Making Protest Songs Great Again
My Favorite Protest Songs of 2025
However you feel about Donald J. Trump, there’s one thing you have to admit:
Our glorious president has been great for those of us who enjoy a good, biting protest song.
I doubt that anyone’s making serious money recording songs lambasting authoritarianism, intolerance and other horrors of Trump 2.0. But this past year that pan-genre niche has shown more signs of life than any time I can remember in 50 years or so.
Here’s a list of my favorite protest songs released in 2025. Where possible, I linked to the artist’s Bandcamp accounts or other places you can download the song.
“Come On!” by Jon Spencer (with Kendall Wind, Spider Bowman and Deke Dickerson) In early spring our beloved blues exploder released this joyful call to action. “The power of our music, the power of the people ... We’re going to throw these evil spirits out!” If Spencer were more famous, Pete Hogsbreath would be calling for him to be executed.
“Last Call in America” by Fishbone with George Clinton The nation’s preeminent funk master teams up with these Black rockers on this righteous, if somewhat terrifying tune. “It was a no knock warrant when they came to the door. / Six shots later she was dead on the floor. / Now that don’t sound like justice to me. / Take an innocent woman from her family... “
“Goon with the Hammer” by Mark Rubin, Jew of Oklahoma I first became a fan of Rubin in the 1990s when he played upright bass with punk-bluegrass group Bad Livers. I never got to see the Livers play, though I did see Rubin leading a klezmer band, in which he played tuba. But lately, he’s traded his bass and tuba for a folkie guitar and is specializing in protest music. “Goon,” which takes aim at Trump’s ICE-capades, is my favorite: “Dressed up like thugs/ In unmarked vans / If you fit a description / These guys have got plans ...”
“One in a Million” by Janis Ian & Joan Baez Talk about timeless ... When I first heard this haunting duet, I thought the song had to be some unjustly obscure Civil Rights Era hymn being revived for the present day when the ghosts of Bull Connor and George Wallace seem to have been resurrected. “In my darkest night / I hold on to that light / We are one in a million strong ... “ But, no, this song was written by Janis and another songwriter named Jess Leary. I was right, however that the song is old, if not as old as I thought. It was written in the early ‘90s. While the recording of Janis and my old background singer Joan was made in 1994, it never was released until this May. By the way, the link here is to Janis’ website where you can download the song for free.
“Don’t Let the Bastards Get You Down” by Margo Price OK, you can argue that this tune, from Margo’s excellent Hard-Headed Woman album, wasn’t actually written as a political song. But let’s add a little context: I believe it’s significant that she performed it on Jimmy Kimmel Live! the very night before ABC, reacting to pressure from Trump’s FCC chairman, suspended (temporarily, as it turned out) the show. And in this performance, Margo changed the lyrics to the final refrain to “keep all them fascists underground/don’t let the bastards get you down.” Yeah, we know these bastards. I’m sure, if there is a Heaven, both Kris Kristofferson and Sinead O’Connor looked down with approving smiles.
“Join ICE” by Jesse Welles Anyone who’s spent any time on TikTok most likely has come across this scruffy kid playing acoustic guitar outdoors and singing short, clever topical songs with a voice and the general vibe that’s rightly been compared with Woody Guthrie or the young Bob Dylan. (But, Christ, I thought he were over anointing “new Dylans” decades ago!) There are many Welles songs that could have gone on this list. But “Join ICE” is my favorite. Welles sums up the mentality that helped turn this agency into the ugly force it’s become: “I failed the academy, the cops weren’t havin’ me / The Army didn’t sound that fun / So I found me a paramilitary operation / That was keen to hand me a gun ...” (Unfortunately, I can’t find anywhere online selling this song. But you can find more Jesse music for sale at the above link.)
“Dixie Be Damned” by Nick Shoulders. Here’s another singer from northwestern Arkansas. Nick’s been a favorite of mine for years (and he’s played Santa Fe several times.) He knows his way around a protest song, though that’s not what he’s best known for. From his work through the years, it’s obvious Nick loves the land of his birth, its snakes. Its waterfalls. But he’s not shy about calling out hate and bigotry where he sees it. And there seems to be more of it to see every day. “I’ve been beaten by the Bible belt / I’ve been hainted by the holy ghost / Lord who preaches kindness has the flock I fear the most …” By the way “hainted” aint no typo! It’s just Nick’s hillbilly way.
“Horseglue” by Ekko Astral. Noise punk priestess and Ekko leader Jael Holzman’s day job is being an environmental journalist, these days at Heatmap, a climate-news publication. On this jarring song, she rages against her (and my!) chosen profession and its failings at this critical time: “… a national horse race / I call it glue factory / I can’t believe i’m just a dateline to my friends …” I got to hear this new song live a couple of months ago when I saw Ekko in Denver (yes, the same show, mentioned in the About Section of this Substack where I fell in the mosh pit, though immediately rescued by thoughtful Ekko fans who pulled an old man up.) But why read my prattling about “Horseglue” when you can read the songwriter’s own take HERE.
“Just Another Shooting” by Tommy Womack. This one’s literally a last-minute entry here. Seriously, I just heard it for the first time last night right before I was going to give this post a last read-through. And I was impressed by Womack’s disturbingly deadpan delivery with a Randy Newman-style irony, telling the story from the perspective of a moron. So it was obvious that it belongs in this list. Unlike most of the selections here, this tune was not directly inspired by Donald Trump. In fact, according to a review in Glide Magazine, Womack wrote it “in the wake of the 2023 Covenant School shooting in Nashville,” (where the singer resides.) But even though it could have been released virtually any time in the past 30 years no matter who was in the White House, I’m sure our beloved president — or any MAGA zealot listening — would immediately denounce Womack as an America-hating, Antifa-loving, woke DEI terrorist. So here it is.
Finally here are a couple of fine 2025 protest tunes from a couple of my New Mexico cronies.
“Ain’t No Compassion” by “Saddlehorn Sam,” whose not-so-secret identity is my fellow Okie in exile, Jeff Hett. Jeff knows quite a bit about “some of these small towns” and shudders at the mean spiritedness that seems to have taken over much of the rural parts of the country. He’s helped out here by his wife Anita, daughter Melody and my brother Jack, who played slide guitar.
“When The Nightmare’s Over” by Jim Terr. When Jim, who’s been writing funny tunes for decades (seems like centuries), sent me this new tune a few weeks ago, it struck me immediately as refreshing. Other songs on this list do a great job expressing rage, ridicule, fear, frustration and sadness. But Jim’s song is different. It’s an expression of hope, a quality we haven’t found an abundance of in the past year or so. Granted, that hope has a grain (or maybe a pound) of salt. It starts out “When the nightmare’s over, when this bad dream is through / We’ll go back to lovin’ each other, or pretending that we do ...” It’s a nice reminder that “This too shall pass.” Jim recognizes that even after Trump’s eventual exit “things won’t be perfect still,” but he sings, “We can all get back to work intending that it will.” Fuck a duck, I hope that happens!
Tune into Terrell’s Sound World Sunday night, December 14, (10 p.m. to midnight), and I’ll play all these songs. That’s KSFR, Santa Fe Public Radio, 101.1 on your FM dial, or www.ksfr.org online.
