The Trump Protest-Song Boom, in the Eye of History
The first anniversary of Donald Trump’s presidency is also the first anniversary of a landmark weekend for art and politics. Trump’s inauguration festivities brought Toby Keith and 3 Doors Down to the National Mall—amid rumors that bigger performers had turned down invitations. Then came the Women’s March, in which pink-hatted protestors sang taunts at the new president, activists and pop stars speechified, and bands mobilized.
The year since has seen a flourishing of protest music, extending a preexisting trend in which even the most vanilla pop singer began regularly slinging social causes with their music. Whether it was rappers naming and shaming the president or indie rockers writing cryptic ballads about national unrest, album after album asked to be evaluated in the context of the political climate. At the same time, Trump sparred with celebrity detractors, firing back at Madonna, Snoop Dogg, Kathy Griffin, football players following Colin Kaepernick’s lead, and other high-profile critics.
The U.K. music critic Dorian Lynskey’s 2011 book, 33 Revolutions Per Minute: A History of Protest Songs, insightfully traces politics and pop’s intersections from Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit” to Green Day’s “American Idiot.” Looking for historical perspective on the occasion of Trump’s one-year mark—is this really a protest-song boom?—I spoke to him via Skype. This conversation has been edited.
Spencer Kornhaber: In 33 Revolutions, you wrote that you feared the book was a “eulogy” for protest music, because it seemed to be on the decline. How do you feel now?
I don’t know that I thought it was dying. I thought that a certain era was over, which related to the waning of pop music’s
