Power of Protest Song featured Jesse Welles

The power of the protest song

With everything that’s going on in the world I’ve been thinking about the power behind people’s right to protest — and the equally powerful strength of a protest song. Music and protest go hand in hand, whether it’s Woody Guthrie, Billie Holiday or more recent acts like Green Day, Rage Against The Machine or Jesse Welles. Bruce Springsteen even visited Minneapolis the last week of January to perform a solidarity concert alongside Tom Morello, where he performed his latest protest song “Streets of Minneapolis,” which he’d just written earlier that same week.

Protest songs have always carried a rare kind of electricity: they have an ability to turn private frustration into a shared, undeniable force. They put injustice into words that ordinary people can carry with them, sing together and rally around. In moments when voices feel ignored, a protest song can make it impossible to ignore what’s happening.

Let’s examine a list of just a few of the protest songs that bring people together and give voices to those who can’t carry their message on their own. And hey — maybe there’ll even be some new-to-you music discovery along the way.

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Jesse Welles — “Red”

[Red]

Jesse Welles has quickly become one of the more political musical voices of current times.

Yes, this is a tongue-and-cheek track poking fun at right wing politics. But what it’s also doing is imagining a world where war is the ultimate unifying factor between the world’s people, and when war comes “we all hold hands.” Welles really channels his inner Country Joe McDonald on this one.

https://www.iowapublicradio.org/studioone/news/2026-02-03/the-power-of-the-protest-song