Most of us could use more peace in our lives. Whether it’s ongoing conflict across the world we’re considering, or the many little wars we fight on a daily basis – with each other, with ourselves – it’s not difficult to see how fraught the modern age can feel. Our battles are different in nature to those of bygone generations, and in a lot of ways they’re more complicated. More insidious. Horrors, issues and disagreements that get under our skin. Music can hold a mirror up to this.
Historically, the ‘protest song’ tends to get more airtime. Heavy music in its politically inclined forms (from early blues and folk to punk and metal) has often taken an oppositional approach: identifying wrong and rallying against it; calling listeners to arms; or just providing an outlet for anger. Some of the most powerful statements in music have stemmed from such sources, from Billie Holiday’s Strange Fruit to Rage Against The Machine’s Killing In The Name.
But in this age of information (and, increasingly, misinformation), perhaps a call for acceptance is just as useful? And, for that matter, aren’t some of the greatest ‘protest songs’ (for example Edwin Starr’s immortal War) really pacifist anthems at heart? We highlight some of the finest peace songs recorded, from soul stars to hard rockers and beyond, from the 1940s to the present day.
George Harrison
Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth)
Harrison’s spiritual antennae was raised high in his earliest post-Beatles years, with the guitarist announcing an ambition to be “God-conscious”, and 1973’s Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth) flowing from him as though written by a higher power. “Sometimes you open your mouth and you don’t know what you are going to say, and whatever comes out is the starting point,” he wrote in his 1980 autobiography I, Me, Mine. “This song is a prayer and personal statement between me, the Lord, and whoever likes it.”
Give Me Love was no act of remote handwringing from a grief-tourist rock star. Harrison knew all about the human cost of conflict, having recently waded into the Bangladesh Liberation War with his famous New York benefit shows of ’71. Yet where a Springsteen or a Neil Young might have bitten harder, Harrison’s song painted a soundscape that sounded like peace already achieved, with a benevolent acoustic strum joined by a slide riff evoking a Honolulu sunset. The only possible note of conflict was the fact that Give Me Love knocked Wings’ My Love off the top of the US singles chart.
