Tracey Barnett: Them's fightin' words

Politics and music have always had a happy marriage, but today, musical in-laws are spitting venom in America, headed straight for divorce.

What country music may lack in subtlety, it makes up for in stomach punches. These days, the punches are hitting very different targets. Clint Black sings about Saddam Hussein as "the devil" in I Raq and Roll:

But we can't ignore the devil
He'll keep coming back for more
If they won't show us their weapons
We might have to show them ours
It might be a smart bomb
They find stupid people, too
And if you stand with the likes of Saddam
One just might find you
Now you can come along
Or you can stay behind
Or you can get out of the way
But our troops take out the garbage
For the good old USA

Makes one's achy-breaky heart cry out for the bygone innocence of titles such as I'd Rather Pass A Kidney Stone Than Another Night with You.

Bruce Springsteen sang the Edwin Starr classic War (What is it good for?) at a Melbourne concert the day the US invaded Iraq.

Greenday, the Beastie Boys, Rickie Lee Jones, Public Enemy and many others have all penned anti-Bush songs with sentiments like Spearhead's Bomb The World:

... military madness
The smell of flesh and burning pain
So I sing out to the masses
Stand up if you're still sane
To all of us gone crazy
Sing this one refrain
We can chase down all our enemies
Bring them to their knees
We can bomb the world to pieces
But we can't bomb it into peace

Senior citizen rockers the Rolling Stones are weighing in next month with a new track called Sweet Neo Con. They sing to Bush and his neoconservatives:

You call yourself a Christian
I call you a hypocrite
You call yourself a patriot
Well, I think you're full of shit
How come you're so wrong, my sweet neo-con?

It is no great surprise that political music is echoing a split political nation. What is surprising is that country music, the bastion of a conservative fan base, is showing signs of splintering into a diverse political cacophony.

Two years ago, the Dixie Chicks withstood death threats and playlist boycotts after they told a London audience: "Just so you know, we're ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas".

But last Christmas Willie Nelson got next to no press over his song, How Much Oil is One Human Life Worth?, in which he sang:

But how much is a liar's word worth
And whatever happened to peace on Earth?

Jason Cother's country Haiku poem perfectly nails the growing divide:

Two countries: red, blue
Dixie Chicks or Toby Keith
So, which one are you?

The politically quiet and ever-savvy Dolly Parton has just recorded Bob Dylan's anti-war anthem, Blowin' In The Wind and John Lennon's Imagine to be released this October.

At a concert last week at Radio City Music Hall, Salon's Rebecca Traister reports Parton highlighted particular verses as she sang:

How many ears must one man have before he can hear people cry?
And how many deaths will it take till he knows that too many people have died?

The audience, who listened in perfect silence, stood up for a huge ovation by the song's end, Traister said. This reaction from a Dolly Parton audience? Perhaps the times are indeed a-changin'.

* Tracey Barnett is an American journalist based in Auckland.