10. Masters Of War - The Freewheelin Bob Dylan (1963)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mvr72uTd7kc Without doubt the angriest song on Freewheelin, Masters of Wars vitriolic deconstruction of power-hungry, warmongering zealots is essential Dylan listening. Far from a flat-out criticism of war, Dylans main beef rests with how figures of authority use their people as surrogate killing machines whilst they sit comfortably behind their desks in an abdication of responsibility and in some sort of inflated sense of their own importance. A song that encapsulates a young Dylans attempts to alert the world to the despicable blood lusts and ultra violence that permeated Cold War America, perhaps even more so than the much more popular Blowin in the Wind, Masters of War is loaded with a pathos and disillusion that injected some much-needed political commentary into the 60s music scene. Dylans anti-exploitation epic culminates in a most unsettling fashion. After decrying the evils of propaganda, distortion and bureaucracy, he speaks of his wish to see all of the globes masters of war dead in the ground, relishing the thought of these abhorrent authorities being lowered down to their death bed. A dark conclusion to a song born out of a finely-tuned disgust with imperialist, and fundamentally archaic, ideologies.