What is your favorite 100% non political "just nice music" music artist?

vis4valentine@lemmy.ml to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 22 points –

I'll start. System of a Down.

Recently it seems like some people are JUST NOW realizing that Bring me the horizon is not Christian friendly and I wonder how many other artists can we put into the bag of "Wait, they were political this whole time?"

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Gotta love how so many MAGAites are bopping to Rage Against the Machine, without realizing that they themselves are part of the most vile and extreme version of the machine. They just latched on to the "fuck you, I won't do what you tell me" from "Killing in the Name" without that single grain of self awareness necessary to connect the only two dots there are.

He's the one who likes all our pretty songs
And he likes to sing along
And he likes to shoot his gun
But he knows not what it means
And I say 'yeah'

Unrelated to this thread, but that chorus is among my favorite duets. Dave and Kurts voices mesh so incredibly well.

And I do like shooting guns... wait...

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I always thought it was "To be in love" instead of "and I say 'yeah'" until now. I never really understood that lyric, which is kinda ironic.

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"Uhhhh 'the machine' is clearly Big Woke that's trying to make us all gay trans Muslims. It's like you don't know anything 🙄"

Same with the liberals. You know the ones who voted to increase police budgets after the largest anti-police protests since the civil rights era. The ones who cheered when Obama overthrew libya. The ones who were upset about missing brunch while they were protesting the same policies Obama created when Trump was president, and then stopped when Biden became president. The ones who watch Hamilton and cheer everytime they see Clinton.

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Chumbawamba! (Am I doing this right?)

"Everybody" knows that song, and thinks of it as a harmless party song. "Nobody" has heard their earlier stuff which alternates between punk and anarchism-pop.

If I remember correctly, they emerged from the blue collar punk scene, and draws a lot of their political views from there.

Nothing special to see or hear in any of the following: their earlier stuff, their later stuff, tracks 2–12 on the same album, the 10,000 word essay in the liner notes, their followup single, etc.

Nothing ever burns down by itself. Every fire needs a little bit of help.

Mate are you seriously saying System of a Down is a non political music act

What do you mean? They're just songs about nice things, like bringing your own beer to a party, jumping on a pogo stick and shimmying until the break of dawn, yeah. Oh, and cocaine. Lots of cocaine.

I like grabbing my brush and doing a little makeup in the morning to start the day

Not wanting to die shouldn't be a matter of politics.

Edit: I'm dead serious too. Singing about culture, tradition, and real heroes for humanity fall more inline with folklore style singing. Which is a tier above politics. Don't ever diminish an artitsts work with the disgusting political label. And the "politics" of a certain genocidal nation are certainly debatable too.

I've always understood SoaD to be overtly political, with songs like Prison Song, Attack, BYOB, A.D.D., and on and on... I listened to them for a long time because I enjoyed the music, but when I gave more than two seconds to think about the lyrics, I immediately understood them to be political in nature (which I actually enjoyed and appreciated more).

When I want non-political music, I almost avoid lyrics entirely, or listen to old-timey songs about broken hearts and love. I particularly enjoy early jazz guitar like Billy Banks, or The Ink Spots. Or some good EDM like Jaded and Noizu.

There's a bit of politics in so much lyrical music, even if it is less transparent, seemingly nonsensical stuff. I do enjoy a good revelation about some bands, though. Like the amount of veterans my age that listen to Lamb of God but are very enthusiastic about military service and God and country types, or as has been mentioned in the thread already, that whole thing with Rage Against the Machine. I feel like SoaD falls into this category a lot too, with these particular people.

There are certainly moments of social commentary in RHCP songs, but I do enjoy Frusciante's and Flea's musical prowess to a degree that I don't care at all what they're saying at times, and just very much enjoy the tunes.

Edit: After reading replies in here, I oughta mention I'm wrong and political music doesn't actually exist.

The most hilarious part is the drummer stating that most SoaD music is not about politics, and people only think it is because of Serj’s activism

Is this satire? SoaD is one of the most political bands I know?

This thread has been reported to us. I've temporarily made the decision to keep it (other mods; feel free to override). While the question could have been phrased a hell of a lot better ("what are your favourite bands that people don't get the real meaning of?"), its a valid question and doesn't quite fall into the "offensive" rule.

Community: please stay civil. The fact that a song can be political does not mean it is worth debating if it's politics are correct. If discussion significantly devolves into personal attacks, bans will be issued regardless of partisanship.

Off topic: I love how clear you are in your articulation. I wish to develop this skill some day . If you don't mind me asking, how would one develop such a skill?

I must confess that you're the first person to tell that to me — English class was always a disaster! The only thing I can point to is practice: I have a blog here that I write at regularly. The other component might be luck? They say that a broken clock is right twice a day and I'm inclined to agree.

In any case, thank you!

Aww yall are cute :) eloquence is a skill one must practice regularly. I agree you are quite good at typing out shit

weird al. huge range of actual parodies and his own songs as 'style' parodies. always clean, good fun

I loved his music until he admitted that all of it was Al-generated.

I also loved it afterwards, but I loved it until then too.

That joke is a testament to the ubiquity of sans-serif fonts these days.

I can't tell if you're kidding but I'm pretty sure he meant Al as in Uppercase A and lowercase L. As in "Weird Al"

That's why they said Al-generated.

WHY. DO. THEY ALWAYS SEND THE POOR. (Repeat a dozen or so times)

Sorry but no way they are non political. That's just one example from a more well known song. Haven't they publicly spoken on the Armenian genocide, too? If you need to separate your art from your politics, perhaps you should re review your politics. It's inherent in most aspects of life.

Gotta go with Bad Religion on this one.

I've been listening to punk for 30 years now. I'm so glad politics have never made their way into the scene.

Serious discussion: Rise Against.

Taking the title literally: Alestorm.

non political

SOAD

if anything this is a good troll 🤣 but ill bite:

soad is one of the bands you ask for.

Wait. You said "non political music" (as if that were a thing) and then you say SoaD???! Please read their lyrics. They are full of politics. From war protests to the Armenian genocide to anti-science and pseudo-science weirdness.

Music is always political.

The BMTH thing to me is hilarious. Their first popular single was “Pray for Plagues”, where Oli is asking God to burn this world to the ground, for fucks sake. I guess those fans discovered them post-deathcore and mostly know their singles without reading the lyrics too much, or at all? I genuinely don’t know how else they’d get this idea it’s a Christian friendly band lol

The BMTH thing to me is hilarious

  • Should I save 1½ seconds typing?

  • If that makes my post incomprehensible?

I'll never understand how people decide that trade-off is a good one.

It’s a direct answer to the main post, which mentions two bands, and this one is one of them. I thought the context implied the reference, visibly it didn’t, so I’m sorry for that. No need for the snark.

Wait a minute, you're telling me you listen and think about things? I bet you even wear glasses. Someone needs a bit more Pol Pot in their lives. /s

For those who haven't seen it, I recommend the movie The Killing Fields. If you prefer music, listen to "Holiday in Cambodia". Same topic in both pieces of media.

Ever listen to the (Tony Hawk Pro Skater OST) song Police Truck by the Dead Kennedys? Nice lil diddy about police brutality.

And every 2pac song was talking about what we would consider "modern issues" 35 years ago. But no, all this "woke" stuff just showed up yesterday..

I'd put Willie Nelson in there, in large part because a lot of country listeners are right-wing and completely oblivious.

If you want a music artist that is guaranteed to not come out in support of some political view, you should probably pick a dead one.

Alternately, you could sign up to udio.com or suno.com and generate some of your own. Since it's an AI making the music you can be sure it holds no opinions.

Since it's an AI making the music you can be sure it holds no opinions.

That is a very popular, but also very dangerous misconception. AI has all the same biases and opinions as the dataset it was trained on (and thus also those of the engineer who picked said dataset). Even if you just YOLO it by training it on "everything" and hoping it'll average out, whatever biases society itself as a whole has, the AI will happily perpetuate.

For example, folks wanted to reduce judge bias in criminal sentencing, so they created an AI... and then trained it on historical sentences. Guess what happened?

In reality, if you want to create an unbiased AI, you've got to go out of your way to carefully curate the dataset to deliberately remove bias, and almost nobody is doing that.

Gojira. It’s just angry noise and there’s no words to be heard, and even if there were lyrics they’d be in some strange dead language

Wha- Gojira has some songs with good lyrics, like The Shooting Star

As a country fan you don’t really expect much from modern country singers so sturgill Simpson might be a good pick.

I remember a while back he was snubbed from the CMAs so he busked outside of the event and called trump a “fascist fucking pig” while taking donations for the ACLU.

The only thing funnier than people thinking Pink Floyd is apolitical is people thinking The Wall was right-wing.

Also met a strange amount of republicans who like Rise Against. When I was first getting into them I saw someone say they turned out to be fash, so I asked for more info and it turned out it was because they said they didn't want racists, misogynists, or homophobes at their concerts.

Green Day for sure. Although I did recently see a conservative post online, “when did Green Day start singing about politics,” so maybe they’ve gotten political…

Caspar Babypants.

What did you think the babies were running from, comrade?

Todd Edwards. His way of using vocal samples is absolutely amazing and many of his tracks give off this groovy dreamlike vibe which I really love!

Some of my faves:

Tuff Jam - Need Good Love ( Todd Edwards Dub)

Phoenix - If I Ever Feel Better (Todd Edwards Dub Better Mix)

Todd Edwards - Radio Thing (Sectors Remix)

Todd Edwards - When Angels Sing