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“It’s not the right time to be sober”: Revisiting Post-September 11 Protest Songs in the Current Moment
Usually, I play random playlists on Apple Music, and these playlists typically contain songs I listened to, at least at some point, in the early 2000s. Listening back to these songs, I keep thinking about how the protest songs written in reaction to the invasion of Iraq, government overreach, Islamophobia, and blind patriotism resonate today. Everything from Tool’s “Right in Two” and Glassjaw’s “Radio Cambodia” to Suicide Machines’ “War Profiteering” and Radiohead’s “2+2=5” and more. Today, I want to expand on my last post where I looked at two songs from Sleater-Kinney’s 2003 album One Beat and examine a few other songs from this period that really resonate with me right now in our current moment.
I’ve been a NOFX fan ever since I first heard 1994’s Punk in Drublic. With the mainstream success of Green Day and Rancid, I went down a east bay punk rabbit hole, devouring everything I could from Epitaph and discovered NOFX, who had already been around for a decade at that point. NOFX has always had a political edge, even on Punk in Drublic with songs like “Perfect Government.” Following September 11 and during the War on Terror, NOFX released The War on Errorism in 2003. Emblazoned with a cartoon image of a clown faced George W. Bush in front of an American flag on the…
