Music Inspires Change

On November 3rd, the country went to the polls and voted for change. Whatever change means to you, a moment like this always sends me back to my records, because music has been part of every push for change I can think of.

Songs don’t pass laws, but they do something just as important. They give people the words when they can’t find their own. They turn a crowd into a chorus. They let you know you’re not the only one who sees what’s wrong and wants it fixed.

That’s Joan Baez and Bob Dylan in the photo at the top of this post, singing at the March on Washington on August 28, 1963. Folk singers shared the stage with the speakers that day, and “We Shall Overcome,” an old gospel song Pete Seeger helped carry to folk audiences, had already become the anthem of the civil rights movement.

Sam Cooke heard “Blowin’ in the Wind” and felt a Black artist should be writing songs like that. He answered with “A Change Is Gonna Come,” recorded in 1964 and still one of the most moving records ever made. Nina Simone wrote “Mississippi Goddam” after the murder of Medgar Evers and the church bombing in Birmingham, and she didn’t soften a single word. A few years later James Brown gave a generation something to shout with “Say It Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud.”

When the Vietnam War divided the country, the radio pushed back. Barry McGuire’s “Eve of Destruction” went to number one in 1965. Creedence Clearwater Revival asked who was really being sent to fight on “Fortunate Son.” Edwin Starr shouted the question and the answer on “War,” Black Sabbath turned “War Pigs” into a heavy metal sermon, and John Lennon and Yoko Ono recorded “Give Peace a Chance” in a Montreal hotel room during their 1969 bed-in.

In 1970, after four students were killed by National Guard gunfire at Kent State, Neil Young wrote “Ohio,” and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young had it out within weeks. Marvin Gaye followed in 1971 with “What’s Going On,” asking questions that still don’t have easy answers over one of the smoothest grooves to ever come out of Motown.

The thread runs back further and forward further too. Woody Guthrie wrote “This Land Is Your Land” in 1940 as an answer to “God Bless America.” Public Enemy made “Fight the Power” for Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing in 1989, and Rage Against the Machine turned “Killing in the Name” into pure defiance a few years later.

Every one of these songs came out of a moment when people felt something had to change. Some were hits, some got pulled from radio playlists, and all of them have outlasted the headlines that inspired them.

That’s why I put together this playlist. Put it on, turn it up and listen to the words. Better yet, find these songs on vinyl, drop the needle and let them remind you that music has always been part of how change happens.