Radosh.net

Hey, I didn't say it, John Lydon did. Recently, NR published a list of the 50 greatest conservative rock songs of all time (hey, didn't music club do that ages ago?) and a quick read through it shows that at least — at least — half of them aren't conservative at all — the Sex Pistols's Bodies being the example that Lydon was presciently objecting to when he said (so very colorfully) that he is pro-choice and that people who think his lyrics are anti-abortion aren't thinking hard enough. Pete Townshend less eloquently blasts NR's top choice.

As others have noted, there are a few general flaws with the list, including the facts that the NR editors think any song that is anti-Stalinist is conservative and that they clearly don't understand irony.

But there are also several instances where they just seem to be hoping that nobody knows what the chosen song actually says.This satirical list of 50 more "conservative" rock songs makes the point pretty well, and this analysis tackles the question of what is meant by conservative, but for sheer missing the effing point:

My City Was Gone is about Wal Mart-ization, not "central planning."

I Fought the Law is about, um, fighting the law, not obeying it.

This one's more open to interpretation, I guess, but I've always heard Stay Together for the Kids as a lament about parents who think fighting all the time in a miserable marriage is preferable to getting a divorce.

Keep Your Hands to yourself doesn't "affirm old-time sexual mores," it whines about them.

If the last verse of Godzilla means anything, it means the same thing as the movie: no good can come from nuclear weapons.

Why Don't You Get a Job "capture[s] a motive force behind welfare reform"?! Whaaaa? Tell me what these lyrics have to do with welfare: "My friend's got a girlfriend and he hates that bitch... She sits on her ass/He works his hands to the bone/ To give her money every payday/ But she wants more dinero just to stay at home/Well my friend/ You gotta say... Why don't you get a job?" Shouldn't conservatives be encouraging men to be breadwinners?

Frankly, the most conservative thing about NR's list is that there are no almost no blacks allowed. What did they ever do for rock and roll anyway?

Posted by Daniel Radosh

6:22 PM