Title: Songs that Changed the World: Music of Resistance and Transformation
Author: Andrew Clarke
Publisher: Gelding Street Press; RRP: $39.99
Reviewed by: Jason Nahrung, Ballarat Writers Inc. Book Review Group
There are 42 songs in this collection, the number apparently a nod to Douglas Adams’ famed meaning of life, and appropriately so: as the author notes, these tunes have impacted lives and taken on lives of their own.
Melbourne-based Andrew Clarke, who has written more than 30 books, with this his third for Gelding Street Press, whittled his selection from a hundred, looking for songs that ‘shifted thinking, sparked action, or gave people a voice they didn’t know they had’.
The list starts with ‘Strange Fruit’, by Billie Holiday (1939), and ends with Sooking’s ‘La Liberte’, an Algerian/French protest song from 2019. A variety of musical styles and political and social movements are included. ‘Y.M.C.A.’ – gay pride, with a sly wink to those who didn’t quite get it, and later, Lady Gaga’s ‘Born This Way’, ‘a personal anthem so many in the LGBTQ+ community could relate to’. Helen Reddy and Loretta Lynn, stepping up for feminism; Joni Mtchell for environmentalism. Johnny Cash, Clarke argues, kicked open Nashville’s door to let politics into country music.
To his credit, Clarke has reached further than the obvious must-have American offerings (Pete Seeger, Sam Cooke, Bob Dylan) to highlight songs from Rwanda, Italy, Japan and more that have become the themes of popular movements.
As any magazine editor knows, a list is good fodder for a chinwag, not for just what’s in but what’s out. I won’t buy into that, but Clarke has left room for some watercooler discussion by spreading the idea of impactful songs beyond that of blatant protest. He labels ‘Panama’ by Van Halen the most unusual inclusion, an example of music used as ‘psychological torture, a sharp contrast to its traditional role as a unifying cultural force’.
He notes how Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born in the USA’ and Creedence Clearwater Revival’s ‘Fortunate Son’ have been co-opted by politics that clearly haven’t paid attention to the lyrics, how the localised subject of songs such as Midnight Oil’s ‘Beds Are Burning’ can find fresh meaning elsewhere where the struggle remains the same.
Nena gets a (red) balloon for Cold War angst (with an interesting comparison of the original German versus the English version), the Beatles and Elvis win spots by popular vote, Band Aid for global achievement. There’s the occasional double dip, notably comparing the approach/synergy of headliner U2’s ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’ with the Cranberries’ ‘Zombie’ 11 years later (similarly responding to an outrage in Northern Ireland).
A strength is the background to the music: perhaps something of their genesis, how they ruffled feathers, shook up the industry (Triple J earns a mention for its championing of N.W.A. when no other radio station would), became inspirational even if by accident.
The book itself is a glossy production making the most of its record motif, Clarke’s text beefed up with images of the artists and acts of protest. Which is where a couple of reservations put a scratch in the vinyl.
While the images have their sources acknowledged, it wouldn’t have hurt to have a few captions rather than trust to common knowledge or intuitive leap based on the names dropped in the text. Why is Cash pictured with Ray Charles? Is that Joan Baez giving Seeger’s ‘We Shall Overcome’ fresh air in a live performance?
Hear all about Songs that Changed the World
@ Channel 9’s Extra
The text also seems to get caught in a groove at times – the Beatles’ wit, charm and style are remarked upon twice on the same page, and twice we are told ‘Born in the USA’ was a Trojan horse – and sometimes the information feels like duplication: in the case of the comparison of the Sex Pistols to Nirvana (explosion/fallout, fuse/flare), quite literally.
That interplay of the songs, when done with restraint, is another strength, with Clarke noting how musicians respond to and build on those who have gone before: ‘Respect’ (Aretha Franklin) to ‘Love Child’ (Diana Ross & the Supremes) to ‘I Am Woman’ (Reddy).
Clarke has reached out to cover a variety of nations and genres to provide a list where Marvin Gaye and Bob Marley rub shoulders with Public Enemy and Green Day, providing a useful primer as well as a conversation starter.
‘Sometimes,’ Clarke writes, ‘we don’t know what we need until someone puts it in lyrics.’ And that, as events in the United States continue to demonstrate, won’t change any time soon.
Review copy provided
