What are your favorite 5 socially/politically-charged songs? [View All]

[marmar]

It's amazing the stuff you think to post when you're bored on a Saturday night.....Anyway, here are mine, with snippets from each:


1. Inner City Blues, Marvin Gaye

This ain't livin', This ain't livin'
No, no baby, this ain't livin'
No, no, no
Inflation no chance
To increase finance
Bills pile up sky high
Send that boy off to die
Make me wanna holler
The way they do my life
Make me wanna holler
The way they do my life


2. White Man in Hammersmith Palais, the Clash

Dress back jump back this is a bluebeat attack
'Cos it won't get you anywhere
Fooling with your guns
The British Army is waiting out there
An' it weighs fifteen hundred tons

White youth, black youth
Better find another solution
Why not phone up Robin Hood
And ask him for some wealth distribution


3. Living for the City, Stevie Wonder

A boy is born in hard-time Mississippi
Surrounded by four walls that ain't so pretty
His parents give him love and affection
To keep him strong moving in the right direction
Living just enough, just enough for the city

His father works some days for fourteen hours
And you can bet he barely makes a dollar
His mother goes to scrub the floor for many
And you'd best believe she hardly gets a penny
Living just enough, just enough for the city


4. Red Hill Mining Town, U2

We'll scorch the earth
Set fire to the sky
We stoop so low to reach so high
A link is lost
The chain undone
We wait all day
For night to come
And it comes
Like a hunter child

I'm hanging on
You're all that's left to hold on to
I'm still waiting
I'm hanging on
You're all that's left to hold on to

Love...slowly stripped away
Love...has seen its better day


5. Rat Race, Bob Marley

Some a gorgon-a, some a hooligan-a, some a guine-gog-a
In this 'ere rat race, yeah!
Rat race!
I'm singin' that
When the cat's away,
The mice will play.
Political voilence fill ya city, ye-ah!
Don't involve Rasta in your say say;
Rasta don't work for no C.I.A.
Rat race, rat race, rat race! Rat race, I'm sayin':
When you think is peace and safety:
A sudden destruction.
Collective security for surety, ye-ah!