Top 10 Rock and Metal Protest Songs

Protest songs are associated with a movement for social change: anti-war movement, human rights movement, civil rights, animal rights, environmentalism, to name a few.

In some sense rock and metal music were made for protest songs - rock music frequently addresses social or political topics as well as metal because metal is an extreme and more challenging subgenre of rock.
The Top Ten
1 Peace Sells - Megadeth

The tension in the first half is unrivalled, and the second part really unleashes the fury and the emotion.

And the two parts are linked, in the music video, with the scene of a teen watching this on T.V.. His father comes in and takes the remote controller from him, saying :
- What's this garbage you're watching? I want to watch the news.
The teen answers :
- This IS the news!

Incredibly powerful, anti-system, and BADASS.

Just an epic, epic, tense and powerful track.

2 Child In Time - Deep Purple

Deep Purple's classic of 1970 is an anti-war song. An epic and intense song. Unforgettable vocals and guitar solo.

3 Won't Get Fooled Again - The Who
4 You're the Voice - John Farnham
5 War Pigs - Black Sabbath

36? This should be #1! Or at the very least in the top ten.

Awesome song

6 Holy Wars... The Punishment Due - Megadeth
7 Killing in the Name - Rage Against the Machine

Very angry protest song.

8 Holiday - Green Day
9 Zombie - The Cranberries
10 Out In the Fields - Gary Moore & Phil Lynott

One of my favorite songs of all time - for both music and lyrics. It's about the Troubles in Northern Ireland but lyrics may be interpreted in a broader sense because you see they are kinda universal and can be suitable in many situations:
"It doesn't matter if you're wrong or if you're right
It makes no difference if you're black or if you're white

All men are equal till the victory is won
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun

Out in the fields the fighting has begun
Out on the streets they're falling one by one
Out from the skies a thousand more will die each day
Death is just a heartbeat away"

The Contenders
11 Beds are Burning - Midnight Oil

Midnight Oil are a rock band from Australia and aren't well known In America, and maybe Europe, but check out this song - it's very good.

12 Uprising - Muse
13 God Save the Queen - The Sex Pistols
14 B.Y.O.B. - System of a Down
15 Imagine - John Lennon

No one wants to acknowledge that Lennon disavowed this infantile communist anthem in the years before his death.

16 Fortunate Son - Creedence Clearwater Revival
17 Schrei Nach Liebe - Die Ärzte

An anti-neonazism and anti-right wing protest song. The most famous and acclaimed German protest song and not unlikely the most loved German song of all time by one of the most essential German bands. Even 22 years after its initial release it topped the charts in 2015 because people bought it as a protest against racism increasing in the European migrant crisis.
Lyrically, the extremely powerful rock song (the audio sample is a live version, the studio version is more anthemic) tells how a skinhead's violence and hate is the result of the lack of love in his own life, but with a very aggressive and occasionally insulting tone.

18 Balls to the Wall - Accept
19 Sunday Bloody Sunday - U2
20 Deer Dance - System of a Down
21 Military Man - Gary Moore
22 Full Spectrum Dominance - Sons of Liberty

Believe it or not, guitarist Jon Schaffer of Iced Earth is on lead vocals. Sons of Liberty is his solo project.

23 Goodbye Blue Sky - Pink Floyd
24 Hero of War - Rise Against
25 Hiroshima - Gary Moore
8Load More
PSearch List