10 Perfect Rock And Roll Protest Songs

Rock and roll was starting to grow up a little bit once the grunge movement started to take over the charts. Even though the hair metal sounds of the '80s may have been fun, the music of Kurt Cobain spoke to a much more jaded side of your brain, advocating for everything from mental health to stopping the abuse of women on songs like Polly and Sappy. Pearl Jam were no strangers to message songs with tracks like Jeremy, but Not For You was the first time that they had some legitimate anger at the music business.

Accusing concert mogul Ticketmaster of price gouging, the next few years of the band saw them taking on more independent projects, making entire concert tours by themselves and never willing to cower to what the suits think that rock and roll should be worth. On their next album Vitalogy though, this was the first time that Eddie Vedder really lashed out, painting the suits as a bit of a caricature and asking the fans to enjoy their youth before big business comes to try and take it away from you.

As much as this is a condemnation of Ticketmaster, there's a more cynical bite to the fairweather fans of Pearl Jam as well, blasting those that would beat up them in high school only to come on the bandwagon once they became one of the biggest bands in the world. Rock and roll may have been for the Everyman most of the time, but when you're on as big a stage as Eddie was, you need to still make sure that you're playing to the fans for all the right reasons.