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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

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY MATTHEW COOLEY. IMAGES IN ILLUSTRATION BY GIE KNAEPS/GETTY IMAGES; TIM MOSENFELDER/GETTY IMAGES; MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES, 3; AL PEREIRA/GETTY IMAGES/MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES, 2; PARAS GRIFFIN/GETTY IMAGES; KEVIN MAZUR/WIREIMAGE; ERIKA; GOLDRING/GETTY IMAGES; GILLES PETARD/REDFERNS; LINDSAY BRICE/MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES; SCOTT DUDELSON/FILMMAGIC/GETTY IMAGES; RAYMOND BOYD/GETTY IMAGES; EARL GIBSON/BET/GETTY IMAGES; HERITAGE ART/HERITAGE IMAGES/GETTY IMAGES, 3.

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.

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.”

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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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