Protest Music and Context Assignment
For this assignment, you will be examining a song of your choice that makes a statement. This song can be a clear protest song, like Lil Baby’s “The Bigger Picture,” or a song that works as a challenge to accepted norms, or a song that has been repurposed into a protest song like Andra Day’s “Rise Up” that became a favorite of the March for Our Lives movement. Your chosen song should say something about an important issue. If the music video is important, like A Tribe Called Red’s “Stadium Powwow,” then you will need to include that in your analysis.
This paper focuses on context and research. Once you’ve selected your song and provided an overall analysis, you want to conduct research on whatever issues your song references – the song should be your guide. This should be the focus of your paper. You want to give the reader the information they need to understand why the song was written, what issue the song is responding to, why this issue is important, and how the artist is responding to that issue. You will need to integrate sources clearly and successfully.
Successful Papers Will:
· Have a clear thesis that tells the reader what issue is being investigated
· Provide the necessary context to understand the purpose of the song
· Successfully integrate multiple sources
· Include direct quotes
· Use correct in-text and Works Cited formatting
· Avoid plagiarism
· Be organized with strong topic sentences
Paper Requirements:
· 1,000-1,250 words
· 3-4 reliable sources
· Semi-formal

Helpful hints:
There are two things you want to watch out for. They are:
1. Writing a song analysis instead of a context paper.
You aren’t telling the reader what the song means, or what the point is. This is why websites like genius and songfacts can get you into a lot of trouble – they will go through and tell you what the song is talking about, but they don’t provide context. For example, using my sample song “Zombies”:
This song reminds listeners that violence has unintended consequences. In the lyrics “another head hangs lowly child is slowly taken” O’Riordan is singing about how sad it is that this conflict is affecting children. When she says a child is slowly taken, she is making the point that violent conflicts don’t only affect adults or the people actively fighting them, but can also affect innocent bystander, some of whom are children. By saying another “head hangs lowly” she acknowledges that people feel bad or are sad about this, but this does not seem to stop the violence, as the chorus reminds us that “with their tanks and their bombs and their bombs and their guns” the fighting simply continues.
As you can see, I’ve broken down the lyrics and performed a kind of literary analysis telling the reader what they mean. But that is NOT what we are doing in this paper.
Instead, I’d want something like this:
By referencing the deaths of two young boys during an IRA bombing, this song reminds listeners that violence has unintended consequences. When O’Riordan sings about how a “child is slowly taken/and the violence caused such silence” she is making a reference to the deaths of actual children that shook the people of Ireland and the UK. Harry McGee writes that in 1993 the IRA detonated two bombs left “in rubbish bins in the northern city of Warrington on March 20th, killing Jonathan Ball (3) and Tim Parry (12).” McGee goes on to note that the Warrington bombing was part of a larger bombing campaign by the IRA from 1992-1993 and, while it caused outrage in the UK, only seemed to embolden the IRA. O’Riordan, in singing “Another mother’s breaking/heart is taking over/when the violence causes silence/We must be mistaken” she is expressing remorse and sadness over the tragic deaths of these two boys from a conflict that has been raging for decades.
As you can see here I’ve used the lyrics as my starting point to provide context. I am not just telling you what the lyrics mean, but instead I am giving you contextual, historical information that you would need to understand why and what this song is addressing and linking that context to the lyrics.
2. Not giving necessary information.

I covered this a bit in the video, but you want to make sure you’re giving the necessary information that someone might need and you’re not getting distracted by other things that aren’t directly related to the song.

For example, in “Zombie” I might be tempted to talk about the history of the zombie (it’s actually really interesting) but that won’t help me help my reader to understand more about The Troubles, the IRA, or the violence between Ireland and the UK that the song is actually referencing.