No posting USSR anthem, too obvious.
Most of 9 to 5ers Anthem by Aesop Rockis just certified anti-work banger lines.
My Idea of Fun of the same album got this mood bigtime, with hooks like:
We're building a new world, all of my friends and me It's not an exact science yet, but we have the technology Now all we need is an economy Where everybody finally will get enough to eat Even the suburbs know power's getting too crooked To stand on its own feet for much longer than it has
Pat the Bunny is a good source for this stuff
Dead Kennedys have some good ones
The Landlord's here to visit
They're blasting disco down below
Says "I'm doubling up the rent
Cause the building's condemned
You're gonna help me buy City Hall"
But we can, you know we can
But we can, you know we can
Let's lynch the landlord man
I tell him "turn on the water"
I tell him "turn on the heat"
Tells me "All you ever do is complain," yeah
Then they search the place when I'm not here
But we can, you know we can
Let's lynch the landlord
Let's lynch the landlord
Let's lynch the landlord man
Let's Lynch The Landlord
Problem is few care
About the people in despair
If you help no one
You're guilty in this hellnation
It's the only world we've got. Let's protect it while we can. That's all there is and there ain't no more
Hellnation
When pesticides get banned, we're safe up north
We'll just sell them to those other countries
Soon there's lots of exotic deformed babies
Somehow that's not our fault
And I wonder - yeah, I wonder
Why so many insects around us feed off the dead
Death squads, starvation
Foreign aid? Just leave it to the magic of the marketplace
A Growing Boy Needs His Lunch
The symbols of our heritage lit up proudly in the night
Somehow fits to see the homeless people passed out on the lawn
So this is where it happens, the power games and the bribes
All lobbying for a piece of ass of the stars and stripes of corruption
America's back, alright, at the game it plays the worst
Strip mining the world like a slave plantation
No wonder others hate us and the Hitlers we handpick
To bleed their people dry for our evil empire
The drug we're fed to make us like it is God and country with a bang
People we know who should know better
Howl "America rules, let's go to war!"
Business scams are what's worth dying for
But are the Soviets our worst enemy? We're destroying ourselves instead
Who cares about our civil rights as long as I get paid
The blind me-generation doesn't care if life's a lie
So easily used, so proud to enforce the stars and stripes of corruption
Thank you for the toilet paper, but your flag is meaningless to me
Look around, we're all people, who needs countries anyway?
If we don't try, if we just lie
If we can't find a way to do better than this, who will?
Stars and Stripes of Corruption
The literal english translation from Warszawianka is pretty cool:
Hurra! Let's tear down the crown of the tzars,
While peoples are wearing the one of thorns.
Let's drown the rotten thrones in blood,
Thrones already stained purple with the people's blood!
Ha! Frightful vengeance to today's tormentors,
That suck the life out of millions of people.
Ha! Vengeance to the tzars and plutocrats,
And we'll harvest the crops of the future!
The modernized english version goes like this:
Off with the crown of the tyrants of evil!
Down in the dust with the prince and the peer!
Strike off your chains, sons and daughters of labor!
Wake all humanity, for victory is near.
For something a bit more recent I always liked Chairman Mao by Bambu:
I study Mao Tse-tung's tongue, the young gun
Lock, load, and bust one
Champion with it like brraammp pomp pomp pomp
Lebanon guerrillas that'll egg 'em from ten yards
With little pebbles, I call it strength in arms
When it's broadcast on broadband, they savages like Tarzan
They never get the background story they'd rather jam
Your frequency with trickery and headline news
It's nothing new
And if it's only half the truth it ain't true
Living proof that guerrillas in the Philippine jungle
Won't stop, won't quit till the babies don't struggle
I rumble with colonization's effects on my people, homes
The buck stops here with a buck to your ear
The current affairs that wear my fellow organizers out
Same machine that be wiping my fellow activists out
From the comfort of a couch we make critiques of the world
While little girls in the mountains let the slug shots hurl
"Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around
And desert you
Down Rodeo - RATM
Yeah
Bear witness to the sickest shot while suckers get romantic
They ain't gonna send us campin' like they did my man Fred Hampton
Still we lampin', still clockin' dirt for our sweat
A ballot's dead, so a bullet's what I get
A thousand years they had the tools, we should be takin' 'em
Fuck the G-ride, I want the machines that are makin' 'em
Our target straight with a room full of armed pawns
To off the Kings on the west side at dawnSame Thing - Flobots
Saying the same things over again
Repeatin' the same slogans we don't know where we've been
We've been overthrowing leaders with legitimate views
Democratically elected but we didn't approve
Who let'em overthrow Jacobo Arbenz
Who let'em overthrow Mohammad Mosaddeq
Who let'em assassinate Salvador Allende
I didn't let them but they did it anyway
Who let'em overthrow Kwame Nkrumah
Who let'em overthrow Aristide
Who let'em assassinate Oscar Romero
I didn't let'em but they did indeed!
Don't let them assassinate Hugo Chavez
Don't let them assassinate Evo Morales
Bring back Martin, Malcolm, Medgar, Hampton, Goodman, Schwerner, Chaney
When I first heard it I didn't know who half those people were and now I do know who half those people were :stalin-approval:
There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me; Sign was painted, it said private property; But on the back side it didn't say nothing; This land was made for you and me.
Lenin
Lenin walks around the world.
Frontiers cannot bar him.
Neither barracks nor barricades impede.
Nor does barbed wire scar him.
Lenin walks around the world.
Black, brown, and white receive him.
Language is no barrier.
The strangest tongues believe him.
Lenin walks around the world.
The sun sets like a scar.
Between the darkness and the dawn
There rises a red star.
- Langston Hughes
Musing on roses and revolutions, I saw night close down on the earth like a great dark wing, and the lighted cities were like tapers in the night, and I heard the lamentations of a million hearts regretting life and crying for the grave, and I saw the Negro lying in the swamp with his face blown off, and the northern cities with his manhood maligned and felt the writhing of his viscera like that of a hare hunted down or the bear at bay, and I saw men working and taking joy in their work and embracing the hard eyed whore with joyless excitement and lying with wives and virgins in impotence
And as I groped in darkness and felt the pain of million, gradually, like day driving night across the continent, I saw dawn upon them like the sun a vision of a time when all men walk proudly through the earth and the bombs and missiles lie at the bottom of the ocean like the bones of dinosaurs buried under the shale of eras, and men strive with each other not for power or the accumulation of paper but in joy create for others the house, the poem, the game of athletic beauty.
Then washed in the brightness of this vision, I saw how in its radiance would grow and be nourished and suddenly burst into terrible and splendid bloom the blood-red flower of revolution...
-Dudley Moore
"Oh No" by Gogol Bordello https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEQYJbyk_xE
Sometimes when facing common trouble - When whole town is screwed
We become actually human - Act like Prometheus would
Suddenly there is more humor - And a party tabor style
People ringing one another - "Yo man, how's your blackout?"
Suddenly there is more music - Made with the buckets in the park
Girls are dancing with the flashlights - I got only one guitar!
And you see brothers and sisters - All engaged in sport of help
Making merry out of nothing - Like in refugee camp
Oh yeah, oh no, it doesn't have to be so - It is possible any time anywhere
Even without any dough - Oh yeah, oh no, it doesn't have to be so
Forces of the creative mind are unstoppable!
[ this verse is 🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 ]
And you think, all right, now people - They have finally woked up
But as soon as the trouble over - Watch them take another nap
Now nobodies making merry - Only trotting scared of boss
Everybody's making hurry - For some old forgotten cause
But one thing is surely eternal - It's condition of a man
Who don't know where he is going - Who don't know where does he stand
Who's dream power is a bottle - Put away in dry dark place
Who's youth power is well buried - Under propaganda waves
Who's dream life's in opposition - With the life he leads today
Who's beaten down in believing - It just kinda goes this way!
Oh yeah, oh no, it doesn't have to be so - It is possible any time anywhere
Even without any dough - Oh yeah, oh no, it doesn't have to be so
Forces of the creative mind are unstoppable!
phil ochs has loads of incredible verses/lines/songs but i really like this bit from ringing of revolution (later renamed to rhythms of revolution) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00G1mS_fGWA
In tattered tuxedos they faced the new heroes
And crawled about in confusion.
And they sheepishly grinned for their memoroes were dim
Of the decades of dark execution.
Hollow hands were raised; they stood there amazed
In the shattering of their illusions.
As the windows were smashed by the ringing of revolution.
Down on our knees we're begging you please,
We're sorry for the way you were driven.
There's no need to taunt just take what you want,
And we'll make amends, if we're living.
But away from the grounds the flames told the town
That only the dead are forgiven.
As they crumbled inside the ringing of revolution.
(how the fuck do you format lyrics lol)
“As we come marching, marching we battle too for men, for they are win this struggle and together we can win.” - Utah Phillips, Bread and Roses
“Oh Irish men the day will come when workers one and all, will rise upon there bender knees and rally to the call” -Connelly was There
“Kalashnikov machine gun, flow that I fire, obnoxious till they shoot me on the day I retire” -Immortal Technique, Obnoxious CW: pretty terrible homophobia but music slaps
“And we should all be ready, true-hearted brave and steady, to rally round the standard when the red flag is unfurled!” -Where the Fraser Rive Flows (ive heard the Utah Phillips version of this)
The entire song of Ain’t Done Nothing if you Ain’t been Called a Red
Poison Trees and Never Learn by The Devil Makes Three.
I can't really pick out any specific lyrics because both are very much greater than the sum of their parts.
Poison Trees:
The roots of the matter run miles deep This is the era of eternal sleep Please everybody now but please be advised Nothing's going away just cuz' you're closing your eyes
This is the harvest of some rotten seeds This surely isn't any mystery This is the fruit of-a the poison trees You better ask yourself what you believe
I see a storm it is coming down And I can feel my bones creak I know you can feel it too But you just to scared Are you just to scared to speak?
The wire is taped now and crackling hot Words from a burning screen will make your stomach knot Fear the hopeless and lock the door Sweet safety, praise the lord
The loud voices got the signals locked All the past heroes now outlined in chalk Well that'll teach the world to not walk the walk Show your face out in the light and hear the pistols pop
Well.. this is the harvest of some rotten seeds This surely isn't any mystery This is the fruit of-a the poison trees You better ask yourself what you believe
I see a storm it is coming down And I can feel it in my bones I know you can feel it too But you think that you're You think that you're all alone
Old tactics leaves you face down on the bricks This new dog knows some terrible tricks Turn the cameras off and it doesn't exist Thats a lesson well learned back in 1966
This is the harvest of some rotten seeds This surely isn't any mystery This is the fruit of the poison trees You better ask yourself what you believe
I see a storm it is coming down And I can feel my bones creak I know you can feel it too But you just to scared Are you just to scared to...
A storm it is coming down And I can feel it in my bones I know you can feel it too But you just think that you're You think that you're all alone
Never Learn:
Let all them hounds off of their leashes, Gave all that money to the rich, They're gonna hand you down now that short handed shovel and direct you directly to the ditch.
Now just hear them talkin tongues child, Though you know not what they mean, Ain't gonna make no kind of difference, Just keep your eyes focused on the screen.
Yes I guess I see, They ain't doin nothin here but leechin off of you and me, well Yes I guess I know, There ain't no place left on this earth that I can call my own, and Yes I hope I see The day we all wake up and stop them ships upon the sea, well Hallelujah, Let it all just burn, Cause they ain't the type for listenin and they sure ain't never gonna learn.
You can watch them as they circle, Like them vultures in the sky, Waitin now just so patiently for every breathin soul to die. Yes they feed off of your blood child, As it flows out of your veins, Ain't about what you have lost now, Only what they have gained.
Yes I guess I see, They ain't doin nothin here but livin' off of you and me, well Yes I guess I know, There ain't no place left on this earth that I can call my own, and Yes I hope I see The day we all wake up and stop them ships upon the sea, well Hallelujah, Let it all just burn, Cause they ain't the type for listenin and they sure ain't never gonna learn.
You can feel them as they watch you, A thousand eyes now filled with pain, I'll just sit back and relax now, As your heart disconnects from your brain.
Yes I guess I see, They ain't doin nothin here but livin' off of you and me, well Yes I guess I know, There ain't no place left on this earth that you can call your own, and Yes I hope I see The day we all wake up and get up off our bended knees, well Hallelujah, Let it all just burn, Cause they ain't the type for listenin and they sure ain't never gonna learn.
