This shouldn’t be too hard; conservatives have shunned rock music for decades. Part of the point of rock is to shake up the status quo, to challenge institutions, and to call for change. In a nutshell, rock music is, or at least is supposed to be, the opposite of conservative ideology.<\/p>\n
We’re a creative bunch; what are your ideas for a list for our side of the aisle?<\/p>\n
(If you’re interested I’ve included the top 10 from Miller’s conservative list after the jump, several of which don’t strike me as conservative at all.)
\n<\/p>\n
1. “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” by The Who
\nThe conservative movement is full of disillusioned revolutionaries; this could be their theme song, an oath that swears off na\u00efve idealism once and for all. “There’s nothing in the streets \/ Looks any different to me \/ And the slogans are replaced, by-the-bye. . . . Meet the new boss \/ Same as the old boss.” The instantly recognizable synthesizer intro, Pete Townshend’s ringing guitar, Keith Moon’s pounding drums, and Roger Daltrey’s wailing vocals make this one of the most explosive rock anthems ever recorded \u2014 the best number by a big band, and a classic for conservatives.<\/p>\n
2. “Taxman,” by The Beatles
\nA George Harrison masterpiece with a famous guitar riff (which was actually played by Paul McCartney): “If you drive a car, I’ll tax the street \/ If you try to sit, I’ll tax your seat \/ If you get too cold, I’ll tax the heat \/ If you take a walk, I’ll tax your feet.” The song closes with a humorous jab at death taxes: “Now my advice for those who die \/ Declare the pennies on your eyes.”<\/p>\n
3. “Sympathy for the Devil,” by The Rolling Stones
\nDon’t be misled by the title; this song is The Screwtape Letters of rock. The devil is a tempter who leans hard on moral relativism \u2014 he will try to make you think that “every cop is a criminal \/ And all the sinners saints.” What’s more, he is the sinister inspiration for the cruelties of Bolshevism: “I stuck around St. Petersburg \/ When I saw it was a time for a change \/ Killed the czar and his ministers \/ Anastasia screamed in vain.”<\/p>\n
4. “Sweet Home Alabama,” by Lynyrd Skynyrd
\nA tribute to the region of America that liberals love to loathe, taking a shot at Neil Young’s Canadian arrogance along the way: “A Southern man don’t need him around anyhow.”<\/p>\n
5. “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” by The Beach Boys
\nPro-abstinence and pro-marriage: “Maybe if we think and wish and hope and pray it might come true \/ Baby then there wouldn’t be a single thing we couldn’t do \/ We could be married \/ And then we’d be happy.”<\/p>\n
6. “Gloria,” by U2
\nJust because a rock song is about faith doesn’t mean that it’s conservative. But what about a rock song that’s about faith and whose chorus is in Latin? That’s beautifully reactionary: “Gloria \/ In te domine \/ Gloria \/ Exultate.”<\/p>\n
7. “Revolution,” by The Beatles
\n“You say you want a revolution \/ Well you know \/ We all want to change the world . . . Don’t you know you can count me out?” What’s more, Communism isn’t even cool: “If you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao \/ You ain’t going to make it with anyone anyhow.” (Someone tell the Che Guevara crowd.)<\/p>\n
8. “Bodies,” by The Sex Pistols
\nViolent and vulgar, but also a searing anti-abortion anthem by the quintessential punk band: “It’s not an animal \/ It’s an abortion.”<\/p>\n
9. “Don’t Tread on Me,” by Metallica
\nA head-banging tribute to the doctrine of peace through strength, written in response to the first Gulf War: “So be it \/ Threaten no more \/ To secure peace is to prepare for war.”<\/p>\n
10. “20th Century Man,” by The Kinks
\n“You keep all your smart modern writers \/ Give me William Shakespeare \/ You keep all your smart modern painters \/ I’ll take Rembrandt, Titian, da Vinci, and Gainsborough. . . . I was born in a welfare state \/ Ruled by bureaucracy \/ Controlled by civil servants \/ And people dressed in grey \/ Got no privacy got no liberty \/ ‘Cause the 20th-century people \/ Took it all away from me.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Of these, maybe I could see “Sweet Home Alabama” as a vaguely conservative anthem, but “Sympathy for the Devil”? Seriously? Since when is “all sinners are saints” a conservative idea?<\/p>\n
For that matter, if the right has to look to U2, The Who, The Stones, and The Beatles for conservative lyrics, doesn’t this kind of prove my point about the inherent liberalism of the genre?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
July’s almost over, Congress starts a five-week summer break tomorrow, and Bush seems to have some kind of moral objection to working in the month of August, so let’s take on a slightly less serious discussion-group topic today, shall we? National Review’s John J. Miller recently published what he labeled the “50 greatest conservative rock […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8069\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}