This essay is going to be quite long, and still, I didn’t write about nearly as many bands or topics as I wanted to. I know our attention to long writing is difficult, so each paragraph has a link to a different song to listen to while you are reading. Through the first half of the essay, the songs are unrelated to the paragraph- they are just songs that I wanted to include with the playlist. In the latter half, the songs are the songs mentioned in that paragraph. Finally, while this essay is about political music, the selections and examples are from music I listen to. My favorite genre is ska, so that is significantly over-represented, along with punk, folk, and a little hip-hop. That is not to suggest that political music only exists in those genres; it’s merely a representation of my taste. I also chose to focus on new music, so almost every song here is from the last 2 years.
Political music has always been my passion. The power of music to shape narratives, to motivate people, to shape the way we see the world has always had a profound impact on me. Music shapes the way we see the world, and everyone knows it. There is a reason every country has a national anthem, a song that is supposed to inspire patriotism. Church hymns deliver the messages of the religion- generally written long after the religious texts, often thousands of years later, but sung in services as if they were the words of a deity. The armies of medieval times through the 19th century took to the battlefield with bands, drummers, trumpets, and bugles to tell the story, to order troops, and to inspire.
2400 years ago, Plato wrote, “musical innovation is full of danger to the whole state, and ought to be prohibited”. Music doesn’t just communicate political messages for the church, inspire soldiers on battlefields, and work as a tool of the state to promote nationalism and messages of the state- but for as long as we have records, music has existed as a tool of the people to inspire resistance. Music is the sound of Revolution.
Yet despite this rich history of music as the agent of communication, from artist to the masses, every time someone realizes that another band is political, I see and hear a constant refrain of “politics don’t belong in music”. “I liked your music before you got political”. “Music is supposed to be an escape from politics”. And every time I’ve ever heard this chorus, it is, without fail, a response to a political message that is not shared by the speaker. Nobody ever criticises political music they agree with; in fact, they proudly celebrate those political messages.
Recently I ran into these messages again- in a never-ending debate about punk and politics, but at the same time, I was inundated with a world full of incredible new political music. Kneecap being criminally charged for political music- Bob Vylan making international headlines for chants against the IDF for bombing Gaza at a festival with thousands of people broadcast live on the BBC leading to a police investigation and the United States- once an alleged beacon of free speech- revoking their travel visas. An amazing year of political music being released in multiple genres, sadly, largely in response to a horrific year of global violence and injustice that has inspired so many artists to speak out.
While I was thinking about the political nature of many of the songs that are being written today, I started thinking about the power of music and the impact it has. Is it negligible? Does it impact change? Are the artists trying to cash in on something, or is there conviction in their words? What inspires artists to write about specific issues? And while I was entertaining some of these thoughts, I ran into a song that felt particularly powerful to me. “The Ballad of Officer Helsley”, by Curtis Lovejoy. I had never heard of Curtis Lovejoy before, and this was a folk song, and I don’t listen to a lot of folk music (despite a very rich history of political music). This song was about police violence, an incident that happened earlier in the week that I first encountered the song. It never made national news. When I look at the Bandcamp page, it appears I may be the only person who has purchased the song. When I look up his Spotify, it only has 80 monthly listeners. Writing the song clearly wasn’t about fame; the audience it reaches is unfortunately small. What inspires artists to write about songs?
If writing love songs and heartbreak is what makes Taylor Swift a billionaire, and works for countless other artists, and every time someone realizes that your songs are political, they have a need to let you know that you’ve lost a fan and to stay out of politics, why do artists feel compelled to write about political issues? So I reached out to a bunch of artists and asked. Many of these bands released these songs in 2025, but not all of them. There will be a playlist attached to this article featuring the bands that I talked to and several more. I’m including their newer songs on the playlist because these are the songs that they are passionate about that they wrote right now, and are relevant today.
One of the first people I reached out to was Curtis Lovejoy, the previously mentioned writer of “The Ballad of Officer Helsley”. On Friday, July 18, 2025, Clarksburg, West Virginia, police responded to a call for a welfare check on a man who was acting erratically in public. There were no allegations of criminal behavior, just a man who was possibly having a mental health crisis. When the police arrived on the scene, the man was lying on the ground with his head on the curb. The five police officers arrived and ordered the man to put his hands behind his back. When he refused, one of the officers began punching the man repeatedly, often slamming his head into the concrete until his forehead bled. Two officers pressed their knees on his back and neck while they arrested him for “Obstructing Law Enforcement”. When the videos of the assault went public, the police had already determined that the officer did not violate the law for assaulting the man, but the man violated the law for not putting his hands behind his back as the officer punched him in the face. The officer was not named in any of the news stories, which struck Curtis Lovejoy as intentional, a way to protect the man he had witnessed assaulting someone in the middle of a mental health crisis. So he picked up his guitar and wrote the song that same day, making sure to name Officer Helsley of the Clarksburg Police, who punched a man repeatedly in the face.
Another song inspired by a single incident of police brutality is “Caught in the Crosshairs” by Left Hand Hotdog. The song was written after a man jumped the turnstile in the New York subways to avoid paying the $2.90 fee, and the police shot him 9 times, hitting four people, including the person who jumped the turnstile, one of the officers, and 2 bystanders, including shooting one in the head. The song calls out the “comply or die” mentality of police, but also of the justice department that found the officers did nothing wrong, and the public who, in large part, defended the police for using deadly force to demand compliance.
Very few political songs are as much of a direct response to a single incident. Instead of writing a song about a single incident, JER released an album in early August, where the entire album was themed around a specific political concept. While the album discusses subjects like genocide, global warming, racism, authoritarianism, and toxic masculinity, the common theme of the album is more about the silence and willingness to turn a blind eye to the injustice. The album is a call to action, and laments how we can all watch as the world burns, and genocide is committed and televised and live-streamed, how we can watch authoritarianism and deportations and military on our own streets, how trans people are vilified and banned from sports and restrooms and the military, and we don’t take action. The album features a quote from civil rights leader James Baldwin, and ties historically political genres together like the messages of 2-tone ska and hip-hop to weave together a narrative, but it doesn’t stop there. Jer also ensures that their shirts and merchandise are made by union workers. When playing live, Jer tries to only play all-ages venues and refuses to play 21-and-up venues because building community is important, and giving the youth a place to go and be a part of a community is important. Political music isn’t just about speaking a message, but about living that message, and making sure your actions have intent and are inclusive. It does no good to write a bunch of music about racial harmony or trans rights or toxic masculinity or community, and then go on tour with 3 bands that are all cis white men playing shows to 21 and up venues. If we want to build the world we want, we have to start with our own actions.
Some bands are constantly writing political music and releasing singles instead of albums in order to keep their songs more relevant to the things that they write about. One such band is California hip-hop band The Neighborhood Kids. They released “Who’s Next” in March of 2025 as a response to the assassination of a health insurance CEO, pointing out that the health insurance is considered legitimate when their policies lead to the deaths of tens of thousands of people in the pursuit of profit, but there is public outrage at the death of one CEO because profit wasn’t the motive. They also released songs about racism and deportation, and the genocides in Congo and Palestine, and several other political topics in 2025, all released while news stories were still extremely relevant.
Another one of my favorite bands- Space Monkey Mafia- put out a very political album in August, but it featured a song that struck me as particularly unique. The song, Malas Raíces, was formed after a member of the band watched the city buy up all the land from a historically black and impoverished district to “invest” in it, driving up prices and property values so that nobody who rented in the area could afford to live there anymore. All over the country, private equity firms are buying up real estate to drive up housing costs, making housing unaffordable for an entire generation- people whose families have lived in neighbourhoods for generations can’t afford to stay, and it overwhelmingly impacts black and brown people. The song puts a personal spin on the story where your homes, your pasts, your memories are all given a dollar value, commodified for someone else’s profit, the neighbors all foreclosed and sold to someone who will never live in the community, never send their kids to the school, but who will suck every dollar of profit to a private equity firm and line a bank account- often 1000 miles away.
Interestingly, that wasn’t the only political song about housing that came out this year. Earlier in the year, The Pomps released a song called “That’s Not a House”. The Pomps have a very different approach to political music than many of the other bands- they try to be much more subtle. Their songs are designed to not sound political in nature as they frequently contain social and political themes. In this song, the protagonist makes a wrong turn while driving and ends up in a secluded zip code where the houses are mansions and are far more than any person could ever realistically need in life. The idea that wealth inequality is just a wrong turn or missed exit away from downtown Boston, where homeless people seek shelter, is a juxtaposition that is implied but not stated throughout the song. It’s a form of beautiful political songwriting of lived experiences that seeks to penetrate the listener’s subconscious without them realizing the message, far from Bob Vylan‘s hyper-aggressive in-your-face lyric from 2024’s album, which had several lyrics about slum lords and renting. That album featured the aggressive and direct lyric “It’s cold outside, and the games being played ain’t fun, landlord just raised the rent, better get yourself a gun”. Regardless of how the message is sent, it’s clear that housing is an issue that artists are impassioned about, and that they want their listeners to think about.
Yet another powerful political album that came out this year was “Stockholm Syndrome” by music legends, Fishbone. The album had quite a few political tracks on it, and I was lucky to talk to Angelo Moore about some of the songs, because Fishbone has been performing for over 40 years, and I wanted to know how political music has changed in that time. One of Fishbone’s first major political songs was “Party at Ground Zero,” which they originally wrote in 1984. At the time, we were in the midst of the Cold War. Iran allegedly had nuclear weapons, and there was a risk of World War III, a nuclear missile crisis, and talks of bombing Iran. The idea of the song is a satirical “party” as our leaders lead us towards the end of the world. Now, in 2025, the whole world is “different”, and Iran allegedly is on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons. President Trump bombed Iran, and there was talk about the risk of World War III. While Fishbone has always been political, some things have changed. According to Moore, there is more banter and open political discussion from the stage, because the people coming to the shows now have been listening for 40 years and know what to expect. The new album features a song about Donald Trump called Racist Piece of Shit, a song about police violence that references the police murder of Breonna Taylor as she slept in her bed. But the song that felt most powerful to me was another song that was written about a single specific incident, which, like many other songs about a single incident, could be extrapolated to a whole series of incidents. “Secret Police” is about Kyle Rittenhouse, racism, and vigilanteism rising in America, where people go to protests with guns or get in their cars and shoot and kill protestors, only to be protected by the police. In June, the same week this album came out, Arturo Gamboa was shot at by a volunteer security guard at a protest. The shot missed Gamboa and killed another man, Afa Ah Loo. Gamboa was arrested and charged because he was protesting while carrying a gun, despite never breaking the law. The actual shooter and murderer was never arrested, and his name was never made public. The lyrics of the song could also perfectly describe people eagerly joining ICE and wearing masks to detain, arrest, and deport immigrants.
When asked about these songs, Moore says, “You can only write about what you know, and if you don’t write what you know, then you’ve got nothing to say.” But he also notes that pop music exists for a reason, because people need an escape, and there is nothing wrong with that. And that’s also why, even with their message, Fishbone wants you to dance. “Black music has always done that from Marvin Gaye, Grandmaster Flash, PE, Soul Sonic Force, and more”.
Matt Wixson hasn’t been writing music for 40 years, but still took inspiration from the music of the past and took to heart the revolutionary nature of music. Matt Wixson has an album, “Mericannia”, that was just released this week, and on this album, he has a song titled “El Derecho de vivir en Paz”. A song by the same name was released in 1971 by the Chilean artist Víctor Jara, on an album also of the same name. The song was a protest song in Chilean folk style, with traditional instruments, about Ho Chi Minh, and a criticism of the Vietnam War. When Pinochet took power in Chile, Jara, the writer of the original song, was tortured and assassinated. The song became a symbol of Chilean protest, and in 2019, over 1000 guitarists performed the song together, and Chileans all over the world sang the song in protest. In Matt Wixson’s version, traditional Chilean instruments are used, but the lyrics have been changed to reflect the genocide in Gaza, tying the protest song to new events, recognizing international solidarity between protest movements, and tying injustices of the past to the injustices of today. (I’ve included both versions here)
While many bands sing songs about war, chant slogans, wave flags, and directly oppose war, some bands have begun taking the next step. In December of 2023, Holy Schnikes! Released a 5-song LP featuring a single called ‘Ceasefire”. 100% of the proceeds from the entire EP were donated to Doctors Without Borders, and that album is still available today, and 100% of the proceeds are still donated. In addition to this, Holy Schnikes! is finishing work on another album that is entirely political- a significant departure from some of their earliest songs.
I don’t mean to suggest that Holy Schnikes! is alone in moving from raising awareness to raising money for charity. Hugo Skavez, whose music is always political in nature, wrote a single titled Free Palestine the following month, in January 2024, with proceeds from that single going towards the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund.
In August of 2025, Blind Adam and the Federal League wrote “Solidarity from Chicago” in collaboration with Songs for Liberation. The song was written after a rally in downtown Chicago on New Year’s Eve and has messages of hope for a free Palestine. The money raised from this song goes directly to Solidarity Studio, a Palestinian-run non-profit and event studio in Chicago.
Finally, some musicians, like Carsie Blanton, have always been very outspoken politically. Instead of donating proceeds to charity or just raising awareness, she has decided to join Artists Against Apartheid and go to Palestine on the Global Sumud Flotilla, deliver food and medical care to Gaza directly, and, by being a celebrity voice on board, raise awareness, bring more attention, and perhaps apply political pressure to the situation. While Carsie Blanton has several political songs to choose from, I am going to leave this with her cover of Anaïs Mitchell’s 2007 “Song of the Magi”– a song about a baby, born in Bethlehem, whose home is a checkpoint under Israeli occupation. A song written 16 years before October 7, 2023, to remind us that the current genocide is just the current iteration of occupation and destruction of the way of life, and a baby in Bethlehem, once receiving gifts of frankincense and gold, is now receiving famine and shrapnel.
The playlist:
Written by Gimp Leg
