It’s been a while since I’ve done a song-a-day project, and the last few started to lean more into musical conversation than topical discussion. But with everything happening, I decided it’s high time to get topical again.

For the month of May, 2025, I am diving deep into some of the strongest musical statements I can find. I expect these songs to be in various degrees challenging, inspiring, surprising, and appalling. I want to warn you right now that I am not pulling any punches on this one – there will be explicit language, explicit content, and abrasive opinions. I will post relevant content warnings on every selection, but it’s also completely understandable if you choose to nope out of the whole playlist. I’m also going to be less picky about making sure every song has a video or a live performance. Most of them do, but not all. So sometimes you’ll be staring at album covers or reading lyric videos, but that’s because the songs are important enough that they need to be there anyway.

If you’re sticking around, let’s talk about how I’m organizing the month.

First, I’m beginning with a traditional song that is also a call for action and union – the anthem of the IWW – because we’re beginning on May Day.

After that, I’ll be presenting the songs in three sections. I’m opening with How We Got Here, a set of songs examining the past century of bigotry and authoritarianism and how those events have led to our current situation. Then we’ll move into Where We Are, a frank examination of what’s happening right now, including both comparisons to other similar situations around the world as well as warnings about potential outcomes. Finally, the last third of the list will be songs about Who We Become, a mixture of hope and righteous anger intended to inspire us and temper our resolve.

Thank you for coming on this journey with me.

Day 1 – The Internationale, Eugène Pottier and Pierre De Geyter (as sung by Billy Bragg)

Happy May Day!

May 1st is traditionally Labor Day / International Workers’ Day. Although the US separated its celebration of Labor Day from the rest of the world during the Cold War, May 1st is the traditional date because it commemorates the general strike for the 8-hour work day which culminated in the Haymarket Affair right here in Chicago. The lyrics for the song had been composed 16 years prior by Eugène Pottier, a member of the First International. It was set to music by French-Belgian composer Pierre De Geyter in 1888.

Historian Lauren Thompson posted recently that during the period of 1870-1913 (aka the Gilded Age our current administration claims was when America was great), there were over 36,000 strikes in the US alone. We have some catching up to do.

Part 1 – How We Got Here

Day 2 – This Train (Revised), Indigo Girls

In many ways, this month’s song project presents a many-pronged argument, so I begin the first set by establishing the stakes of the debate. This is what we’re facing in its starkest form, but instead of box cars to Poland, we have cargo planes to El Salvador.

In our journey to this point, we have been repeatedly told that such comparisons are ridiculous exaggeration, but the parallels could not be more obvious if they were intentional. The authoritarian playbook is consistent – demonize people who are either 1) marginalized by gender and/or sexuality, 2) migrants, or 3) religious minorities who may have fled oppression elsewhere. The assault on trans people is the same now as it was then, Latin/Hispanic immigrants are being targeted instead of Roma, and Muslims are being targeted more than Jews (at least for now, though that may very well change).

Where we have come from is the same as where we are going, and we have an obligation to recognize that. People are already suffering and dying because of these attacks, and I keep thinking about the closing line of this song: “Here is potential, gone for good.”

Day 3 – The Day the Nazi Died, Chumbawumba

Rudolf Hess was famously the last living prisoner convicted of war crimes at Nuremberg until his death by his own hand in 1987. After he died, Spandau prison was demolished to prevent the site from becoming a shrine for neo-Nazis, and this act in itself is an admission of failure on the part of the world to eradicate fascism, nationalism, and white supremacy.

One of the themes that will repeat over the course of this month of songs is the tendency of many countries to prioritize the reconciliation of evildoers over the protection of their victims. Much of this comes from our tendency to see war as final, and to see victory in war as a proof of ideological superiority. It is not. But our confidence in that view has caused the US in particular to win wars but lose the peace multiple times.

Day 4 – Kenji, Fort Minor

When we consider the sources of our current political moment, we have to remember that fascism was never something we had to import. We grew it right here at home out of fear, racism, and greed. Our history from the Trail of Tears to the Chinese Exclusion Act was cited as inspiration by German fascists. And as soon as we entered the war that we tell ourselves we entered as heroes, we fell into those same patterns.

Fort Minor was a side project of Linkin Park member Mike Shinoda, and this song is very much his family’s story. Japanese internment in the US was used not only to imprison peaceful immigrants and even citizens, but it was also leveraged for opportunistic property grabs by the neighbors and business rivals of those Japanese-Americans that were abruptly taken from their homes. This was all under the umbrella of the Alien Enemies Act, and that’s why many of us realize that any mention of that law is suspect even in the most perilous circumstances.

Day 5 – Only a Pawn in Their Game, Bob Dylan

The man who shot Medgar Evers went to trial twice in 1964, both times resulting in hung juries. The all-white juries that failed to convict Byron De La Beckwith had been further screened to assure such a result. Finally, in 1994, another trial was brought with new evidence about the jury manipulation and supported by the fact that De La Beckwith had spent three decades bragging about his murder at public gatherings of the various white supremacist movements he had joined over the intervening decades. He was 71 when he was finally convicted and sentenced to life in prison, where he died in 2001.

While Bob Dylan’s initial poetic sentiment that De La Beckwith was a pawn in the larger racist political game was met with some justifiable skepticism, the story does reflect the fact that the murders of black people in the United States have always been treated differently throughout our history. The network of systemic support is what makes lynching different from other types of killing. But many (mostly white) people still refuse to see these patterns, writing off each of the many many examples as somehow unique, despite their predictable similarity.

Day 6 – What’s Going On, Marvin Gaye

The Vietnam War was a pivot point for the US in a number of ways. It is the only draft the US has held following desegregation, and African Americans were drafted at a higher rate than white people. Further, they were disproportionately assigned to combat units, accounting for 23% of such units overall and reaching as high as 45-60% in some airborne units. This use of black men as cannon fodder abroad, combined with suppression and murder of black leaders at home, resulted in a loss of potential that we can never fully measure.

I will return to the Vietnam War later, so I am just focusing on that point for today. This song is also a pivot point for the playlist – a mellow interlude before we start to dig into harder music and harder language.

Day 7 – Sowing the Seeds of Hatred, Credit to the Nation

As the Cold War ended and the US and UK emerged from the Reagan/Thatcher era, it was clear that those in charge would simply seek new enemies, new excuses to hold on to power. The Cold War had begun with a polite discussion among rivals that casually divided the world into spheres of influence and set the stage for casual manipulation and destruction of all the other countries caught in the middle. In the 90s and 00s, we shifted our focus to crushing the very groups that we had incited to fight our proxy battles against the Soviet Union, now calling them terrorists. The line that always grabs me from this song is one that echoes a sentiment I have long held: “The cause of the war of today is the remains of yesterday.”

Although I’m placing this song in in the middle of this first section for some specific historical reasons, it’s probably the best single summary of the entire first third of my argument. Credit to the Nation were one of the most prominent UK entries into the political Hip-Hop movement of the 90s, partially due to the crossover audience they gained working with heavily political rock bands like Chumbawamba and The Levellers. Their focus did not gain them many fans among mainstream Hip-Hop crowds, particularly because they publicly criticized the rising trend of violent and sexual themes from artists like Onyx and Ice-T.

Day 8 – Goons of Hazzard, Dead Kennedys

One of the greatest lies we tell ourselves as a country is that we won the Civil War. And while it’s true that the CSA was defeated militarily, and we had a moment where we passed some important amendments and elected a surprising number of black politicians in the South, many of those gains vanished within a decade. We do not live in a country whose true history is the victorious North, but rather one whose true history is the Corrupt Bargain of 1877. The century and a half that follow the election of Rutherford B Hayes tell us how much of our country’s legacy is still tied up in the Confederacy.

Our pop culture has continued to romanticize and glorify the South, not just in the obvious examples like Gone With the Wind and Birth of a Nation, but through the Dukes of Hazzard and even our lingering fascination with the cowboy myth. (I was well into adulthood when I put together the fact that all those “outlaws” that were celebrated in old Westerns were actually former Confederate soldiers.) The United States has failed to extricate and condemn the evils of its past, which is why they keep bubbling up in the present.

Day 9 – Killing in the Name, Rage Against the Machine

Okay, it’s a bit hackneyed at this point, but there’s a reason this is a song that gets referenced repeatedly. For one thing, it’s extremely catchy with its anthemic repetitions. For another, it continues to be accurate and relevant in a simple and straightforward way. We have a long history of using law enforcement as cover for our worst societal tendencies. Because of this, law enforcement agencies often attract those seeking justification and validation for their hostile and superior attitudes. This goes even more for agencies like ICE and prison enforcement, where dehumanization of targets is a built-in habit.

And none of this is new. The history of policing in the US began with slave-catching followed by union-busting, with a sprinkling of “decency” enforcement, and it’s never fully gotten beyond those origins. For more detail, I strongly recommend the documentary podcast series “Empire City,” which focuses on the history of the NYPD. And if you want to see how our pop culture glorifies and mythologizes police, check out Skip Intro’s “Copaganda” series on YouTube.

Day 10 – Freedom of Expression (F.O.X.), Living Colour

A year ago, I wrote a post titled “Cassandra is Screaming,” in which I analyzed some of the main democracy-deteriorating events of my lifetime. I began that list with the ending of the Fairness Doctrine in the 1980s, an action that spawned first a right-wing radio talk show and then an entire TV “news” network that is so factually deficient it had to pay nearly a billion dollars in settlements because of its lies about the 2020 election.

The massive sphere of hate-fomenting media we have now owes much of its success to that early infrastructure, and we could not be where we are without the manipulation that these sources provide daily. So much of the last election came down to “information-poor” voters, and there is nothing these outlets want more than to keep their viewers ignorant and afraid.

Day 11 – We Do What We’re Told (Milgram’s 37), Peter Gabriel

Whatever actions our government, our police, our corporations may have taken, we must always remember that the biggest factor in how we have gotten here remains very simple – it’s because we let them. And we can’t blame everything on the enthusiastic followers of authoritarians. There aren’t enough of those to overwhelm the rest of us if we resist. But in the long march towards fascism, we have stood by time and time again and just let it happen.

Over the past few months, we have seen how compliance is never enough. Concessions to authority are never rewarded, merely treated as invitations for more abuse. Slowly, people are beginning to realize this. They are beginning to see that courage in the face of power shows how hollow that power actually is. We are beginning to inspire each other to stand up together.

Because remember this – Stanley Milgram’s experiment was flawed, and we now know he was wrong. There are more of us who won’t submit than those who will.

Part 2 – Where We Are

Day 12 – Know Your Rights, The Clash

We open our examination of the current state of things (i.e. – “where we are”) with a declaration of rights. Unfortunately, some restrictions and conditions apply. Rights not valid in all states and territories. Not everyone is eligible for rights, and rights can be revoked at any time. “Endowed,” “inalienable,” and “self-evident” are not legally binding terms. Please consult your politician if you experience rights for time periods in excess of four hours.

I don’t have much else for this one – a lot of the songs in this section can speak for themselves pretty clearly. But I will take a moment to sidetrack and say that John Lydon sucks, and it’s blatantly unfair that we lost Joe Strummer but still have to listen to that fake punk whine his way into senility.

Day 13 – Right Wing Pigeons, The Dead Milkmen

Sometimes it feels like the sheer cruelty and hatred we face is inhuman, even alien. That’s part of how we are being treated after all. So for a moment, I thought I’d offer a little catharsis, as a treat. This song is a bit ridiculous, but sometimes we need to step back and just revel in some hyperbole to get us through the day, especially as we once again have a president who, as the song says, “starves little kids and…dyes his hair.”

I really wish The Dead Milkmen had done better in the 80s. I feel like the Pop-Punk movement of the 90s and 00s would have been improved with a stronger Dead Milkmen influence or at least awareness. But that may be a conversation for another day.

Day 14 – I’m Afraid of Americans, David Bowie

It is frankly astonishing how quickly this administration has turned our country into a pariah state. In a world where the international community is slow to condemn even the worst actions by their allies, the US has managed to isolate itself incredibly quickly. And it’s not just a diplomatic isolation – we’re also working very hard to make sure no one wants to come visit. Everyone right now is justified in being afraid of us, and that’s deeply upsetting.

And of course, the other side of this coin is the list of people we are still trying to befriend. On top of all the other questionable countries and authoritarian leaders we’re cozying up to, here we are fast-tracking the refugee status of Afrikaners in what is probably the longest-distance example of White Flight I’ve ever seen. The flushing of our reputational toilet is being made absolute – we will not recover from this.

Day 15 – Redneck Wonderland, Midnight Oil

While the rest of us struggle, there are so many politicians that are doing just fine and even profiting from our misery. This song was originally about Clive Palmer, one of Australia’s worst pieces of corporate/political garbage of recent years, but it can easily be extrapolated to cover many of the polished turds in our own government. We live in an oligarchy, not a democracy, and that decline is made more apparent by the day.

Midnight Oil has an endless supply of relevant songs, but I wanted to pull from a lesser-known album for this one. Redneck Wonderland (the album) is their most musically aggressive work, and it feels right to get that one out right now.

Day 16 – Today’s Empires, Tomorrow’s Ashes

Sometimes it only takes two minutes for a Canadian thrash-punk band to just completely have our country’s number from start to finish, dissecting the contrast between our promise of justice for all versus the injustices we have committed. There is absolute poetry in how much critique is packed into so few words rapidly delivered. Importantly, this song makes references to Canada’s own treatment of First Nations people as well – a reminder that our neighbor to the north has their own problematic history.

In our scrambled panic about the authoritarianism now being applied to white people, let’s not forget that even worse has been and is being done right now to the true stewards of this land. From the gutting of important Park Service roles to the staggering cuts to education and Medicaid, the US is largely abandoning many of its treaty obligations with native tribes in ways that threaten their survival across future generations.

Day 17 – The Final Solution: Slavery’s Back in Effect, Sister Souljah

While the specific scenario presented in this video might seem like hyperbole, anyone who has watched the documentary Thirteenth or another of the many deconstructions of the prison labor system knows that slavery is active right now in this country. And it’s only getting worse with the current kidnappings of migrants and protestors. We know that El Salvador’s CECOT is a labor camp, and the attempt to remove detainees to Libya is another way of selling off prisoners for labor.

I also wanted to include this video specifically to call out the political “allies” who lack the courage to speak bluntly. There’s a habit of politicians known as the “Sister Souljah Moment” that refers to a supposedly progressive politician denouncing a more progressive voice to defuse centrist worries. President Clinton denounced her speech at the beginning of this video along with other statements she had made to the Rainbow Coalition about the LA riots. Unfortunately, because this seemed to work for Clinton, the spin machine for the Democratic Party keeps encouraging its candidates to do likewise. They did it to Obama over Jeremiah Wright, and Bill Maher tried to get Harris to do it as a calculated strategy (as if she wasn’t already abandoning the left). So, you know, Bill Maher can cram it sideways.

Day 18 – Ohio, Neil Young

Part of examining where we are is considering where we are going very soon. This is not distant speculation, but clear-eyed understanding of the inevitable consequences of current trends. The language being used regarding protests these days very much echoes the sentiments of the Nixon administration in 1970. The escalation of violence and anti-protest rhetoric that led to the Kent State shootings feels very familiar. In 2021, at the height of BLM and anti-police protests, there was a surge of anti-protest legislation proposals, with almost 90 bills submitted across the country that year. In the first three months of 2025, there were 41.

When (not if) the next Kent State happens, make sure you’re paying attention to how they characterize the victims. They’re already demonizing protesters after the fact with the ICE kidnappings, and that will only get worse if someone is killed. Don’t believe the lies.

Day 19 – Belfast Child, Simple Minds

As should be pretty obvious, I tend to look at history for models of what to expect from the present. In trying to imagine a United States descended into sectarian violence, I know that terms like “Civil War” are probably going to be inaccurate. We don’t have the neat geopolitical divisions that some people think we have, and our situation will almost certainly be more chaotic. The best example I have been able to come up with is the Troubles in Northern Ireland. I can imagine a situation where violent acts over ideology are regular enough that we lament them without really changing our daily lives. We live a little more in fear every day, but, as Jim Kerr sings, “life goes on.”

Except I don’t have to imagine it. That’s really where we are. From school shootings like the one in Madison to the bombing of an IVF clinic in Palm Springs, we’re already immersed in ideological violence. The harder thing to imagine is life without fear, without trauma, without the daily toll of lives. And of course we don’t have it nearly as bad as others around the world, but our experiences numb us to the pain of others. We are forced inward and made less able to help those who so desperately need it.

Day 20 – Life During Wartime, Talking Heads

This one’s a bit of an interlude, but also one of the songs that inspired this list in the first place. This song imagines life in an unspecified time of conflict in a war-torn US. When it was created, the song was clearly an examination of Cold War era perceptions about how we thought of war “over there” and never “right here,” but in a modern context it feels…oddly prescient.

Day 21 – No Gringo, Vienna Teng

I end this section with another thought experiment turned predictive – one last quiet moment of despair and frustration before I turn to the hope and anger. We’re rapidly turning into the country people want to escape from rather than to, and it is increasingly easy to imagine some version of the scenario described by this song becoming real – one in which we are the unwanted refugees.

Part 3 – Who We Become

Day 22 – No Time For Cryin’, Mavis Staples

Few people still living understand the struggle better than Mavis Staples. She’s been part of it since she was a child, and she’s never stopped singing and fighting.

For much of this section, I’m going to let the songs speak for themselves. While I appreciate the support I’ve received for my written comments, I want to center the music as much as possible. As Mavis sings, “We’ve got work to do.”

Day 23 – Fight the Power, Public Enemy

Because sometimes we got to pump the stuff that makes us tough.

Also, just a side note to boost Flavor Flav being a real one these days and showing that actually supporting women’s sports does not involve being transphobic.

Day 24 – Ballad of the Fort Hood Three

About twenty years ago, I saw a documentary called Sir! No Sir! that transformed my understanding of the Vietnam War and, by extension, my understanding of how much our military relies on manufactured consent. Part of the purpose of this section of the playlist is to offer ideas and reminders of the power we have under authoritarianism. The GI anti-war movement during Vietnam was huge and tremendously effective, and this principled rejection of immoral and illegal orders is what we need to see now.

It won’t come from the cowards hiding their faces and gleefully stealing people based on race alone, but our military is bigger and more diverse than that. There are career soldiers with the power to say no publicly, and we must encourage that.

Day 25 – Double Dare Ya, Bikini Kill

This one’s pretty straightforward: Be who you are. Don’t let them tell you what to do. Stand up for your rights.

Bikini Kill double dares ya.

Day 25 – Queer as in Fuck You

It’s telling that this is the first video of the entire month that is age-restricted and can’t be embedded on my blog. Sure there’s swearing. Yeah, there’s an animated dude hanging his butt out. But really it’s about our Puritanical society’s inability to stomach queerness.

This song began as a rejection of rainbow capitalism, and in previous years that might have been a reasonable message as we approach Pride. But this year we see just how hollow those previous 1-month acknowledgments have been as companies hurry to abandon the LGBTQIA+ community to avoid scrutiny by the militant fascists. However, that hasn’t gone well for Target, and it won’t go well for others – people remember. But most importantly, we now see that those superficial gestures of the past were never going to be enough. Queer liberation is part of the freedom we all must demand.

Day 27 – Django Jane, Janelle Monae

Janelle Monae is an underrated icon, a pinnacle of queer black excellence. Not only do they produce anthem after anthem showing that, but they’re also responsible for one of the few true protest songs of this century: “Hell You Talmbout.” For this moment in the playlist, though, I wanted to give them a moment of power and pride, and this is one of their best for that.

Day 28 – Higher Ground, Stevie Wonder

I have loved this song for a long time. The groove just doesn’t quit, and the lyrics are inspiring but flexible so you can haul it out in a variety of situations. This performance is especially good, and I come back to it often enough that Stevie saying “Turn me up just a little bit” has become part of the lyrics for me. I honestly can’t imagine anyone listening to this and not feeling pumped up.

Day 29 – People Have the Power, Patti Smith

There’s a lot of broken discourse these days. I see comments about certain politicians not doing enough, or doing the right thing once and then not following through, or about making empty gestures and not really meaning it, and it all misses the point. Politicians respond to pressure, and it’s up to us to apply it. They’re always receiving pressure from moneyed interests, but the people can override that with our own pressure if we make the effort. The key is we have to sustain that pressure – it can’t be a one-time thing. We can’t accept that a politician taking one action under pressure is enough for us to stop. That relenting is evidence that our efforts are working, so we can and should push for more.

If we don’t force them to pay attention to us, they’ll go back to paying attention to money. Don’t let them. Persuade those who can be, remove those who can’t, and remind them daily that the consent of the governed can always be revoked.

Day 30 – Shelter, Vic Mensa (ft. Wyclef Jean, Chance the Rapper)

Before I close, it’s important to take a moment to remind everyone that the difference between the revolution and our oppressors must be that we remember the most vulnerable, the ones they are willing to forget. At the moment, that’s a lot of different groups, but one thing all those groups have in common is children. Migrant children, poor children, Palestinian children, trans children, and more – remember that what we sacrifice is less important than what we save. We must be their shelter.

Day 31 – One Fine Day, David Byrne

Here’s the hope that I end on – encapsulated not just by the song itself, but also by this fantastic performance with the Brooklyn Youth Chorus. This video feeds my soul, and I hope yours as well.

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If you’re interested in listening to the whole playlist straight through, you can find it here: