Quote:
Originally Posted by HappyMartin
Popular protest songs. How about American Idiot by Green Day. What about quite a lot of Springsteen, Atlantic City for example. Sunday Bloody Sunday by U2. We can go back a bit further to God Save The Queen by the Sex Pistols.
My world has is filled with protest songs.
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That may be so, there have always been protest songs and some of them have become popular with some people. In fact you can find songs about anything. On the other hand, they generally only appeal to people who are fans of the particular singers or groups who sing them. Dylan's songs appeal to Dylan's fans. Apparently some people do not like Dylan's singing (no surprise, he is a terrible singer) but they like his songs if they are covered by a singer they like.
Personally I have a collection of over 30,000 songs but not one by Green Day, U2 or the Sex Pistols because I am not a big fan of rock. I do have one song by Springsteen - "Old Time Rock 'n' Roll" which I listened to a few times until I found another version that I liked better.
if we want protest songs that were popular we can go back even further to the 1930's - "Brother Can You Spare a Dime" by Rudy Vallee. Or any number of blues songs that never became very popular in the mainstream.
However, as a lover of both music and literature, I do not think song lyrics are literature. If the Nobel Prizes want to hand out a prize for the category of "popular music" fine.