Jon Ewing
Playlists
All You Need Is Love by The Beatles
24 May 2017
At the very peak of The Beatles’ career, modern communications technology gave them the opportunity to spread the message of what would become known as the “Summer of Love” all around the globe. Our World was a worldwide satellite TV broadcast on June 25th 1967, for which The Beatles were chosen to represent the United Kingdom by singing their specially composed song All You Need is Love.
Ohio by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
12 May 2017
When Neil Young picked up the new issue of Life magazine in May 1970 and saw the now infamous photograph of a young girl kneeling over the dead body of a student protester, he was filled with rage. He walked off into the woods and when he came back an hour later, he had written this song.
How Do You Sleep? by BIGG
28 April 2017
The whole paradoxical tangle of guilt and innocence is summed up in four familiar words – a single, weighted question at the heart of a riff-fuelled, two minute blast of vitriol.
Heartland – The The
27 April 2017
For this year’s Record Store Day, Matt Johnson has released his first new material for 15 years – a one-sided 7″ single called We Can’t Stop What’s Coming. In fact, as he reveals in the new documentary The Inertia Variations – a film essay that uses Johnson’s experience to investigate the notion of creative stagnation resulting from anxiety – it’s the first time he’s written a song or even sung one in a very, very long time.
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised – Gil Scott-Heron
10 April 2017
Often credited as one of the godfathers of rap music, Gil Scott-Heron didn’t set out to be a singer-songwriter. He started his career as a youngster writing poetry but a cult legend was born when jazz producer Bob Thiele – recognising the raw charisma of Scott-Heron’s vocal delivery – set Scott-Heron’s poetry to music for the first time. These early recordings included The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, a scything indictment of white America’s blind ignorance of racial issues.
Give Us Something Worth Voting For – The Tuts
30 March 2017
Exactly the sentiment that the Fight Evil playlist was created for, this is a song for anyone who has washed their hands of the current crop of hypocritical politicians and demands an alternative.
It’s also a belter of a protest song by a melodic pop punk three-piece from the outer limits of London.
Where’s the Revolution – Depeche Mode
18 March 2017
A leviathan of a rebel-rousing track… Martin Gore’s lyrics are strong stuff and difficult to contradict
Doesn’t Make It Alright – The Specials
7 March 2017
It seems unlikely that a ska revolution started at 51 Albany Road, Coventry – go ahead and take a look on Google Street View and tell me I’m wrong – but from these inauspicious surroundings, songwriting mastermind Jerry Dammers and his friends introduced the world to the music of the Caribbean filtered through the prism of the West Midlands.
Dear Mr President – Pink and the Indigo Girls
7 March 2017
The more things change, the more they say the same. This song from 2006 could have been written in 2017, which is not to say that protest is futile, but rather a solemn reminder that the fight for equality and justice against greed and brutality never ends.
Erupt and Matter – Moby with The Void Pacific Choir
7 March 2017
Moby despises Donald Trump and everything he stands for. If you’ve watched the video for Erupt and Matter, you’ll know that, even if you don’t follow the veteran DJ and activist on social media. The sheer venom and anthemic roar of the music would be enough to tell you how he feels, even if the words weren’t written in letters that fill the screen. This is a pounding techno incitement to riot under the banner “we don’t trust you any more”.
Fighting Times – The Neurotics
7 March 2017
When Neurotics frontman Steve Drewett wrote this song for the 1986 mini-album Repercussions, its chief target was the South African apartheid regime and thankfully that has long since been overturned. But every other point of reference in this rallying cry against inaction sounds depressingly contemporary. “Why are you so quiet?” Drewett asks in the chorus, “when these are fighting times?”
P.O.W.A – M.I.A.
7 March 2017
“Say this is people power / Throw up my finger and I’m taking on the Tower”. Taking pot shots at The Donald is all fine and good but it is so much better when it’s done by a daring, eclectic, unpredictable original like Ms Maya Arulpragasam. An activist and a true artist of rap, MIA’s POWA is a unique mix of doo-wop loops, laid-back, bitter rhymes and Tamil folk percussion.