Songs by Rage Against the Machine - Report Example

? Rage Against the Machine: Song Analysis Word Count: 1558 (6 pages) I. Introduction The band Rage Against the Machine has some very unique tunes. "Bullet in the Head", "Year of the Boomerang", "Bulls on Parade", "Without a Face", and "Wake Up" will be analyzed, each with its own section of analysis regarding meaning. Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine said, “A good song should make you wanna tap your foot and get with your girl. A great song should [defy authority] and set fire to the suburbs. I’m only interested in writing great songs.”1 Rage Against the Machine is a progressive band with a clear message: bureaucracy is not welcome in government. II. Bullet in the Head The following is the opening lyric to the song Bullet in the Head. “This time the bullet cold rocked ya/A yellow ribbon instead of a swastika…”2 What Rage is trying to convey with this lyric is that people are needlessly dying, all due to a person who is in power at the top trying to usurp money from the poorer people. If one thinks about it, think about Dick Cheney, who was the Vice President of the U.S. as well as the head of a company called Halliburton, which rebuilt Iraq. Several poor men, desperate for jobs, enlisted into the military because they thought they were fighting for ideals after 9/11. However, this was a scam. It has now been proven that the U.S. was planning to invade Iraq beginning in 2001—two years before the war in Iraq ever began. Halliburton lost millions, possibly billions, of dollars in funds that were never accounted for, in the end. Like Hitler, Cheney ruled over the an entire nation—and conducted the whole Iraq war operation, not to mention profiting quite handsomely from it. Truly, Cheney was a type of dictator—especially because he could not be prosecuted for these crimes after he left office, not to mention the fact that he ordered torture to be used on prisoners of war. That type of behavior goes against the Geneva Convention—but he got away scot-free, all because of his money-hungry power. Dick Cheney is just one example of people who made a lot of young men go to wear, and get proverbial (and sometimes real) ‘bullets’ in their heads in order so that he could become a very rich man, living on a heart pump which helps keep him alive (it’s expensive). III.Year of tha Boomerang Year of tha Boomerang is about World War II history. The lyrics from the song go like this: “It's dark now in Dachau and I'm screamin' from within/'Cause I'm cell locked in tha doctrines of tha right/Enslaved by dogma, talk about my birthrights…”3 World War II harkens back to the days when Jews were enslaved in the concentration camps, and the political right’s ideology—which included eugenics—was in control of Germany. Personally, it seems a bit wrong to bring up the Holocaust in the sense that this is definitely not a respectful use of the terminology. The singer is not physically in Dachau, nor is it believed that the singer could ever emotionally experience what was experienced by the concentration camp prisoners—and how they felt. Trying to appropriate that emotion for the sake of the song—even if any of the band members happen to be Jewish—still seems like a grossly inappropriate and wholly misuse of the imagery evoked by bringing up the concentration camp of Dachau. This minimizes the true pain of real Holocaust survivors, especially those at Dachau. How dare this band desecrate a place which is so notoriously sacred, and where real human flesh burned…not just being lyrics in a song. Rage Against the Machine may have made its point, but it really struck the wrong chord on this song—not an isolated incident. IV. Bulls on Parade RATM’s next song to be analyzed, the lyrics to Bulls on Parade, reads: “Weapons not food, not homes, not shoes/Not need, just feed the war cannibal animal/I walk tha corner to tha rubble that used to be a library/Line up to tha mind cemetary now…”4 It’s interesting that the library here is seen as a place called a ‘mind cemetery,’ or, basically, a place that ideas (good and bad) go to die. In modern terms, we call the mind cemetery the Republican party. It is the Republicans who are the party of ‘no’ and are obstructionists—President Obama facing heat on every issue he undertakes, getting a lot of pushback. Perhaps it’s because he’s liberal, perhaps it’s because he’s Black—hey, it could be because he’s a progressive. Whatever the reason, however, obviously there are human forces greater than Obama himself alone which are at work here. It is obvious that some people are holding back his plans for greatness. This includes people who have more money than him. People who hold offices in the military, for example, take precedence because it is difficult to replace these people with liberals who favor demilitarization—and that would be hard to do because it is the military we are talking about. So, for example—Obama kept Robert Gates, who was under President Bush’s watch—in the Pentagon as its Department of Defense head. And, although Obama got out of Iraq, now we are faced with being in the quagmire that is Afghanistan. So, it makes sense that someone is feeding off of war. Once war isn’t profitable, it will become nonexistent—or at least much less prevalent. V. Without a Face The song Without a Face begins in the second stanza rather solemnly. “Yeah, I tried ta look back ta my past long lost/A blood donor ta tha land owner [H]olocaust…”5 Why RATM continues to bring up Holocaust imagery is beyond me. However, what is worrisome is that this Holocaust imagery would be used to stir up hatred for the Jewish people among people who are of Aryan descent. Even though the singer—and, probably, the band—mean well by having penned this song, if a Holocaust survivor were to hear this song, it would probably make their ears proverbially bleed. One just does not talk about the slaughtering of six to ten million people so lightly, making comparisons and allegorical references that have no basis in reality. Thus, in this sense, RATM has failed to do little else but stir up anger between Jews and Germans all over again. This may sell copies of albums, but it is certainly not going to win points with the Jewish community or anyone else who supports the Jewish community. In fact, Zack De La Rocha, who is of Chicano, German, and Irish descent, especially has no place singing or writing lyrics that have to do with the Holocaust. Even though the place he grew up in, Irvine, California, was one of the most racist places he had ever been—that gave him no excuse to use his power as a musician to dog a people who have already suffered enough: the Jewish people. VI. Wake Up The ballad Wake Up is an intense call to recognize injustice due to the slaughtering of the innocents, namely, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., for standing up for civil rights. “You know they went after King/When he spoke out on Vietnam/He turned the power to the have-nots/And then came the shot…”6 This, again, is powerful imagery. It’s not really appropriate either, since the band members of this band are primarily white. At least one of the band members has some African-American heritage. However these lyrics got snuck into the song Wake Up is really beyond belief—truly. This only serves to paint Rage Against the Machine as a band promoting racism and not speaking out against it, in fact. Making light of the sacrifices that Dr. King made for Blacks in the U.S. to gain their civil rights seems what these lyrics are doing. They are not healing, but rather hurtful and unhelpful lyrics. So, yes, we know that Dr. King was basically assassinated by the government, who had hours of tape on Dr. King because he was a radical activist. However, him being a martyr did not really change anything. It was because he took action that things changed. So, dying, alone, in and of itself, does nothing to solve things. Perhaps the movement was taken more seriously, in terms of civil rights—pointing out obvious historical facts will do nothing but enrage Blacks and other minorities for whom Dr. King fought. It seems like Rage Against the Machine is going for the political jugular here—just stirring up any kind of dirt they can to make a buck. They just want to sell albums and don’t really care that their petty rehashing of history is going to hurt anyone’s feelings. That is what is truly most sad about this band’s music; it’s a disappointment when one listens closely to the lyrics. VII. Conclusion "Bullet in the Head", "Year of the Boomerang", "Bulls on Parade", "Without a Face", and "Wake Up" were RATM songs that were all analyzed, each having its own meanings revealed. Obviously, the lyrics reveal much of the anarchical lyrics evoking World War II imagery and symbolism. RATM is not concerned with political correctness as it is concerned with making a political point—which is that one must not trust the government, at least, according to RATM. It is very telling that many of the band’s songs pay homage to people who lost their lives in various wars, revealed in lyrics. WORKS CITED ‘Bullet in the Head’ Lyrics. Retrieved 27 Sept 2011. Available: . ‘Bulls on Parade’ Lyrics. Retrieved 27 Sept 2011. Available: < http://www.ratm.net/lyrics/bull.html>. Devinish, Colin. Rage Against the Machine. US: Macmillan, 2001. Pp. 53. ‘Wake Up’ Lyrics. Retrieved 27 Sept 2011. Available: . ‘Without a Face’ Lyrics. Retrieved 27 Sept 2011. Available: . ‘Year of tha Boomerang’ Lyrics. Retrieved 27 Sept 2011. Available: . Read More