After a relatively barren period for such music, the protest song has returned to popular culture in recent months, mostly manifesting in its oldest and most enduring form: folk music. Identifiable by their stripped-down instrumentation and forthright social messages, folk protest songs are constructed to involve, persuade, inspire, and unite, serving functional more than aesthetic goals. Folk singers span the globe as well as centuries, and their western prototype is the medieval troubadour.
Long before the recent outpouring of guitar-wielding protest singers, troubadours of the 12th century traveled from town to town across Europe singing the news of the day, accompanied only by their stringed instruments. Like today’s successors, these distant trailblazers operated as everyman figures, offering barbed commentaries to the people about social happenings and daily hardships. Sometimes their songs ridiculed the ruling classes; sometimes they showed sympathy for the plight of the commoners. Invariably, they tackled the topics of the day by informing, enlightening, and entertaining.
Like the folkies of recent months, the medieval troubadours established trust with the communities they visited, their honesty providing a corrective to the propaganda fed to them by their rulers. Their songs provided emotional sustenance, too, a pathos appeal that could inspire dissent, uprisings, or insurrections.
Today’s Folk Troubadours
The ancient troubadours had their 20th-century correlatives in the folk music revivalists of the 1950s, whose inspiration came from the caustic commentaries of Woody Guthrie. Donald Trump may be a primary target of today’s folk ire, but Guthrie went after his father, Fred, with “Mr. Trump Has Made a Tramp Out of Me” and “Beach Haven Ain’t My Home”; the latter a newsworthy ditty about the racist rental practices of the Trump patriarch.
The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, it seems. Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, and Bob Dylan followed in Guthrie’s footsteps, writing topical songs about pressing concerns of the day, particularly the Civil Rights struggle and the Vietnam War. Particularly renowned for his present-tense protest songs was Phil Ochs, the exemplary benchmark-setter for today’s cadre of singing reporters.
Ochs grew up with the ambition of being a journalist before turning his attention to songwriting. The reporter bug never left him, though. Often dubbed the “singing journalist”, he wrote songs about war, poverty, and labor rights throughout the 1960s, many inspired by articles he had read in Newsweek. Some of these songs landed on his debut album, which he (fittingly) titled All The News That’s Fit to Sing (1964). The kind of topical specificity he gave to its songs is likely an inspiration for recent anti-ICE songwriters, as is the appeal of his passionate expression.
Back then, Ochs—like Dylan and Baez—took his songs to anti-war rallies, labor strikes, and student events; today’s troubadours travel more through cyberspace, posting their songs—hot off the presses—on streaming sites and social media. The resulting immediacy suits our social circumstances, providing narrative coherence and clarity amid national mayhem and confusion. Moreover, with the current US presidential administration “flooding the zone” daily, hoping that its citizens will forget its last outrage as a new one arrives, the singing troubadours freeze the moment in song, marking events for our contemplation.
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young showed how the news can be felt viscerally and how emotions can be collectively channeled through such songwriting. Their account of the gunning down of four students by the National Guard in “Ohio” (1970)—released just a month after the incident—resonated both then and since. Songs have an especially important role to play today, their reach across partisan lines one of the few ways to penetrate our news-media bubbles.
Boss Populism
The importance of marking a seismic event with time and place stamps is recognized by Bruce Springsteen in his recent recording, “Streets of Minneapolis” (2026). Such signposts focus our attention, adding the gravity of the moment to what is happening here and now. What was happening just days before this song’s release was the murder of Renée Good and Alex Pretti by ICE agents during Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis. Recorded in two days, then released with a lyric video on YouTube, “Streets of Minneapolis” garnered 2.5 million views on its first day, making it the number one trending song in the US.
Critic Matthew Cantor assesses how the song benefits from lacking any painstaking poetry. “Urgent”, “to-the-point”, and “not subtle” are among the reasons Cantor claims the song works so well; for this is no time and there is no time for “ambiguity”, he says. With blunt lines like “King Trump’s private army from the DHS,” Springsteen evokes recent and familiar vernacular. He challenges on the most populist of terrain, too, referencing the national anthem (“by the dawn’s early light”) and even The Bible (“the stranger in our midst”). Collective feelings underscore the ethos throughout, the chorus of voices chanting “ICE out!” signifying that “we the people” patriotism is not the preserve of the right.
Punk-Folk
Punk has long been on the frontlines of social protest, its artists singing the news since the Sex Pistols took “God Save the Queen” to the top of the charts during the week of the Silver Jubilee celebrations in 1977. From this tradition came punk-folk hybridists Billy Bragg and Dropkick Murphys, both of whom released anti-ICE songs in the wake of the siege of Minneapolis.
Bragg’s “City of Heroes” (2026) is more evidently folk-based, the singer performing with the sole accompaniment of an acoustic guitar. This allows for the words to cut through, the music serving merely as a vehicle for the message.
Like Springsteen’s, Bragg’s song was written, recorded, and released with haste at the end of January 2026. Unlike Springsteen, Bragg not only implicates ICE agents and their Washington, D.C. puppeteers, but listeners, too, who are told in stark terms that the heroic Minneapolis protesters should serve as their role models, and this is no time for “silence” or “look[ing] the other way.” “They use teargas and pepper spray against our whistles and our phones,” he cries, the pronouns implicitly asking: which side are you on?
A similarly uncompromising punk spirit runs through Dropkick Murphys’ “Citizen I.C.E.” (2026), a remake of their previous “Citizen C.I.A.” (2005) cut. Here, the macro reportage of Springsteen and Bragg is replaced with a finger-pointing character assassination of ICE mercenaries. Frontman Ken Casey pours shame on them for their class betrayal, screaming, “You’ve joined the traitor’s ranks to play the hand of God / In a dirtbag grifter’s kidnapping squad.”
Arkansas Americana
Ironically, a primary geographic locale for folk troubadours protesting the current administration is the deep-red state of Arkansas. Defying stereotypes about the politics of artists from this region, Jessie Welles, Dylan Earl, and Nick Shoulders have become the Ozarks’ representatives of the protest vanguard.
Their regional identity is crucial to their purposes and effectiveness, too. Whereas Springsteen and Bragg can be easily dissed and dismissed as urban liberals by southern conservatives, such a charge is more difficult when the messengers come from their own heartland communities. Furthermore, a good argument can be made that Trump’s base is less likely to be cracked by so-called “coastal elites” than by those within MAGA country. As such, Welles, Earl, and Shoulders might be considered the enemy within, but also as more trusted communicators by virtue of their backgrounds.
Dissent from the heart of the country is nothing new. From “outlaws” like Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson to “progressives” like Lucinda Williams and Jason Isbell, voices resistant to the conservative commerciality of Nashville and the conservative politics of mainstream country culture have periodically arisen.
Nowadays, these have been consolidated under the umbrella of Americana, a genre that reveres and preserves the diverse, working-class roots of country and folk music. In an era when history is increasingly being whitewashed, Americana traditionalists remind fellow southerners that their culture has a rich tradition of multi-ethnic expressions and anti-establishmentarianism.
Jessie Welles is the latest in a long line of folk troubadours tagged “the new Dylan”. Certain characteristics satisfy the comparison: both write protest songs accompanied by an acoustic guitar and harmonica; both are wordsmiths who infuse social comment with cutting humor; and both deliver their songs of conscience with a deadpan tone and delivery. Just as influential on Welles, though, is Phil Ochs.
Whereas Ochs spread the news as a traveling troubadour, Welles uses modern technology, recording newly written songs on his iPhone while positioned in the midst of an idyllic Ozark setting. He then posts those live clips across social media, where he has built up a following of passionate fans. Millions of viewers have watched his trail of song posts on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, their virality earning him guest spots on Stephen Colbert’s and Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night shows, as well as four Grammy nominations at this year’s awards.
Welles’ brand as an internet troubadour is ideal for our times, enabling him to reach an audience otherwise unthinkable. Moreover, his songs strike chords of relevance and urgency by meeting listeners while the topics are still hot, heightening their emotional impact. Written, recorded, and disseminated via a self-sufficient DIY model, Welles is unbeholden to the corporate music industry and its narrow demands, enabling him to sing how he wants, when he wants, about what he wants. Among the topics of this folk documentarian are the Gaza conflict (“War Isn’t Murder”), predatory capitalism (“Walmart”), white Christian nationalism (“The Great Caucasian God”), unaffordable healthcare (“United Health”), ICE (“Join ICE”), and the self-explanatory “Sometimes You Bomb Iran”.
Like his Arkansas peers, Welles pays particular attention to the exploitation of the working class. Many in that class attend evangelical mega-churches where they are force-fed prosperity theology by multi-millionaire preachers. “If you worked a little harder then you’d have a lot more / So the shame and the blame’s on you for being so damn poor,” he sings in “The Poor”, channeling the perspective of those prosperity pastors.
Like the folk troubadours of yore, Welles speaks to what ails the people, even if his medicine is hard for them to swallow. His viewpoint contrasts with country-folk artists on the political right, though, some of whom are also singing the news today. Jason Aldean and Oliver Anthony had huge hits in 2023 with topical songs—“Try That in a Small Town” and “North of North Richmond”, respectively—about heartland life. However, whereas those singers either blame the victim or ethnic “others” for white working-class struggles, Welles points the finger where traditional troubadours did: at those in power orchestrating the distractions, divisions, and exploitation.
Fayetteville’s Dylan Earl similarly puts social class at the heart of his folk critiques. “Working-class solidarity is the only way we’re gonna stamp that fascist out,” he declares in “Outlaw Country” (2025). With his mullet, mustache, and a deep southern accent evoking Merle Haggard, Earl fits a typical MAGA profile, but those stereotypical markers come in handy, he says. They enable him entry into a conservative country where he can preach “holler solidarity” to the misguided masses. (Carter)
Progressive politics are anathema to many in the venues Earl plays at, but working-class and outlaw identities are not. Like troubadours before him, Earl starts conversations in places where certain home truths about issues have not yet reached. “Dude, you’re worshipping the fucking foot,” he says to the proud MAGA boys that sport “Don’t Tread on Me” tattoos, (Mitchell) a sentiment he underscores in “Outlaw Country” with the line, “All this authority worship is the strangest thing I ever saw.”
Earl’s Arkansas comrade, Nick Shoulders, draws from the past to challenge present presumptions about southern music and identity. Like Earl, he appeals beyond party allegiances by speaking directly to working-class people’s concerns. In songs like “Dixie Be Damned” (2025), he provides necessary historical revision, dramatizing how the poor across ethnic lines have always been used and abused by the oligarchy.
Hailing from a white Southern Baptist family, Shoulders speaks to the demographic from which he hails, despite not always sharing its politics. Still, his roots in Americana music are enjoyed by parts of that constituency, as he yodels and whistles through songs that run the gamut of southern folk history.
Whereas the Arkansas Americana singers operate both outside and within red America, other contemporary folk-country artists are starting to speak out from deep inside the belly of the beast. Zach Bryan is a mainstream artist who speaks to large portions of Trump’s base; so when he sings the news in a fashion at odds with the Fox News narrative, right-wing operators listen—and respond. Bryan discovered how much the right truly cares about free speech when he released “Bad News” (2025), another song critical of recent ICE conduct.
He places ICE’s actions in a larger context, the song’s patriotic narrator bemoaning the “fading of our red, white, and blue.” The so-called “woke” left are called out, too, and Bryan is a military veteran, but that didn’t stop Kristi Noem from condemning the singer for voicing his perspective. The (now former) Secretary of Homeland Security reacted with hostility, calling Bryan “completely disrespectful” before offering this coded call to boycott:
“Very happy that I never once gave you a single penny to enrich your lifestyle,” she said. (Bryson Taylor) Although this chastisement does not compare with the 500-page file the FBI once compiled on Phil Ochs, it shows that the U.S. Government does not consider folk troubadours to be ineffectual.
Does Bryan’s singing journalism signal potential dissent within the ranks of conservative America? Cracks are still few and far between in country culture, but sometimes it only takes a few loose rocks for the dam to start collapsing.
Works Cited
Bryson Taylor, Derrick. “Kristi Noem Attacks Zach Bryan’s New Lyrics About ICE”. The New York Times. 8 October 2025.
Carter, Rosie. “In Dylan Earl We Trust: The Last of the True Outlaws”. The Rodeo. 3 December 3, 2025.
Mitchell, Matt. “Dylan Earl Is Reclaiming Country Music’s Working-Class Heritage”. Paste. 8 July 2025.