillaise

Donovan: Universal Soldier

Edwin Starr: War

Elvis Costello: Tramp The Dirt Down

Enoch Sontonga: Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika

Eugène Pottier: The Internationale

Fela Kuti: Zombie

Gil Scott Heron: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

Horst Wessel: Die Fahne hoch

Jim Connell: The Red Flag

John Lennon: Imagine 

Joni Mitchell: Big Yellow Taxi

Leornard Cohen: The Partisan

Li Youyuan: The East is Red 

Marvin Gaye: What's Going On?

Midnight Oil: Beds are Burning

Nena: 99 Luftaballons

Nina Simone: Mississippi Goddam

Pete Seeger: Where have all the flowers gone?

Peter Gabriel: Biko

Plastic Ono Band: Give Peace a Chance

Public Enemy: Fight the Power

Randy Newman: Political Science 

RATM: Killing in the name

Robert Wyatt: Shipbuilding

Rolling Stones: Gimme Shelter

Sex Pistols: God Save The Queen

The Beatles: Revolution

The Clash: Know Your Rights

The Cranberries: Zombie

The Jam: Eton Rifles

The Police: Invisible Sun

The Specials AKA: Free Nelson Mandela

The Strawbs: Part of the Union

Tracy Chapman: Talkin' 'bout a revolution

U2: Sunday Bloody Sunday

UB40: 1 in 10

Verdi: Chorus of Hebrew Slaves

Victor Jara: Te Recuerdo Amanda

William Blake: Jerusalem

Woody Guthrie: This Land is Your Land

Now to give credit where it is due, the list is not as lame as one might have feared, even if it is heavily skewed in favour of nostalgic boomer anthems and assumes that music stopped being political sometime in the mid 1990s.

But, it is an obvious collection, in part because it is underpinned by a very narrow assumption about what politics 'is' and therefore what can properly count as 'political'. These choices reveal that politics--at least for those who drafted this list--is defined by explicit representations of nationalism, street protest, conflict, inequality, support for--or opposition to--government policy, and perhaps alienation that have become associated with historical time periods or events. These are presented as songs that have responded to a politics that exists out there regardless of what we may think about it.

It is the politics of recognized issues, institutions, and actors, that have been invested by the dominant socio-economic forces of the time with the importance and privileged status of being coded as 'political' in political discourses. Moreover, it is a politics of direct intentions, intentions that the audience can supposedly discern from the lyrical content or title of the pieces.

To be clear, I am not arguing that these songs do not cover what we can consider to be political subjects. And it is not to say that these songs do not address important political issues. But there is more to music being political and to the politicization of music than a neat fit with events that are recorded in orthodox history books as being 'of' the political sphere.

For example, take the Rolling Stones' 'Brown Sugar'. Some might dismiss it as a cheeky song about lust--or maybe lines of prose from Strom Thurmond's secret diary--that is devoid of any broad political significance. Yet, the narrative exposes the societal power-relations enabled by the privileging of the white heterosexual male gaze. More specifically, the song can be seen as an example of how that gaze  eroticizes difference into an object of fetishistic corporeal desire while simultaneously denying the humanity of the eroticized other. This strikes me as incredibly political and as important to understanding gender and racial dynamics today as  when it is was first performed.

Similarly, this list does not take into account that aesthetics are in part about the shaping of what we can and/or are prepared to perceive as well as the value to be accorded to ways of representing our perceptions. And since perception itself shapes political possibility by forwarding a particular understanding of reality, then music that challenges aesthetic norms is also highly political. So pieces like John Cage's 4'33 or genres like Noise Music are themselves constitutive of the limits of the political, transgressing boundaries that are supposed to separate art, profanity, the abject, or even the sublime. While I am unsure how these might relate to a specific praxis, that does not mean that they lack a political sensibility.

Furthermore, the limited conception of the political underpinning the PSA list completely misses the constitutive role of music in the creation and maintenance of particular relations of power. For example, the Barney the Dinosaur Theme Song or the Meow Mix Commercial Jingle were favoured by American interrogators as a means to torture detainees in Iraq. In my mind they have just as an important political significance as Pete Seeger lamenting the metaphorical absence of flowers.

So in the end, even with my reservations above, I'm not entirely sure how to read the PSA's attempt to form links between the field of politics and popular culture. On the one hand, given how small-c conservative the disciplines of politics and international relations are in general, might this represent an opening--however small--to begin to get colleagues to take the popular culture-world politics continuum seriously? Or is this best seen as a shallow and gimmicky appropriation that just reinforces problematic understandings of politics and of popular culture?

Update: you can find the top 20--as voted for by some members of the PSA--here.

Photo credit: ktylerconk

Comments

[Rafa]

I do not see any country tunes in the list. In the interest of balance, may I suggest this country political/patriotic song posted on YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cd1r5MMjURE

[Kyle]

Hi Rafa,

Thanks for the link. It reminds me of a line from the Simpsons about the tendency for people to lament a past that only ever existed in the minds of conservatives...