10 Perfect Rock And Roll Protest Songs

In the early days of the Beatles' career, John Lennon had mentioned that they weren't allowed to comment on any political matters. This was the era when the Vietnam War was raging on, and the last thing that manager Brian Epstein wanted was to face some sort of backlash from one of the Fab Four saying something about the state of the world. The world looked a lot different in the late '60s though, and John was the first one to throw his hat into the ring on the song Revolution.

Looking at the state of the world at the time, this song is practically a dissection of what a revolution was supposed to be, with John not even having all the answers sorted out himself, even swapping the line talking about destruction with 'don't you know that you can count me out...in.' While John was the first to say that he would not advocate for chaos in the streets, this is a revolution taking place inside your head, looking to weight all of the options before blindly going into a war that you wouldn't want to be in.

The message of the song didn't even end there, with The White Album featuring a slowed down acoustic version and Revolution 9, meant to be the sound of a revolution taking place in the listener's mind. For as much backlash as this song might have gotten in its time, this isn't just a rowdy rock and roll song about going against the man. We live in strange times, and it takes a song like this to remind us to think for ourselves and not to believe things just because someone told us to.