When it comes to protest music there is no better era for good meaningful music than the music that came out during the Vietnam War. With artists such as Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Janis Joplin, and many many others. For this blog post I would like to focus on one of the absolute best protest songs, that being “Fortunate Son” by Creedence Clearwater Revival. The lyrics are absolutely genius that pair exquisitely with the instrumentals. The song has a dirty guitar riff and a very catchy background drum, which almost mimics the way a helicopter sounds, the “THUD,THUD,THUD”. Which is cool because during the Vietnam War a lot of what was shown on television were helicopters dropping off supplies for the soldiers fighting in the war. Now to get into the lyrics, pretty much overall the message behind the song is that it's funny how the people who push for the war never really seem to make it to the front lines to actually fight in the war. The people who are born rich and involved in corporate America essentially only focus on the economic profit that can be made from the war rather than focusing on the actual human lives that are at steak everyday, and the thousands of lives lost. While people who don’t have that same focus realize and understand that mostly what comes out of an unjustified war like Vietnam is heartbreaking loss of loyal Americans. The lyric that perfectly describes this is “Some folks are born made to wave the flag,Ooh, they're red, white and blue,And when the band plays "Hail to the chief", Ooh, they point the cannon at you”. Which just explains how they're all for the country and doing what's “best” for it but as soon as the draft rolls around they appoint people less fortunate than them.
I love this song, but never noticed the drum imitating the sound of a helicopter, until now. The Vietnam war was such a powerful time for protest music, and this song described the "unjustified" war perfectly, like you said.
ReplyDeleteI've always liked Creedence CLearwater Revival and really appreciated you branching out this week to include a topic that not many people chose. With this in mind, I would love to see you go deeper into your analysis of this song and the possible cultural effect that it had at the time. This is not a discredit to what you already have down but instead high praise. Stylistically, you brought a lot of your own energy into this post. We as readers can see not just your words but your genuine passion for the track, and I urge you as a classmate and fellow music lover to use that passion and that energy to push yourself. Good job this week. Also fun fact: did you know that the CCR track "Bad Moon Rising" was actually misheard by many people upon its original release? Instead of "There's a bad moon on the rise," some people heard "There's a bathroom on the right." I always thought that was really funny.
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