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By Jon Pareles
Dear listeners,
Jon Pareles here, chief pop critic, dropping by The Amplifier while Lindsay is on leave. The Fourth of July is just a few days away. And its celebratory fireworks and parades, lest we forget, commemorate a manifesto of principled rejection of authoritarian rule, which became the foundation of a successful revolution. It’s a good moment to crank up some songs about defiance, rebellion, justice and collective action. Here are a few for starters.
Rip the mic, rip the stage, rip the system,
Jon
Listen along while you read.
1. Tracy Chapman: ‘Talkin’ Bout a Revolution’
“Poor people gonna rise up and take what’s theirs,” Tracy Chapman predicted on her 1988 debut album. With a churchy organ looming behind her strummed guitar chords, she envisioned economic discontent that could build from a whisper to a movement — and she welcomed it.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
2. The Isley Brothers: ‘Fight the Power, Pts. 1 and 2’
Frustration energized the funk in this 1975 hit by the Isley Brothers. Tautly contained rhythm guitars and pithy drumming back up the brothers’ growls and falsettos as they rail against red tape, against people who say their “music’s too loud” and generally against a barnyard profanity that was still a rarity in that era of R&B. For the last two minutes of a five-minute track, they bear down directly on their message, vehemently repeating, “Fight it, fight the power!”
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
3. Public Enemy: ‘Fight the Power’
In 1989, Public Enemy latched onto the Isley Brothers’ title and refrain for “Fight the Power,” which appeared on the soundtrack to Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing” and on Public Enemy’s album “Fear of a Black Planet.” Chuck D declares, “From the heart, it’s a start, a work of art / To revolutionize, make a change,” over the Bomb Squad’s dense, deep funk production — a bristling pileup of samples from James Brown and many others. Decades later, it still sounds uncompromising.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
4. Michael Franti & Spearhead: ‘Yell Fire!’
A reggae groove spiked with aggressive rock guitars backs up Michael Franti’s multifaceted attacks — on wealth, white-collar crime, the Iraq war, media distractions and more — in “Yell Fire!,” the title track from a 2006 album. “A revolution never come with a warning,” he chants, while he counts on the power of music: “Rumble in the speakers and it make you wanna rebel.”
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
5. Bob Marley & the Wailers: ‘Get Up, Stand Up’
Bob Marley and Peter Tosh don’t shout in “Get Up, Stand Up,” from the 1973 album “Burnin’.” Their tone is sympathetic, pained, admonitory, hoping to persuade. They’re warning listeners not to wait for divine intervention or rewards in the afterlife, but to stand up in the here and now. The song is in a minor key, with the Wailers band setting up a patient tempo and terse instrumental cross-talk. They’re braced for a long struggle.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
6. Mavis Staples: ‘Eyes on the Prize’
“Eyes on the Prize,” an old folk-gospel song that was reworked into an anthem of the civil-rights movement, reaches back to biblical references to call for tenacity in fighting for freedom. Mavis Staples, who in her years with the Staple Singers sang for countless civil-rights gatherings in the 1960s, revisited the song on her 2007 album, “We’ll Never Turn Back.” With Ry Cooder’s slide guitar urging her on, it’s a twangy, rawboned version, fervent in its conviction and sharpened by long experience.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
7. Patti Smith: ‘People Have the Power’
Patti Smith forged a utopian, all-purpose anthem with “People Have the Power” in 1988. What starts as her own remembered dream turns into a vast, shared, global vision, where people can stop an army with “The power to dream, to rule, to wrestle the earth from fools.” Pounding drums, sustained synthesizers and gleaming guitars work up a sustained surge of unabashed hope.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
8. Björk: ‘Declare Independence’
Leave it to Björk to think not only about independence, but about the nation-building that would have to follow it: “Start your own currency,” she instructs. “Make your own stamp. Protect your language.” From her 2007 album, “Volta,” the track rides a distorted riff punctuated by electronic zaps and dissonant brass-section chords. A basic, brutal drumbeat pushes her voice toward righteous screams: “Don’t let them do that to you!” Bonus geopolitical trivia: In the video clip, the red-and-white patch on Björk’s shoulder is the flag of Greenland.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
9. Rage Against the Machine: ‘Know Your Enemy’
Zack de la Rocha rails at complacency, self-deception, phony “American dreams” and much more in a track from Rage Against the Machine’s self-titled 1992 album. He starts out irate and gets more furious as he goes — especially after a sullen-to-screaming interlude sung by Maynard James Keenan, from Tool. The band slings enough hard-rock riffs for multiple songs, and a careening, high-speed guitar solo from Tom Morello only raises the stakes.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
10. Antibalas: ‘Uprising’
Formed in 1997, the New York City band Antibalas took up the modal funk and political intentions of Afrobeat, the style Fela Anikulapo Kuti forged in Nigeria in the 1970s. “Uprising,” from the 2001 album “Liberation Afro Beat Vol. 1,” is a resolute, percussive instrumental with a promising title and a brassy melody, just awaiting your own fist-pumping message.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
The Amplifier Playlist
“10 Songs of Rebellion and Defiance for the Fourth” track list
Track 1: Tracy Chapman, “Talkin’ Bout a Revolution”
Track 2: The Isley Brothers, “Fight the Power, Pts. 1 and 2”
Track 3: Public Enemy, “Fight the Power”
Track 4: Michael Franti & Spearhead, “Yell Fire!”
Track 5: Bob Marley & the Wailers, “Get Up, Stand Up”
Track 6: Mavis Staples, “Eyes on the Prize”
Track 7: Patti Smith, “People Have the Power”
Track 8: Björk, “Declare Independence”
Track 9: Rage Against the Machine, “Know Your Enemy”
Track 10: Antibalas, “Uprising”
Bonus Tracks
Caryn Ganz, the pop music editor here! Since the Fourth is so associated with grilling, I asked our boss Sam Sifton (a cook and a newsletter guru) to hit us with some related playlist tips. He came through:
First song, “Pressure Drop,” Toots and the Maytals. That’s me talking to the pork butt, letting it know what’s up, what’s going to happen in the smoke over time, until it collapses into juicy strands. Missy Elliott, “All N My Grill,” music for hot dogs. Louis Armstrong, “Struttin’ With Some Barbecue”? That’s for the old heads over by the slaw, wanting to eat early because bedtime’s coming. The Replacements, “Stuck in the Middle.” Burgers on the grill! Pogo while you cook. Morgan Wallen, “Up Down” with Florida Georgia Line. You too can turn a parking lot into a party. Just cook.
Jon Pareles has been The Times’s chief pop music critic since 1988. He studied music, played in rock, jazz and classical groups and was a college-radio disc jockey. He was previously an editor at Rolling Stone and The Village Voice.
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