Slyngstad | Bluesky
Transcript
A three-panel political comic by Slyngstad highlighting the long history of political activism in music. In the foreground of all three panels, two audience members are seen talking in profile.
Panel 1:
On Stage: A modern musician holding a microphone calls out, “FREE PALESTINE!”
Foreground: One audience member complains, “UGH, WHEN DID MUSICIANS START TO BE SO POLITICAL?”
Panel 2:
On Stage: Freddie Mercury performing at the 1985 Live Aid benefit concert, with the “Live Aid” global logo in the background.
Foreground: The second audience member replies, “START?”
Panel 3:
On Stage: Folk singer Woody Guthrie playing an acoustic guitar with his iconic slogan written across it: “THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS”.
Foreground: The second audience member continues, “MAYBE YOU JUST WEREN’T LISTENING.”
No one who’s ever heard music before asks this in good faith. It’s a physical impossibility.
the ones that pretend to, like swift and shareen
Queen played in apartheid south africa, chumbawumba referenced in a song called Slag Aid
Someone else who knows Chumbawamba music beyond Tubthumping!?
People think lots of things started while they were alive. They remember something from their past and assume it was a first without bothering to research it. Golden Age of Information - go figure.
Who thinks this? Even The Beatles were political.
Not that I’ve ever changed a political position because of a musician; I’d rather they not do so, as I don’t go to concerts for politics, but musicians don’t follow my preferences for some reason.
I’d also rather that they’d not “fade” the end of their song, but they won’t listen to me.
Not looking to start a debate. But genuinely what would you have them make songs about, if not something they believe in?
Edit: I guess you could listen to only acoustic tracks.
They say that people came there to listen to his music not his politics, I’m thinking, so if he had just strummed a guitar while he said it, they would have been all for it?
👀
Such a great album too
Who in the hell down votes this?
Arlo Guthrie patiently smiling down from ~~ the hereafter~~ his house, gently shaking his head, furious as fuck.
Arlo’s still around, man
Oh shit! I totally thought he kicked it years ago!
If something happens to him within the next month I’m blaming you.
Fair
I’m just kidding, superstition belongs inthe bronze age.
But what if I hire a bunch of Etsy witches to curse him?
How much do they cost and what services do they offer?
I wasn’t there either but it’s still the first one that comes to mind.
Elvis broke segregation laws.
The Beatles refused to play if the audiences were segregated.
Billie Holiday started offending parts of her audience by singing “Strange Fruit” in 1939.
Bad example as you’re not allowed to like him anymore because of who he was as a person. Allegedly.
Robin Hood and Little John walkin’ through the forest…
Don’t you hate when Rise Against the Machine gets political?
Same level of media literacy that missed the satire of the Starship Troopers movie.
Watching the US Government unironically propose Starship Troopers-inspired uniforms for the Space Force had me in stitches.
Only thing I hate is their music is still relevant even to today. World’s only worse and worse. Love the music, hate nothing has changed.
Reminds me of that Green Charlotte song, Lifestyles of the American Idiot.
Is this some other ratm I’m not aware of?
Tom Morello/Tim McIlrath side project?
Rise
…
Rise Against is also fitting too
It’s a shame a band that wrote a perfect conservative anthem with Prayer for the Refugee would go on to become crazy leftists.
Yes but that had already been spelled correctly elsewhere in this thread
Fuck it it stays wrong whoops!
I respect when someone stands by their mistakes.
When did they become a bunch of woke libtards? /s
You mised about 7 other insult phrases, 4 slurs and at at least 2 racist remarks.
True but I don’t think they are able to string that many words together at a time
Where there’s a will there’s a grammatically incorrect way.
I blame the 90s. I guess because of the sudden end of the cold war everything was more or less euphoric and apolitical for a while and people got used to it.
Having lived through the 80s and 90s as an adult, I can confirm that none of it was apolitical or euphoric.
I would give it more to the 80s, as most pop music was overtly Ra-Ra America and good vibes. The political Big Bads were the Soviets and Apartheid South Africa, and then LiveAid was a fund raiser for Ethiopia. Everything was external-facing.
Pop music is often / always shallow. But, the 1980s to me feel / felt like the lowest common denominator kind of music. Not only were the lyrics of the songs vapid, but the musicality was sucked out of them too, with the rise of drum machines and synthesizers.
There was good music in the 1980s, but you had to look for it. And, back then, that meant knowing someone with good musical tastes, or spending time in a record store. The stuff that you’d just encounter in pop culture was just… dire.
Meanwhile, the stuff that wasn’t part of the mainstream white culture in the 1980s was very political. Take the emergence of rap. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five had a big hit with “The Message” which was nothing but social commentary, and then came the rise of Public Enemy.
That’s a very US-centric view
Yeah. Not going to argue with that, but US media also flooded most of the world in the 80s.
That’s a great take for anyone who wasn’t alive in the 90s. Anyone who was there however knows it’s bunk.
Its a liberal myth that the end of the Soviet Union somehow brought in an era of peace.
I wasn’t talking about peace. I was talking about euphoria and apoliticalness in culture
Having lived them, I can tell you the '90s were nowhere near apolitical. Hell, half the examples here are '90s bands.
Of course there still was political music. But it was the rise or high point of the apolitical bland commercial pop culture. I am thinking of Britney Spears and the countless boy bands
Yes very apolitical decade 🤤
I think the point was that politics calmed down to the point the majority could ignore all of politics except Clinton’s sex life.
Compared to the like 200 years before it and two decades since
It was basically the single most apolitical point in history. It was a MASSIVE calm before the storm.
That’s not to say it didn’t have its politics but geeze
Gen X just sucked at rebelling against their parents
Here’s an example of a band being political for the likes, but not living it: Rise Against. I used to have more respect for them, but they’ve been painfully fucking silent on Palestine and the US oligarchy, AI, etc.
For everyone who saw this comment and started having doubts I looked it up on Wikipedia, and they haven’t been completely silent.
In August 2025, drummer Brandon Barnes wrote on Instagram: “Fuck Netanyahu. Free Palestine. The Israeli government’s genocide against the Palestinian people is horrific and unacceptable.” [207->https://www.instagram.com/brandonbarnes_ra/p/DN9J1h0j-zd/?hl=en]
Also I don’t think this is being silent against US oligarchy:
“We are coming to Minneapolis where the people have heroically stood up against ICE, stood up against Trump, stood up against this terrible rising tide of state terror” Morello said.
Ehhh, I think Rise Against gets a pass in this situation. They just haven’t been quite as active lately. They released a new album which has songs generically about rebelling against flails arms but they were so so so active during the bush era and during Trump’s first term.
Besides, I think the song Nod is a “nod” to the Palestine genocide but I agree it’s a little disappointing that there is not more. I just think that saying they’re not “living it” isn’t really fair when they are known as political legends.
Thanks for understanding where I’m coming from. Like I don’t hate them or anything. Quite the opposite. Life is hard and we all get older. I don’t blame them for wanting to enjoy life.
Rise Against is fucking solid.
They also didn’t issue a statement or write a song specifically for, say, the genocide in Sudan, but that one doesn’t seem to fucking matter for some reason.No one expects them to write a track about literally every injustice. They’d need like 500 albums worth of material. It’s just me as one single fan that means zero, expressing my observation. I’ve seen them live multiple times, I’ve listened to all of their work. It’s just funny to me that somehow Macklemore has spoken out more recently, than a band that basically built their entire image on being political.
I saw someone say this about another band I like.
Do we require every band we like to make a song about every injustice in this world? Or can we celebrate that they stood up against some of them?
They have a platform to speak up with, and a politically charged brand that they chose to carry. Now when some of the biggest threats to the world arise, they’re nowhere to be found. It must be nice to be able to just checkout and put blinders on while their fans are all getting fucked by high cost of living, climate change, data centers, and surveillance hell.
You demand perfection that you yourself do not have.
Why would I ever even claim perfection? I expect nothing. Like I said it’s my observation. I’m not writing some petition or calling them out. I’ve already well moved on.
You have not said that in the previous comments in the thread that I am talking to you in.
And you are upset they are quiet on the issues you deem most important. You do just come across as bitter and personally upset and wanting those you look up to to match your positions. I will actually move on. You can say whatever but it doesnt make it true.
LOL jesus christ. This is exactly why most people come to hate leftists.
Get some fucking perspective on reality, dude, because your position is completely fucking ridiculous. I just regret that there’s no way to know who you are so I can literally laugh directly into your face.
Feel however you want. As my profile states, I don’t give a shit about debates.
Of course not. People who can’t defend their positions usually avoid debates.
When the tanks show up at your door, they wont debate you either :) Hope you can find meaning in your life.
Don’t have this issue as much with punk and hardcore music :P
Okay I need some help. Is there a place I can figure out precisely the boundaries of hardcore music because I’ve been told a few times I should do a hardcore band.
I do blues, folk, jazz, and church music. Hardcore sounds fun but I should know what it is before I try
There aren’t really any boundaries.
You have: American hardcore Powerviolence Crust Euro hardcore
And about 100 other subgenres, that have their own styles. It’s mostly just energy speed and pissed off.
For example bands like Brain Tourniquet, storm of sedition, fentanyl, candy apple, tower 7, kinetic orbital strike, kohti tuhoa, extortion, Woodstock '99, Doped Up, and my current obsession 偏執症者 (Paranoid) all fall under the Hardcore label but all sound distinct from each other.
Edited to add links to band pages
I’m no expert (more of a metalhead) but I don’t know any of these. When talking about hardcore I’m thinking more about Sick of it All, Hatebreed, Terror, Walls of Jericho, 25 Ta Life and the like.
I know some of them, but they’re not super likely to show up on hardcore discussion threads.
Yours would. Although 25 ta life would just be Rick riding a horse memes.
Terror is always good. Incendiary, Backtrack, Have Heart, Trap Them, Nails, Left Behind, Trapped Under Ice. But yeah, hardcore has been around long enough there’s lots of different flavors and offshoots.
I apologize if my last post seemed dismissive, I’m a lifelong hardcore fan. Like old enough to buy Minor Threat out of step when it came out.
I edited my first post to add links for context for the bands I named, if I had the time I would add hundreds more, cheers!
No offense, I fully understand there are a lot of subgenres. I dont want to dismiss the bands you like, I was just surprised to not see what seem (to me) to be the more popular names. But that may be just be my own bubble, and should definitely not be considered an absolute reference or an attempt at gatekeeping what’s “good” hardcore. Anyway, thanks for the links!
I totally get that, and I was definitely not trying to gatekeep. I apologize if I came off that way, cheers and love what you love and keep rocking!
I consider that NYHC style stuff meathead macho hxc, and not fully representative of hardcore as a whole.
Like punk there is a spectrum of sounds, scenes, and subgenres.
Unfortunately, punk music does have nazi fans, hence the song Nazi Punks Fuck Off
I knew some dudes who were big into punk and hardcore in the early ‘00s. They seemed decent at first, so I hung out with them for about a month before I figured out they were racist neo nazi shitstains. I dropped that group of friends so fucking fast.
I am aware sadly. Good thing I said “as much” because the issue still exists, just not as much.
Very true, apologies, I totally missed that
No worries. I could have used better English but I got lazy :P
Nah, you’re good lol Sometimes my brain skips right over words. Anyway
Nazi punks fuck off!
Fuck yeah!
![People act like musicians standing up for what they believe in is anything new. #FreePalestine [Slyngstad]](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/229b1cbc-f82b-471f-a5b1-7aae0efb6aec.png){kind=link}