On Saturday, singer Olivia Rodrigo, performing at the Glastonbury festival, offered a literal “Fuck You” to the five Supreme Court members who voted to kill Roe — by doing a duet with Lily Allen of Allen’s song of the same name. Kudos to both of them. Here’s video of the performance.
A number of other musicians have spoken out against the ruling; so I’ve put together a little playlist featuring some of them.
Billie Eilish, also at Glastonbury, said it was a “really dark day for women in the US.” Here’s her song Bad Guy.
Megan Thee Stallion — also at Glastonbury — was a bit blunter about the ruling, declaring “‘my body, my motherfucking choice!’ Here’s a song of hers with, putting it mildly, a sex positive message. She’s kind of got a lot of those.
Meanwhile, Lizzo announced that she was teaming up with Live Nation to donate a million dollars to help fund access to reproductive health care.
The lead singer of Pussy Riot spoke out against the decision on stage at the St. Petersburg, Florida, pride celebration, saying it would lead to the deaths of many women. Here’s a Pussy Riot song to remind us where this Supreme Court majority came from.
Taylor Swift tweeted that she was”terrified” by the ruling. Here’s one of her most famous songs.
Pink told any of her fans who support the decision to “never f***ing listen to my music again'”
And then there was Cher, who tweeted:
Oh, and let’s add the weirdo cult-favorites Deerhoof, who posted some smart tweets on the subject:
I don’t know if I agree with all of the premises of the video exactly but it’s a great fucking song.
A lot of other musicians and musical groups — from Bette Midler to Rage Against the Machine — also spoke out against the supreme court’s decision, but I wanted to keep this list to a manageable size. Feel free to post videos from your favorites below.
And fuck you, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett, and Brett Kavanaugh, you pieces of shit.
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I have my playlist for the next hour.
Let’s add HarperValleyPTA
Something from RageAgainstTheMachine (they were mentioned in an update to the Lizzo article David linked as donating all the proceeds from a current pair of concerts to abortion providers)
I don’t even know what else. We need a growing list.
Might as well throw Helen Reddy’s I Am Woman. There’s a new cover by someone whose name I can’t remember, but a guy who normally plays country music, I think? Anyway, a guy covered the song and it’s supposed to be the bomb but i haven’t found it yet.
This is one of those songs I listen to when I need a pick-me-up, and a reminder that I am not alone.
This is a more somber song, but those who died before Roe deserve to be remembered, too. In their memory.
Dee Snider has come out as pro-choice several times so add Twisted Sister’s We’re Not Going To Take It.
This is an excellent playlist. Not only the topics, but a wide variety of interesting singers.
(I have been a Lizzo stan for several years; she has yet to disappoint me.)
@LouCPurr: I was never a big Twisted Sister fan, but I have seen Dee Snider interviewed (sans makeup) and he seems like a cool guy, pretty knowledgeable about a lot of stuff.
The Mr. has been in the hospital and now sick at home and I am soooo fucking exhausted and busy that I really don’t have the spoons to deal with anything. There’s still more tests to be run. But am glad to be past menopause right now, and my new shrink is great.
@Alan: I had a dream last night you got a heffalump released from durance vile, so let’s hope that comes true.
@ gss ex-noob
Thank you!
Although the irony is not lost on me that we’ve already got 2 to 5 on the way to granting Happy habeus corpus and thus personal autonomy.
At this rate an elephant could end up with more rights than women.
And I’m not saying that facetiously. I wish I was.
Co-signed, 1000%!
I’m picky about music and haven’t heard most of these songs, but kudos to every artist speaking out, and more importantly, donating to the cause, whether I listen to them or not.
@Alan
Well, here in ‘murica, guns already have more rights than women and children. At least an elephant is a living, breathing creature worthy of care and respect (and they really don’t deserve to be associated with the Rethuglican Death Cult, now or ever).
I’m never sure at times like this whether brain bleach is appropriate; but if it is…
@QotH: I’ve just had a sudden mental flash of a herd of elephants stomping on GQP bigwigs. That’d be perfect.
I wish GQP’ers were more endangered and elephants less.
Off-topic, but I was in Glastonbury a few days before the big music festival! …which is close to the town but not exactly in it. I went up Glastonbury Tor, saw the museum of the old monastery where King Arthur was supposedly buried, and looked at some shops – a lot of hippie/New Age stuff. Oh, and a weed store named after Bag End in The Hobbit.
(The UK trip was fun, but I had a bunch of random tech problems, including a few keys on my computer keyboard not working, which is why I wasn’t writing here much.)
The news from the US is super disappointing and infuriating. In brief, I’d thought the US had gotten through the Trump years without the major disasters people feared, and now this… not that it was exactly him, but he appointed most of the judges who decided this.
So I was lucky enough to witness Olivia Rodrigo and Lily Allen singing this in person, it was quite a moment. Almost every performer I saw for the whole festival mentioned the ruling in at least some way. Brass Against, who do metal/punk protest songs with brass instruments, were particularly fierce about it, and got a great response from the crowd.
Also on one of the smaller stages, queer protest folk singer Grace Petrie was incredibly cathartic. If you aren’t familiar I’d recommend looking her up, especially ‘losing side’ and ‘black tie’ which made me have a little weep to myself.
It’s hard to find a bigger concentration of lefties than the Glastonbury festival (almost like creativity and fun are left wing values or something) and it was great to hear in such crazy times that there still are a lot of people saying “what the fuck is going on?!”
For other people who don’t quite fit in.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYHB0Z4mEd0&w=560&h=315%5D
And I’ve been ninja’d on this one by @waywatcher, but here’s the link.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzU7aIk1dGI&w=560&h=315%5D
@ Waywatcher of the green
Ironically, Michael Eavis is quite candid that he only started Glasto for the money!
@Alan robertshaw
Thank you, I’d not seen that michael Eavis interview, I admit I don’t know much about the guy. I was being a bit glib when I said fun and creativity were left wing values, but I’m also 100% confident a right wing music festival would be miserable. Come and get your face painted with blackface before kidrock on the main stage everyone! 🤮
@ Waywatcher of the green
Well I am of course contractually obliged to say “That’s dairy farmers for you.”
You raise an interesting point about politics and creativity.
I’m sure there have been examples of right wing creativity; across the arts.
By definition though, a lot of conservative art harkens back to real or imagined golden ages. So it can end up being a bit derivative. But I guess that’s the point.
And one function of art is to discomfort the comfortable and vice versa. Privileged people, which many on the right are, are unlikely to want to upset their own apple cart, or offer succour to people they don’t see as deserving of it.
Similarly, there’s the punching up/down thing. That makes a lot of art, especially comedy and satire hard to do from a position of power.
That’s not to to say it’s impossible of course. A key thing with satire is it has to be based on an underlying reality. The subject of mockery actually has to exist and not be a straw man.
So for example jokes against minorities tend to be based on myths or disproven stereotypes. So they’re only funny to people who actually believe those. But they’re primarily not about humour. They’re shibboleths. So people laugh at them to virtue signal (in the technical sense of the word) and identity themselves as belonging to a certain group or mindset. Or just to put the targets down. Seeing someone suffering isn’t inherently funny; but laughing at an enemy’s predicament is part of the humiliation.
Some jokes can land though, like all the Judean People’s Front stuff; because it genuinely reflects something that is present in lefty politics.
@Alan Robertshaw:
My general rule of thumb is that a typical conservative joke is a threat with a laugh track.
@ full metal ox
Indeed.
And not just a threat to outsiders. It’s also aimed in-group.
Making a joke reflecting the group’s ideology, and then seeing if everyone laughs appropriately is like an authoritarian Voight-Kampff test.
And of course jokes can be an exercise in power in hierarchal entities. You must defer, and publicly demonstrate loyalty, to the leader.
And what better way to gauge that than to see how they react to your unfunny jokes?
@waywatcher: I am jealous. Over here we don’t even get to watch Glasto on TV.
@Alan: There’s a line from an old movie, where Spencer Tracy? says he’s here to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable”. I learned it from a friend who’s been in disability activism for decades. If you see something in California that’s there to make it easier for people in wheelchairs, thank her.