Dead Kennedys: “MTV — Get off the Air” (1985)
What is claimed in its relentlessly self-aggrandizing, self-promoting agenda in the early ’80s was that it was an iconoclastic trailblazer changing the course of music history. But what MTV left out was that it was, in fact, “of, by, and for corporate America” — specifically, major record labels, for which MTV served as a 24-hour infomercial. Witness the worst that the FM dial had to offer — from crappy AOR like Toto to pathetic pop like Madonna — set to vapid images. And yet, MTV was basically given a free pass by the vast majority of the music world — until Dead Kennedys spoke up with “MTV — Get off the Air”, that is.
Mixing equal doses of humor and commentary, the song begins with a funky beat and pitch-altered chant of “Fun fun fun in the fluffy chair / Flame up the herb / Woof down the beer” as Jello Biafra does an exuberantly mean imitation of MTV video jockey J.J. Jackson with the promise “to help destroy what’s left of your imagination.” And by the time the song shifts to blazing punk, the so-called “artists” on MTV get theirs: “See the latest rejects from the Muppet Showshake their tits and their dicks as they lip-sync on screen.” The industry is controlled by “tin-eared, graph-paper-brained accountants.” MTV has come up with a few good programs since then, but has anything changed with the music industry itself? – Doug Sheppard
The Ramones: “My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down (Bonzo Goes to Bitburg)” (1985)
It’s strange how one of the most vehement protest songs rock ‘n’ roll gave us during the ’80s came courtesy of a band that many had considered to be on its last legs. Five years removed from their glory years, the Ramones were mired in a musical rut in 1985, but a controversial visit by President Ronald Reagan to a military cemetery in Bitburg, West Germany lit a spark under one Jeffrey Hyman, known as by most as Joey Ramone. Whenever the Ramones dabbled in political themes in the past, the results were always tongue-in-cheek (“Havana Affair”, “Commando”), but upon seeing news footage of Reagan visiting the graves of Nazi SS members, Joey, a fervent Jewish Democrat, got serious.
Co-written with bandmate Dee Dee Ramone and former Plasmatics bassist Jean Beauvoir, “My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down” seethes with anger, Joey spitting his lyrics (“You’re a politician / Don’t become one of Hitler’s children”), but is ingeniously offset by one of the band’s most contagious melodies from that decade, and Joey’s venom is countered by cheeky “ah, na na na” vocals in the background. The band might have been well past its prime, and fervent Republican Johnny Ramone was none too pleased with the song, but “Bonzo” remains one of Joey’s finest moments on record. – Adrien Begrand
Hugh Masekela: “Bring Him Back Home” (1987)
The role of music in South African anti-apartheid resistance is well-documented, both as coded communication between black South Africans and as protest music aimed at the government and the world at large. Hugh Masekela’s “Bring Him Back Home” came out in the last decade of apartheid, a no-holds-barred 1987 single inspired by a letter smuggled to Masekela from an imprisoned Nelson Mandela urging him to keep making music. In exile at the time, Masekela wrote what became a rallying cry for the anti-apartheid movement, demanding Mandela’s safe release to the township streets with unyielding vocal harmonies and a wall of horns.
South Africa’s apartheid government wasted no time in banning the anthemic piece, but its irrepressible melody and message hit hard both inside and outside the nation and marked a shift in Hugh Masekela’s musical activism toward more explicit political statements. “Bring Him Back Home” would only be legalized in 1990, after Mandela’s release from prison; Mandela himself would dance along to the song as it played during his and Winnie Mandela’s tour of Boston. It remained one of Masekela’s most-played songs during live performances for the rest of his career. – Adriane Pontecorvo
Suzanne Vega: “Luka” (1987)
Songs about children — never mind abused children — carry a high risk of sentimentality, but Suzanne Vega’s biggest hit, “Luka”, worked all the more powerfully because of the way it skirted any sort of smarminess. The song, written from the perspective of a little boy named Luka, is a heartbreakingly tough snapshot of a battered soul. Luka’s not asking for your sympathy and he doesn’t want your help, and yet there’s a pathos in the way he makes sense of his situation. “I think it’s cause I’m clumsy / I try not to talk too loud,” he observes, then, “Maybe it’s because I’m crazy / I try not to act too proud.”
Vega has said in interviews that she wrote the song after observing a young boy who didn’t seem to fit in with his peers; she didn’t think he was abused, but he got her thinking about children who were. It’s a clear-eyed, indelible portrait of a boy who seems specific and real, yet universal. His chorus of “You’re only hit until you cry / Don’t ask questions / Don’t ask why” was sort of shocking on late ’80s commercial radio, and yet it got a good number of people asking about it. It’s one measure of the song’s unlikely popularity that it appeared briefly on a Simpsons’ episode; when Homer sings your political lyrics, you know you’ve made an impact. – Jennifer Kelly
N.W.A.: “Fuck tha Police” (1988)
Before the controversy surrounding the Los Angeles Police Department’s Rampart scandal, in which police officers were accused of asphyxiating alleged gang members, and before the Rodney King trial and the Los Angeles riots that followed, there was “Fuck tha Police”. West Coast rap crew N.W.A. were self-described “Niggaz With Attitudes” who sought and secured a platform for dealing with racism in the justice system. The song offered a realistic description of police brutality along with a satisfying fantasy of invulnerability in the face of it. Its sheer power put the world on notice and also prompted a concerned letter from the FBI. In crafting one of the most iconic hip-hop records ever, the group took aim at tactics like racial, economic, and age profiling, as well as the problem of black cops seeking acceptance within police culture by being aggressive against minorities.
The genius of the track, though, is the presentation: the crew’s shoe-on-the-other-foot courtroom parody, illustrating how false testimony and misconduct can run rampant. Calling the case “N.W.A. versus the Police Department”, “Fuck the Police” has Judge Dre presiding over a trial filled with testimonial verses from Ice Cube, MC Ren, and Eazy-E, which culminates with a police officer being found guilty of being “a redneck, white bread, chickenshit muthafucka.” The song’s power has found a resurgence recently after the release of the biopic Straight Outta Compton, released into a social landscape still fighting against police brutality and racial tensions 30 years later. – Quentin Huff