ABSTRACT
The chapter is about the interconnection of resistance, music and screen. It argues that there is more to popular music than the sound of it, and that songs should be understood as narrative packages of which music, lyrics and visuals are component parts. Seen in that way, it becomes clear that the protest song is not dead, as is sometimes claimed. It is argued, furthermore, that popular music, when performed live, can be thought of as a manifestation of the ‘public screen’ said by DeLuca and Peeples to be intrinsic to contemporary protest. After surveying protest image events in which musicians have taken part throughout tumultuous recent history, it explores the incidence of protest in the Billboard Year End Rock Chart (which incorporates YouTube video streaming data in its calculation of ranking positions) before taking a closer look at music videos of protest circulating on YouTube.
