Can Popular Music Really Achieve Genuine Political Change?

Popular music has long been used as a vehicle to express political opinions, to promote policies and ideas. This is not just phenomenon that appeared during the sixties, one example is the anti-English folk songs of the Irish that spoke of freedom and the atrocities of the English. Popular music has long been seen as a threat by establishments. Whether Capitalist, Communist or Dictatorship, the awareness of music’s power to captivate and galvanise its audience into actions has often been cause for both concern and policy change or making. Examples of this include the Criminal Justice Act, the BBC’s refusal to play Paul McCartney songs about Ireland and Bob Doles campaign against Time-Warner’s promotion of Snoop Dogg. However not only does popular music cause its own censorship but can contribute to important political and social change. Billy Holidays song ‘Strange Fruit’ and the pictures that provided the inspiration for the song can be seen as playing an important, if minor role, in changing the attitude towards and social standing black Americans. In my view popular music cannot achieve political change on its own, but it can certainly start and aid the process.