Top 50 Conservative Rock’n'Roll Songs
Refreshingly, the National Review reminds us that not all Rock’n'Roll is Bruce Springsteen and Mrs McGrath.
Yes, much of it is actually conservative - from the Crickets to the Beach Boys, the Beatles to the Stones, and the Sex Pistols to Metallica.
Encore: And There’s More: Another 50 Songs
Two Irish acts make the list of the 50 Greatest Conservative Rock Songs. And of all time no less - though I don’t see any from the 1340s. At #41 is The Icicle Melts, by Limerick’s own Cranberries with vocals of course by the thinking man’s crumpet, Dolores o’Riordan. That was thoughtless of me.
And unavoidably, U2 are in the top 10 with Gloria at #6, the latin doing the business for them. Of course they could’ve chosen dozens of U2 anthems, but NR said they were trying to cast their net wide. These right wing religious types are always laying it on with the fishing metaphors.
I’ve decided this time to not claim as Irish, the Beatles (Lennon and McCartney, I mean hey), the Sex Pistols (Where do you think Johnny Rotten learned to talk like that?), Led Zepellin (for influencing pipers, Irish and Scottish) or a group at #36 with Government Cheese. Yes it’s Kansas City’s own Rainmakers:
A protest song against the welfare state by a Kansas City band that deserved more success than it got. The first line: Give a man a free house and he’ll bust out the windows
See also:
• Encore: Another 50 Top Conservative Songs
• Best Novel of the Last 25 Years
• Irish Immigrants and Bad Birds
• Irish Place Names and Illegals
• Bobby Sands
• 10 Songs They Taught Us In School
Eolaí gan Fhéile:
Good call on adding the Rainmakers. When the guys first started doing Govt Cheese, I loved it, still do, but seems Bob doesn’t play it much at all anymore in his solo appearances. It was cut to the bone conservative [from a small town point of view] and you could dance to it!