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The 100 Best Protest Songs of All Time

From Pete Seeger and Billie Holiday to Beyoncé and Rage Against the Machine, musicians across genres have spoken truth to power through their songs

By ROLLING STONE
Illustration of protest singers

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When Chuck D of Public Enemy famously called hip-hop “the Black CNN,” he was touching on a universal truth that goes beyond genre: Music and protest have always been inextricably linked. For some marginalized groups, the simple act of creating music at all can be a form of speaking out against an unjust world. Our list of the 100 Best Protest Songs spans nearly a century and includes everything from pre-World War II jazz and Sixties folk to Eighties house music, 2000s R&B, and 2020s Cuban hip-hop.

Some of these songs decry oppression and demand justice, others are prayers for positive change; some grab you by the shoulders and shout in your face, others are personal, private attempts to subtly embody the contradictory nature of political struggle and change from the inside. Many of our selections are specific products of leftist political traditions (like Pete Seeger’s version of “We Shall Overcome”), but just as many are hits that slipped urgent messages into the pop marketplace (like Nena’s anti-nuclear war New Wave bop “99 Luftballons”).

This is probably the only Rolling Stone list to ever feature Phil Ochs, the Dead Kennedys, and Beyoncé side by side, but each of those artists is a vital participant in the long story of musicians using their voices to demand a better world.

70

Los Tigres Del Norte, ‘Tres Veces Mojado’

This narrative song from the norteño greats detail an immigrant’s journey from El Salvador to Guatemala, from Guatemala to Mexico, and then Mexico to the United States, confronting different biases and policies at each border: “El mismo idioma y el color reflexioné/¿Cómo es posible que me llamen extranjero?” (“The same language and the color I reflected/How is it possible that they call me a foreigner?”). Detailing the struggle to become “legal” in America, the song took on an extra-poignant meaning when they performed it at Folsom Prison in 2018, for the 50th anniversary of Johnny Cash’s famed concert.

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69

Billy Bragg, ‘There Is Power in a Union’

Borrowing the title of a 1910s labor tune by martyred activist Joe Hill and the melody of Civil War anthem “Battle Cry of Freedom,” British folk-punk icon Billy Bragg wrote an arm-in-arm solidarity singalong that has grown to be an essential anthem of labor movements around the world. He penned “There Is Power in a Union” after getting a crash course in front-lines socialism while doing shows for the United Kingdom miners’ strikes of 1984 and 1985. In later years, Bragg has been known to show up to union rallies and picket lines to sing it himself.

68

Janelle Monáe feat. Wondaland Records, ‘Hell You Talmbout’

This cathartic 2015 chant is sophisticatedly arranged but remarkably simple — nothing more than a gospel chorus, some chattering marching-band drums, and a catchy shout. Janelle Monáe inserted the names of Black people who died at the hands of police and racially motivated violence: “Trayvon Martin, say his name/Trayvon Martin, say his name/Trayvon Martin, say his name/Trayvon Martin, won’t you say his name?” The format made the song endlessly malleable, appearing in David Byrne’s 2018 American Utopia with additions like Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. A 17-minute version released in 2021 using the names of women killed in police-related incidents features Beyoncé standing up for Sandra Bland, Symone Marshall, and Yvette Smith.

67

Mecca Normal, ‘I Walk Alone’

Before the riot-grrrl movement fully emerged raging from the Pacific Northwest, there was Vancouver’s Mecca Normal, a drumless punk-poetry duo out to challenge the world with DIY energy, feminist lyrics, and a riveting, audience-baiting performance style. The dizzying cult classic “I Walk Alone” captures the unique fear of simply being a woman walking by herself in a city. Minimal and harrowing, it’s a shout for women to live in a world without feeling like a target. Vocalist Jean Smith added in live performances, “Because it’s my right to walk anywhere, any time of day, wearing whatever the fuck I want!”

66

Junior Murvin, ‘Police and Thieves’

Junior Murvin’s unmistakable, Curtis Mayfield-modeled falsetto carries this lilting reggae classic about violence in the streets of Kingston, Jamaica, be it from police brutality or warring street gangs. Murvin, a one-time rocksteady singer, embarked on a new career as a roots-reggae truth-teller, thanks to dub cosmonaut Lee “Scratch” Perry — their first collaboration would be this indelible piece of street reportage. The song would take on a new life as it became the theme to the Notting Hill Carnival riots in 1976, when London youths clashed with police over the type of harassment detailed in the song. The Clash would be inspired to write “White Riot” for their first LP and would cover “Police and Thieves,” too, the first of the band’s many forays into reggae.

65

Kris Kristofferson, ‘They Killed Him’

Still in the early years of Kris Kristofferson’s pivot to becoming country music’s most prominent lefty voice, “They Killed Him” was an ode to three great peacemakers who paid the ultimate price for their beliefs — Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Jesus Christ. The song, later covered by Bob Dylan, would presage decades of Kristofferson fighting for peace, disarmament, prisoner’s rights, and farm-workers unions in deed and song. “Kris used his stardom for the benefit of others,” former manager Mark Rothbaum told Rolling Stone. “I don’t think he gave a hoot one way or the other about what it temporarily might do to his stardom. He lent his hand to those who were being oppressed. He couldn’t stay out of it.”

64

Gil Scott-Heron, ‘Whitey on the Moon’

The 1969 Apollo moon landing was hailed as a landmark achievement for mankind, but as Gil Scott-Heron pointed out on his 1970 spoken-word classic “Whitey on the Moon,” the multibillion-dollar space program did little to help struggling Americans or heal the nation’s racial divide. “A rat done bit my sister Nell/With Whitey on the moon,” he says at the top of the song. “Her face and arms began to swell/And Whitey’s on the moon.” The song is a highlight of Scott-Heron’s Small Talk at 125th and Lenox, best remembered for its opening track, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.” But “Whitey on the Moon,” which clocks in at a mere 1:57, encapsulates that moment in history just as incisively.

63

The Special AKA, ‘Free Nelson Mandela’

Inspired by the 1983 birthday concert for Nelson Mandela and the upbeat sound of South African mbaqanga making its way to London clubs, Jerry Dammers of the Special AKA wrote the catchiest anti-apartheid song of the 1980s. Produced by Elvis Costello and featuring vocals from members of the English Beat and a young Caron Wheeler (later of Soul II Soul), the song measures its serious subject matter — “His body abused, but his mind is still free/Are you so blind that you cannot see?” — with breezy two-tone ska, making it a Top 10 hit in the U.K.

62

YG feat. Nipsey Hussle, ‘FDT’

Raised on Ice Cube and 2Pac, Compton firebrand YG knew how to cut right to the issue in a gangsta-rap song. The result was Black Lives Matter protesters across the country taking to the streets and chanting “Fuck Donald Trump” like it was “This Land Is Your Land.” Recording in the run-up to the 2016 election, YG and Nipsey Hussle were critical of the Republican candidate’s opinions of Mexicans and tired of just talking among themselves. Their scabrous attack brought the energy of vintage Nineties rap into the 21st century: “Have a rally out in L.A., we gon’ fuck it up,” rapped YG. “Home of the Rodney King riot, we don’t give a fuck.”

61

Emel Mathlouthi, ‘Kelmti Horra’

Before Emel Mathlouthi’s career as a boundary-pushing avant-electronic auteur, she was a Tunisian Bob Dylan and Joan Baez acolyte who gained fame from a viral video, singing an a cappella version of “Kelmti Horra” in the middle of an Arab Spring demonstration. Her beaming song of defiance — “We are free peoples who are not afraid/We are secrets that never die/And for those who resist we are the voice/In their chaos we shine” — had been banned in Tunisia. However, after the 2011 video, it slowly became an anthem across the Middle East, the soundtrack to uprisings, protests, and, ultimately, regime change.

60

Carl Bean, ‘I Was Born This Way’

Before Gaga even said “gaga,” gospel singer turned disco crooner Carl Bean was soaring on this luxurious and joyful acceptance anthem: “I’m happy, I’m carefree, and I’m gay/I was born this way.” Songwriter Bunny Jones witnessed how the world treated the gay employees of her Harlem hair salon and, with composer Chris Spierer, released the original Valentino version “I Was Born This Way” as the first release on her Gaiee label. After Motown commissioned Bean for a lush disco remake, one of the defining pride anthems was born, storming the charts in 1977 and remixed and reembraced by the dance community every few years since. “If you notice, I didn’t do any reference to shaking your tail feather or any of that stuff,” Bean told Vice. “I just closed my eyes and sang out of my heart about the journey of being sexually different in our society.”

59

Tupac feat. Talent, ‘Changes’

Recorded in 1992, but a smash single upon its posthumous release in 1998, Tupac’s “Changes” played like “The Message” for a hip-hop generation in the shadows of the crack epidemic, the L.A. riots, and the Gulf War. Riding a wave of Bruce Hornsby piano keys (sampled from his 1986 Number One meditation on similar themes, “The Way It Is”), 2Pac runs through a tornado of woes — drugs, racism, police brutality, hunger, the prison-industrial complex, the murder of Huey P. Newton — in his inimitable mix of anguished pain and righteous anger: “Instead of war on poverty/They got a war on drugs so the police can bother me.”

58

Country Joe and the Fish, ‘The Fish Cheer/I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag’

Few moments of Sixties counterculture are more iconic than Country Joe McDonald onstage at Woodstock in his Army uniform, guitar hanging from a rope, demanding to an audience of thousands, “Give me an F.…” The studio version is a little less inflammatory (they spell “F-I-S-H” instead), but the satirical skiffle “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag” remains razor sharp, taking on America’s Vietnam-era war machine with the darkest of humor: “Come on, fathers don’t hesitate/Send them off before it’s too late/Be the first one on your block/To have your boy come home in a box.” The song ended up being played both at home and abroad, and one P.O.W. even told McDonald that it boosted the morale of the prisoners in the infamous “Hanoi Hilton.”

57

Nena, ‘99 Luftballons’

The only Eighties Cold War smash about nuclear dread that could out-anxiety Prince’s “1999,” Nena’s “99 Luftballons” emerged after guitarist Carlo Karges watched balloons rise into the atmosphere at a Rolling Stones concert in West Berlin. He wondered what would happen if they crossed the Berlin wall, spawning the song’s narrative about balloons becoming the target of a military strike, ending the world. Pretty serious stuff, but it nonetheless anchored one of the most buoyant and giddy one-hit wonders of all time.

56

The Clash, ‘The Guns of Brixton’

One of the most incendiary songs in a catalog built on them, “The Guns of Brixton” is a reggae-punk classic that describes London’s youths in conflict with both local police and economic hardship — a stew of discontent that resulted in the Brixton riots two years later. The first Clash song written and sung by bassist Paul Simonon, “Guns of Brixton” pulls no punches about police violence — “When they kick at your front door/How you gonna come?/With your hands on your head/Or on the trigger of your gun?” — but does so on a bass line so pop-ready that it resurfaced as Beats International’s global dance hit “Dub Be Good to Me.”

55

Loretta Lynn, ‘The Pill’

Possibly the most controversial country song ever released, Loretta Lynn’s frank and funny tune about birth control and female independence brought unfiltered feminist politics to the “Rhinestone Cowboy” era. The Supreme Court decision that gave unmarried people the same access to birth control as married couples was only three years in the rearview mirror. Country radio stations throughout the U.S. banned it, but it would prove influential across generations of politically-minded country stars like the Chicks, Miranda Lambert, and Kacey Musgraves.

54

Peter Tosh, ‘Legalize It’

Following the disbanding of the Wailers, Peter Tosh launched his solo career with what would become the most timeless pro-marijuana anthem of them all. More than an ode to the green stuff, “Legalize It” was a blow to the Jamaican “shitstem,” whose police arrested and brutalized Tosh in 1975 for partaking in Rastafari ceremonial smoking. Over a languid pulse, Tosh speaks of cannabis’ medicinal benefits and cross-cultural impact (“Judges smoke it, even the lawyer do”), creating a song and slogan that have lit up decriminalization movements across countries and decades.

53

Beyoncé feat. Kendrick Lamar, ‘Freedom’

Beyoncé made a world-changing statement when she strode into the halftime show at Super Bowl 50 leading a phalanx of Black women in military garb that evoked the Black Panthers. Her liberated radicalism came through equally powerfully on “Freedom,” her most gripping political song, featuring a searing assist from Kendrick Lamar; when she sings “I can’t move,” the line echoes “I can’t breathe,” Eric Garner’s final words before being choked to death by police. “It is up to us to take a stand and demand that they ‘stop killing us,’” Bey said. Eight years after it was released on Lemonade, “Freedom” became the theme song of Kamala Harris’ 2024 presidential campaign.

52

Victor Jara, ‘Manifiesto’

A leader of Chile’s nueva canción movement, singer-songwriter and activist Victor Jara mixed socialist ideas and personal observations, making him a voice to the country’s underclass and a folk sensation the world over. Gently plucked and tenderly sung, “Manifiesto” is an ode to music’s power of change when in the hands of the common man: “My guitar is not for the rich/No, nothing like that/My song is of the ladder/We are building to reach the stars.” The song was one of the last that Jara wrote before his detainment and murder under the Pinochet regime, forever living on as a symbol of music’s ability to illuminate, uplift, and challenge.

51

Dead Kennedys, ‘Nazi Punks Fuck Off’

One of the most potent anti-racist rants of all time blows by in a mere 63 seconds in this indelible hardcore-punk classic. After mosh-pit bullies started showing up at Dead Kennedys shows in the early Eighties, the reliably provocative vocalist Jello Biafra penned this short and sharp letter. More than just an anti-racist kiss-off, “Nazi Punks Fuck Off” breaks down punk ideology, jock mentality, and even offers alternate sources to direct anger: “You still think swastikas look cool/The real Nazis run your schools/They’re coaches, businessmen, and cops/In the real Fourth Reich, you’ll be the first to go.” Naturally, the seven-inch came with a little SS-style armband where the swastika was dutifully crossed out by a red-circle-backslash.

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