Living for the City – Stevie Wonder
Inspired in part by the fatal shooting in New York of a ten-year-old black boy by a white plain-clothes policeman, the audacious centrepiece of Stevie Wonder’s experimental 1973 album was a seven-and-a-half-minute meditation on the brutality of black America: Living for the City…
Parade – Pretty Girls Make Graves
Taken from the third and final album by Seattle band Pretty Girls Make Graves in 2006, Parade is a jubilant marching song for the emancipation of the workers, a chant to the insistent and uplifting rhythm of two drum kits, brought to life by way of a long-lost 20th Century American playwright whose promising career was stymied by pernicious political paranoia…
Confirmation Bias – The Sleeping Tongues
With the staccato delivery of Devo’s Girl U Want and the irresistibly sleazy riffing of The Knack’s My Sharona, Sleeping Tongues mix pop and pop psychology on Confirmation Bias, a song that tells you that you’re only reading this because you expect to agree with what it says…
Call Me Baby – Charlotte Morris
Enough is enough. This anthem for the Time’s Up generation draws on a lifetime of catcalls and vulgar remarks from men who treat women like sexual objects. And this is the moment when one woman can’t take any more. “I’m a strong resilient woman who knows how to kick your ass in,” warns New York singer-songwriter Charlotte Morris. “So call me baby one more time and then we’ll see who’s walking away laughing”…