"Most of the worst songs about Serious Issues ever recorded were made in the five years after Live Aid."

Some serious face while clapping going on there. (iirc)

"Just a world that we all must share, it's not enough just to stand and stare," apparently:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DODKTN3O2s

My long-held crackpot theory - now pending review, upon completion of DL's humungous tome - is that Band Aid Killed The Protest Song.

I think it did serious damage to the protest song's reputation - in the 90s Thom Yorke once said that he wanted to write political songs but not "Live Aid shit".

What is this humungous tome you speak of?

But he did want to play piano on Band aid shit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdtDtZw-p28

Song for the environment by Canadian music stars (in both official languages!). The video features Olympic medalists for some reason:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gri5mVJczMM

And the Canadian "Band Aid", written by Brian Adams:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJN3u1wAWIk

Ugh @ that last one.

This is more about Margaret Thatcher than Live Aid, isn't it? ("Money Go Round", "Money's Too Tight To Mention", et al.)

As far as narratives songs set against a world-in-crisis backdrop, I like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qW-kseVoPms

It's pretty (unintentionally) funny I think. Neil Young, Geddy Lee and Joni Mitchell look so out of place. And then you get Anne-Murray, Mike Reno, Corey Hart, and the token French line!
(x-post)

Oooh have we mentioned Keep on Rockin the Free World? I love that song, but it has to be one of the only songs with lyrics about TOILET PAPER.

Rockin IN that is

Good thing about that song is he actually sounds properly pissed off.

The Lebanon is always cited as one of the worst political songs but I love it. Great PiL-style guitar, snipers/shops line not as bad as it's made out to be.

xp - Totally. That's why I still like it. Also the parking attendant at my local public library used to sing it to me when I would leave the parking lot, and for some reason I always liked that.

And the Canadian "Band Aid", written by Brian Adams:

I thought it was David Foster. Sounds a lot like a David Foster effort.

This thread needs these two chicks:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZt7J0iaUD0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKYWOwWAguk

Not that they are particularly bad - particularly not the first one, but I guess they are if you are against the idea of 80s pop songs about serious issues.

This may have been slightly pre-Band Aid:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bobUGEliic

I'm so glad Hear N' Aid pre-dates Live Aid by 6 weeks or so (though it didn't see release till 1/2 year after) because it is awesome.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZktrrqT1A0

Which also brings me to this (again, I consider this not bad at all):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqqXMXpyAkE

And this one even has a classic video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTOQUnvI3CA

(But maybe "serious" songs were actually better slightly pre-Live Aid?)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyjWEIHqDbE

Austrians aren't very good at tenderness, so a lot of them just growl.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xz43diLLTP8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk9DZfPR9Yg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kluCLBdByGM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X16FFaVnz_s

first time i ever saw boomtown rats was on the merv griffin show!

Mine was IIRC as musical guest on the SNL knockoff Fridays, where they played "Don't Like Mondays". I remember my Mom commenting, with audible contempt, that they looked "anti-establishment'.

Bob Geldof: wtf were we thinking?

luka is a good song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_gz-gY3U1E

Can't remember too many songs much worse than this one, which was the Thompson Twins' anti-drug song and just about their last hit. Completely awful and I doubt the message really connected with anyone.

see also: the first side of Document

finest worksong bro!

It's pretty (unintentionally) funny I think. Neil Young, Geddy Lee and Joni Mitchell look so out of place.

Joni Mitchell has never looked more uncomfortable. Then again, she's never looked particularly comfortable.

xp yeah I hate that album dude (but it reminds you a bit of Go4; we've touched on this discussion before...)

(Finest Worksong, that is)

Hear N Aid is pretty awesome. Shocked to see Nugent, i doubt he would do anything charitable nowadays, unless its for Second Amendment rights.

OK "Talkin' Bout a Revolution" and "The Lebanon" are not bad songs.

I like the Lebanon! Guitars suited the Human League a lot better than they did ABC.

I kind of hated it when I was young, but I'm just thinking how dignified and noble a song Labi Siffre's 'Something Inside' was compared to all the rest of this bilge.

A lot of these songs are not at all bad songs. Surely not the Johnny Hates Jazz one, that one is a great song.

Geir, why do you keep posting great songs including pre-Live Aid ones? It's not "Please post every issue-based song from the 80s" until the thread is dead.

Even now that I like Labi Siffre and appreciate what the song's about, I still find Something Inside ghastly and I feel sort of bad about that.

Was anything on the Greenpeace LP actually recorded especially for it? Doesn't look like it. I bought this with paper route money, it's kinda an awesome tracklist:

Peter Gabriel - Shock The Monkey
Queen - Is This The World We Created
Kajagoogoo - Turn Your Back On Me
Thomas Dolby - Windpower
Tears For Fears - Mad World
Kate Bush - Breathing
Heaven 17 - Let's All Make A Bomb
Pretenders, The - Show Me
--------------------------
B1 Hazel O'Connor & Chris Thompson - Push And Shove
B2 Howard Jones - Equality
B3 Madness - Wings Of A Dove
B4 Nik Kershaw - Human Racing
B5 George Harrison - Save The Wold
B6 Roger Taylor - Killing Time
B7 Depeche Mode - Blasphemous Rumours
B8 Eurythmics - No Fear, No Hate, No Pain, No Broken Hearts

Did No Nukes have songs about nukes?

just dropping in to say that Rockin' in the Free World is an absolutely amazing song

The most recent examples: Just Stand Up 2 Cancer, Everybody Hurts and We Are The World 25. They were all very, very bad.

I feel like Pearl Jam is one of the big inheritors of this tradition. One of the reasons I like Nirvana more tbh

No Springsteen here either?

Springsteen's most "political" 80s songs were probably "Born In The USA" and "My Hometown". Both of which were pre-Live Aid anyway.

Right on.

Btw, love Another Day in Paradise

I feel like Pearl Jam is one of the big inheritors of this tradition.

I don't doubt that Eddie Vedder cares about and contributes to solving serious issues, but it seems like all the homeless people and troubled teens in early Pearl Jam songs exist as much to set an appropriately grunge-y atmosphere as to raise awareness about the issues.

on the other hand, I doubt the guys from Candlebox really cared about serious issues when they recorded that one song about homeless people, and I doubt the guys from Staind really cared about serious issues when they recorded that one song about homeless people, and...(you get the idea)

it's obnoxious to create art about tragedies because it's fashionable to do so, although it's somewhat less obnoxious if there's some real compassion mixed in there.

I'm not saying musicians shouldn't be allowed to write about serious issues unless they intend to directly or indirectly make the world a better place through their music. songwriters should have the freedom to work with any subject matter without feeling any obligation toward it that doesn't relate to their artistic goals. but it's just crass when socially conscious issues go from being the chosen themes of individual artists to being trendy in the same way that gated drums and P-Funk samples are trendy.