‘I Fought the Law’: how terrible cultural moments shape the best music
In the early 20th century, steamboats relied on the coal-burning room to fuel the engines on the lower floors. Above many of them existed a beautiful surface level, adorned by a community of lavish façades and idle chatter about art and great literature. As the coal workers shovelled away, fingers blackened by the grit of the working class, many of the elegant figures played into the illusion that beauty could exist without struggle. In many ways, music born out of turmoil follows a similar pattern.
While we often listen to music as part of the commercial masses that thrive on deck, the architects below scathe away with restless productivity despite their scars, working to deliver for perfect strangers. Emerging from the flames of the ugly underbelly, these artists labour in uncertainty, surviving through forces far beyond their control, harking essential voices into the ether and demanding to be heard and enjoyed.
These coats of armour weren’t just knee-jerk reactions to times gone bad; they were also calls for action against opposing forces, like the unrelenting powers of the elite or the forceful hand of violent or systemic racism, and everything in between. In the 1980s, when Margaret Thatcher’s government incited a grand cultural rapture that led to the miners’ strike, people didn’t just pour their outcry into protest signs—artists also picked up their guitars and microphones, ready for battle in a fight they knew they had little chance of winning.
The same decade saw the Aids crisis rip through queer communities like a razor-sharp knife, from which emerged anthems of resilience dipped in unapolagetic flamboyance and togetherness. Songs like Bronski Beat’s ‘Smalltown Boy’ and Billy Bragg’s ‘There Is Power in a Union’ might have reared on opposite sides of the coin, but both drew from the same fires of resistance, calling for better times with the only weapon guaranteed to make people listen: music.
When society feels like it’s in ruins, musicians feel the need to speak louder. When events happen that feel particularly prejudiced or unjust, like when the 16th Street Baptist Church in Alabama was bombed in 1963, the artists’ hearts struggle to sit still, birthing timeless compositions like Nina Simone’s ‘Mississippi Goddam’ and Joan Baez’s ‘Birmingham Sunday’. “An artist’s duty, as far as I’m concerned, is to reflect the times,” Simone once said, and with rage and sheer talent, she did.
In a broader sense, it could be said that music can—and does—hinge on societal development at any given moment. Even The Beatles sparked resistance against the Vietnam War in the 1960s with songs about the revolution. But when specific periods, decades, and eras feel particularly vulnerable to political or societal crises, the musical output seems to reach a different kind of pinnacle, charged by a newfound fever to fight back with every inch of power against the danger. There will always be the forgotten pool of suffering at the bottom, in the steam rooms, but when the cracks begin to show—when the iceberg hits—music becomes more of an unrelenting tool to challenge and disrupt the insidious flow.
Activism in music never truly dissipates, especially in today’s oversaturated landscape when anybody can say anything, anywhere. And while there has and always will be a disparity with whatever’s popular at any given moment, the truth seekers in the hidden corners never relent. However, it’s hard to ignore the propensity for raw, authentic, protest-leaning music to thrive during society’s more fragmented moments, where artificiality almost becomes displaced or transparent at the hands of grounded purpose.
Simultaneously, the meaning and purpose behind some songs shift with time, later becoming unsuspecting anthems for political campaigns or opposing societal moments, utilising the lyrics and sounds for specific agendas. And, despite the countless times artists have disapproved of such a notion, it makes complete sense. The Clash’s ‘I Fought the Law’, for instance, unexpectedly became repurposed for America’s invasion of Panama in 1989, in an effort to push the country’s ruler to submit.
Similarly, D:Ream’s ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ has been weaponised as an anthem for the Labour Party to promote the idea that trying times are temporary. In most situations, therefore, particularly those arising in response to injustices, these anthems incite hope and unity, transforming struggle into art in ways that feel weighted by their own cultural layering. These are also incidentally the times when music soars to new heights and standards, offering substance beneath the artifice of the mainstream, with things to say that genuinely hold importance.
“Music and any other form of media are extremely important tools when it comes to raising awareness,” Lambrini Girls told Far Out last year. Their song ‘God’s Country’ challenges everything from the country’s democratic system to tax evasion, chanting provocative lines like, “Great Britain? Are you sure?” While there’s no universal scale to suggest that music, in a broader sense, generally improves during trying times, it certainly breeds the best flavours of aggression and pushback. It stands as a powerful and vital source of ammunition against the powers that threaten to derail the entire ship and everyone aboard.
