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1.
'Get Up Stand Up'
Bob Marley'
Get Up Stand Up' is a reggae song written by Bob Marley and Peter
Tosh. The song originally appeared on The Wailers 1973 album Burnin'.
It was recorded and played live in numerous versions by The Wailers
and Bob Marley & The Wailers, along with solo versions by Peter
Tosh and Bunny Wailer. The song's strong and concise lyrical content
has also clearly made it one of Marley's more political songs. Athough
the song is assumed to be asking people not to let others mistreat
and abuse them, it originally talks about a fundamental Rastafarian
belief: that the self-proclaimed Emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie
(Ras Tafari) was, in fact, God incarnated. |
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The song was very often performed at Marley's concerts, often as the
last song. 'Get Up, Stand Up' was also the last song Marley ever performed
on stage, on September 23, 1980 at the Stanley Theatre in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania. Many believe the lyrical stanza provided in the original
version by Peter Tosh proved to be influential as one of the first
raps incorporated before Hip Hop's official appearance in musical
culture:
"We're sick and tired of your ism and schism game/Die and go
to heaven in Jesus' name, Lord/We know and we understand/Almighty
God is a living man/You can fool some people sometimes/But you can't
fool all the people all the time/So now we see the light/We gonna
stand up for our right". In these drastic times, listen to this
number by Bob Marley. It is inspirational and applies to our times.
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2.
'The Times They Are a-Changin'
Bob Dylan
'The Times They Are a-Changin' is a song written by Bob Dylan and
released on his 1964 album by the same name. A protest song, it
is often viewed as a reflection of the generation gap and of the
political divide marking American culture in the 1960s. Dylan, however,
disputed this interpretation in 1964, saying "Those were the
only words I could find to separate aliveness from deadness. It
had nothing to do with age." A year later, Dylan would say:
"I can't really say that adults don't understand young people
any more than you can say big fishes don't understand little fishes.
I didn't mean 'The Times
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Are a-Changin' as a statement... It's a feeling." In 1996, 'The
Times They Are a-Changin' created some controversy for Dylan when
he allowed Canada's Bank of Montreal to feature it in its advertising
campaign. The song was also quoted by Steve Jobs when Apple Computer
introduced the first Macintosh computer, Macintosh 128K in 1984.
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3.
'Turn Turn Turn'
Pete Seeger
'Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is a Season)', often abbreviated
to 'Turn! Turn! Turn!', is a song written and composed by Pete Seeger
in the 1950s. Seeger waited until 1962 to record it, releasing the
song on his album. The lyrics are taken almost verbatim from the
King James version of the Bible. The Biblical text posits there
being a time and place for all things: laughter and sorrow, healing
and killing, war and peace, and so on. The lines are open to myriad
interpretations, but as a song they are commonly performed as a
plea for world peace, with stress on the closing line: "a time
for peace, I swear it's not too late," the latter phrase being
the only part of the lyric written by Seeger himself.
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4.
'What I've Done'
Linkin Park
Their comeback single after a hiatus of two years, 'What I've Done'
is Linkin Park's take on world happenings. As a song it sees a departure
from their combination of rap and rock and leans towards a more raw
rock sound. Lyrically, it sees Chester and Mike (the two songwriters)
discussing issues in a retrospective mode, recognizing the pitfalls
of human errors as it goes, ""In this farewell/There's no
blood/There's no alibi/'Cause I've drawn regret/From the |
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truth/Of
a thousand lies/" and then there is a sign of hope as it further
goes, "So let mercy come/And wash away/What I've done".
The music video of this number was the first time that Linkin Park
made a political statement. It sees nuclear bombs and human wrongs
that effects people and surroundings and features clips of people
like Mother Teresa, Buddha, Abraham Lincoln, Robert Kennedy, Fidel
Castro, Saddam Hussein, Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedong, and
Mahatma Gandhi. It is fitting to our times when human error has cost
the people of this nation more than one thought was possible. |
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