In my opinion, songs can be as political as they want, blatantly or otherwise, but the key is to offer a solution to the problems they're talking about. Green Day can talk about how much Bush sucks all day and into the night, but it's not as if Billy Joe Armstrong would know what to do if we put him in the white house. And who would he suggest putting in there, anyway? Kerry? Why? That's the biggest problem I have with politically influenced music, people not knowing what they're talking about, and not offering any solutions.
On a side note, another "political" musician who annoys the **** out of me is John Mellencamp. If you guys like his music, fine, but he's always seemed like a really bland, untalented Springsteen rip-off to me. These days, he's apparently a big symbol for pro-democratic, anti-Bush rock music. He started pulling all this political bull**** at the Bridge School Benefit (if you don't know what it is, it's a concert Neil Young does to benefit a school his wife made for kids with cerebral palsy), not even close to being the right time or place. On top of that, the messages in his songs were no better than Green Day's, just a bunch of "Hey man, Bush is a mean, stupid old redneck" junk. **** that, worst act of the evening (to put that in perspective, Good Charlotte performed that night), and completely broke the mood. Sorry for the Mellencamp rant, I felt like it fit.
Big3, I agree that it's cool to see musicians approaching politics from a different perspective. One example (sort of) is John Coltrane's "Alabama", which he wrote as a companion piece to MLK's eulogy for the girls killed in Alabama, back in the 60's. It doesn't have any lyrics, but it's interesting how the mood of the music fits perfectly with the subject matter.
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