Guerrilla Radio was released in 1999 and had direct references to the 2000 presidential election. During my research, I was not able to find if there was any direct relation to a specific protest group or movement. However, the song is a direct protest to the way that the elections were being portrayed through the media. The band Rage Against the Machine has taken it upon themselves to use their platform to speak out about certain injustices. This can be seen with a previous song called Killing in the Name Of. That song much like Guerrilla Radio called for the listeners to realize that there is a strong need to pay attention to the issues and make a change. This can be seen when the songs bridge states,
“It has to start somewhere
It has to start sometime
What better place than here?
What better time than now?”
When the band s lead singer Zach de La Rocha raps these lyrics, he does it in a low voice while the band gets quiet in the background. The beat gets lower almost as if the band wants these lyrics to be clear and cut through to their audience. This is one of the calls to actions in the song that comes through loud and clear. Some of the lyrics are also not only a call to action but an actual call out of the candidates. The band goes after both candidates in this song when they rap,
“Who stuff the banks, who staff the party ranks
More for Gore or the son of a drug lord
None of the above. F*** it, cut the cord!”
What is meant by these lyrics is more of an attack on George W. Bush, and a reference to the discovery during his father George Bush Sr. presidency. It was said that during his term the CIA was supplying drugs to inner-city areas. These are the details that the band tries to point out as being hidden from the public which stops them from having a full image of each candidate. The song questions the use of democracy if the people’s choice is being hindered by only having a glimpse of each applicant running who will, in turn, represent them in office. It will be interesting to peel back more of these layers in the song and include the use of music with these lyrics to encompass a full message.
March 5, 2019 at 10:20 pm
This is an interesting post, Alex. Particularly interesting is the reference to Al Gore and GWB, in particular because the song was recorded on September 1, 1998, and Gore, though VP at the time, did not declare he was running until June 16, 1999. And though Bush was gov of Texas, he didn’t announce his candidacy until June 14, 1999. So, here we have RAGE anticipating the two candidates or they had something else in mind. In doing some research online I see that most writers conflate the song with the election, but you need to be careful not to do that — and to make a point say that you are not doing that — because you need to consider when the song was written and recorded and not when it was released. Or, more accurately, you need to consider both — when it was written and when it was released. But unless they knew something no-one else did, the use of the two couldn’t have just been about the election. It had to do with power and the system, which, of course, they were Raging against. They may have just gotten lucky that the two wound up being the nominees….