At times, protest music can feel a little abstract or antiquated. To the average listener, the term may evoke the stirring gospel spirituals of the Civil Rights Movement, anthems about economic hardship in industrial America, or narratives of countercultural clashes in the 1960s. While the artistry of these songs remains impressive, their themes can feel distant in the present day.
My impression changed utterly last month when Ennis singer-songwriter Susan O’Neill collaborated with Valerie June on a haunting cover of For What It’s Worth. Written in 1966 to capture conflict between rebellious youth and conservative authority, the Buffalo Springfield classic has been reimagined as something eerily contemporary. O’Neill and June’s cover was released with a video montage of protests past and present, with all proceeds donated to Amnesty International.
Unlike many protest songs, the song does not directly depict violence or chaos. Instead, a creeping atmosphere of tension and paranoia permeates every note. This restraint lends it a timeless quality. The opening lyrics, “There’s something happening here / What it is ain’t exactly clear” – feel prescient, capturing the instability and precarity of our political climate sixty years on.
Yet Irish artists like O’Neill, for all their talent, are not globally mainstream. Their messages travel only so far. If protest music is to reclaim its cultural power, it cannot rely solely on the margins.
So, what of mainstream artists? Protest music is often spoken about as an endangered genre, or a vestige of the past. In reality, it is no longer surviving merely underground. The polycrisis of climate collapse, war, and democratic erosion has pushed social commentary back into the centre of popular music. After decades in which rock and pop favoured escapist beats that eschewed social commentary, artists are once again wrestling with the vicissitudes of a fractured world.
The protest song enjoyed its cultural peak in the 1960s and early 1970s, when the Vietnam War, civil rights struggles, and generational upheaval produced anthems that became fixtures in the public consciousness. Songs by Bob Dylan, Sam Cooke, and Nina Simone galvanised entire movements. But as rock drifted towards feelgood stadium bombast in the eighties, and hip-hop splintered into electro and dance subgenres in the decades that followed, music with a political edge was sidelined. It survived in protest marches and underground scenes, but rarely broke through into the mainstream. That persistence deserves admiration, but if protest music is not heard by many, its very purpose is defeated. You cannot whisper a call to action.
In the Irish mainstream, with its international reach, that call is growing louder again.
No contemporary artist embodies this resurgence more clearly than Hozier. An icon of protest music before it was fashionable thanks to Take Me To Church, his work has only grown more politically ambitious. The track Be confronts the refugee crisis, climate collapse, and the rise of Trump. Jackboot Jump fuses raw, bluesy grit with a blistering denunciation of tyranny. In recent years, Nobody’s Soldier has raged against war, while Butchered Tongue has grappled with the colonial suppression of the Irish language. His most quietly devastating song may be Swan Upon Leda, which weaves together women’s oppression, the occupation of Palestine, and the tragedy of war through nuance and metaphor.
Fontaines D.C. are even more overt. I Love You from their album Skinty Fia is a snarling, post-punk anthem that confronts cultural oppression, political stagnation, and social decay. CMAT’s Euro-Country channels a similar fury. Its title track castigates Ireland’s venal Celtic Tiger elite for their corruption and excesses that had devastating consequences for so many. These songs demonstrate that protest songs need not be tied to a single cause; they can simply articulate collective anger and frustration.
That very diversity is protest music’s greatest strength. Some songs become anthems for mass movements – like Kneecap’s work for the Irish language, or Take Me To Church’s demand for equality. Others illuminate injustices that do not dominate headlines. Denise Chaila explores the frustrations of the Black Irish experience in Dual Citizenship, while Damien Rice’s Song for Berta mourns the dangers faced by environmental activists.
On the international stage we are also witnessing a resurgence. Mon Rovîa’s Heavy Foot channels the urgency of the present through folk, spreading online as a shared anthem of resilience. Bruce Springsteen’s Streets of Minneapolis may lack the musical or lyrical nuance of his earlier work, but its blunt fury at ICE killings has struck a chord, topping the charts in nineteen countries. Hayley Williams’ True Believer explicitly invokes Billie Holiday’s Strange Fruit – the most harrowing protest song in history – drawing a connection between historical atrocities and the present struggle in the South.
This intergenerational dialogue cuts both ways; legends of protest music also draw inspiration from today’s voices. Mavis Staples stands as living proof of this. The gospel icon, whose voice is inseparable from the Civil Rights era, collaborated with Hozier on Nina Cried Power in 2018. Last year, she released a stirring cover of Kevin Morby’s Beautiful Strangers, a song inspired by protests against gun violence and the killing of Freddie Gray. Protest music is not a trendy genre confined to the young and the fashionable. It is shaped by decades of struggle, and it continues to evolve.
These artists are bound by a shared, subversive commitment to critiquing the world around them. Some, like Hozier or CMAT, emerge from alternative scenes. Others, like Springsteen, harness their vast mainstream platforms. Veterans like Staples lend historical weight to our contemporary anthems. Ultimately, it does not matter where these songs come from; what truly counts is the emotions they evoke. If they provoke discussions about the tribulations of today, they deserve celebration.
In this era of algorithms and political fracture, music’s role in uniting people around shared values is only intensified. For What It’s Worth is rooted in a different era. Yet, the fact that it can be reimagined today and still feel urgent and alive proves the enduring power of the protest song.
The second coming of protest music is just as dynamic and powerful as the original revolution.
