When you hear the words “protest song,” what do you see? Is it a folkie like Bob Dylan or Joan Baez deliv­er­ing songs about injus­tice? Is it an earnest young thing with a gui­tar? Is it trapped in 1960s amber, while time has moved on to more ambi­gu­i­ty, more nihilism, more solip­sism?

British writers–and may we add ama­teur folksingers–Jonathan Lux­moore and Chris­tine Ellis made this lament over two years ago in the pages of The Guardian, in an opin­ion piece enti­tled, “Not talkin’ bout a rev­o­lu­tion: where are all the protest songs?” Here they blame the imme­di­a­cy of social media, the rise of aspi­ra­tional hip hop, and the decline of rad­i­cal pol­i­tics. They end, pre­scient­ly, with a Jere­my Cor­byn-shaped hope for change. Well, look where we are now. Things devel­oped rather quick­ly, did they not?

(And as a side note, I would sug­gest the 1980s as a way more protest-filled music decade than the 1960s. Because of the self-aggran­dize­ment of 1960s cura­tors, they claim more than they did. But near­ly every pop, rock, r’n’b, and hip hop act of the ‘80s has at least one polit­i­cal song in its discog­ra­phy.)

Enter David Byrne, whose mis­sion apart from his day job as a musi­cian is to bring hope to the mass­es with a deter­mined opti­mism. He’s here to say that the protest song nev­er went away, only our def­i­n­i­tion of it. And he’s brought the receipts, or rather the playlist above, to prove his point:

…in fact, they now come from all direc­tions in every pos­si­ble genre—country songs, giant pop hits, hip hop, clas­sic rock, indie and folk. Yes, maybe there weren’t many songs ques­tion­ing the wis­dom of invad­ing Iraq, but almost every oth­er issue has been addressed.

Stretch­ing over six decades, the playlist demon­strates the var­i­ous forms protest can take, from describ­ing racial vio­lence (Bil­lie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit” to Janelle Monae’s “Hell You Talm­bout”) to bemoan­ing eco­nom­ic injus­tice (The Spe­cials’ “Ghost Town”) and rail­ing against war and con­flict (U2’s “Sun­day Bloody Sun­day”, Edwin Starr’s “War”). Some­times declar­ing the pos­i­tive and gain­ing a voice is enough of a protest: you could argue that James Brown’s “Say It Loud (I’m Black and I’m Proud)” did more for equal­i­ty than any song about racism. Biki­ni Kills’ “Rebel Girl” does sim­i­lar things for third-wave fem­i­nism.

But Byrne wise­ly gives voice to those who feel they’re swim­ming against any resis­tance tide:

I’ve even includ­ed a few songs that “protest the protests.” Buck Owens, the clas­sic coun­try artist from Bak­ers­field, for exam­ple, has two songs here. “Red­necks, White Socks and Blue Rib­bon Beer,” is a cel­e­bra­tion of Amer­i­cans who feel they are unno­ticed, left behind. One might call it a pop­ulist anthem, but I think the ref­er­ence to white socks is inten­tion­al­ly meant to be funny—in effect, it says: “we know who we are, we know how uncool white socks are.”

Look, it’s easy to believe that songs “changed the world” when they are eas­i­ly acces­si­ble to hear decades lat­er but the boots-on-the-ground march­es and rev­o­lu­tion­ary acts from which they sprang are now just pho­tographs, film reels, and fog­gy mem­o­ries. But who can deny the gut punch of this year’s “This Is Amer­i­ca” from Child­ish Gam­bi­no, the con­tin­ued excel­lence of Killer Mike and/or Run the Jew­els, and any num­ber of songs that doc­u­ment our out­rage? The songs of protest con­tin­ue as long as there is injus­tice.

And in the case of David Byrne, cov­er­ing a mod­ern protest song and adding to its list of names, is what can keep an idea, a mem­o­ry, and a feel­ing alive for a new audi­ence. Here he is at the encore of his cur­rent tour, cov­er­ing Janelle Monae’s “Hell You Talm­bout,” a memo­r­i­al to all the black lives killed by law enforce­ment.

“Here was a protest song that doesn’t hec­tor or preach at us,” he said in an arti­cle for the Asso­ci­at­ed Press. “It sim­ply asks us to remem­ber and acknowl­edge these lives that have been lost, lives that were tak­en from us through injus­tice, though the song leaves that for the lis­ten­er to put togeth­er. I love a drum line, so that aspect of the song sucked me in imme­di­ate­ly as well. The song musi­cal­ly is a cel­e­bra­tion and lyri­cal­ly a eulo­gy. Beau­ti­ful.”

He also wise­ly asked per­mis­sion to cov­er such a recent song, espe­cial­ly when it’s an old­er white man lend­ing his voice to it. But Mon­ae gave her bless­ing:

“I thought that was so kind of him and of course I said yes. The song’s mes­sage and names men­tioned need to be heard by every audi­ence.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

When South Africa Banned Pink Floyd’s The Wall After Stu­dents Chant­ed “We Don’t Need No Edu­ca­tion” to Protest the Apartheid School Sys­tem (1980)

Tom Waits Releas­es a Time­ly Cov­er of the Ital­ian Anti-Fas­cist Anthem “Bel­la Ciao,” His First New Song in Two Years

Hear a 4 Hour Playlist of Great Protest Songs: Bob Dylan, Nina Simone, Bob Mar­ley, Pub­lic Ene­my, Bil­ly Bragg & More

David Byrne Cre­ates a Playlist of Eclec­tic Music for the Hol­i­days: Stream It Free Online

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

Drug­store Cow­boy, Barfly, Leav­ing Las Vegas, even Bon­nie and Clyde… we love a good sto­ry about doomed, down-and-out lovers. What­ev­er emo­tion­al reser­voir they tap into, when writ­ten well and hon­est­ly, such sto­ries have broad cul­tur­al appeal. Which in part explains the over­whelm­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of The Pogues’ 1987 clas­sic “Fairy­tale of New York,” the kind of “anti-Christ­mas song,” writes Dori­an Lyn­sky at The Guardian, “that end­ed up being, for a gen­er­a­tion, the Christ­mas song.”

Many hol­i­day sto­ries cyn­i­cal­ly trade on the fact that, for a great many peo­ple, the hol­i­days are filled with pain and loss. But “Fairy­tale of New York” doesn’t play this for laughs, nor does it pull the old trick of cheap last-minute redemp­tion.

Sung as a duet by Shane Mac­Gowan and Kirsty Mac­Coll to the boozy tune of an Irish folk bal­lad, the song “is loved because it feels more emo­tion­al­ly ‘real’ than the home­sick sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty of ‘White Christ­mas.’ ” Even if we can’t iden­ti­fy with the plight of a burned-out Irish dream­er spend­ing Christ­mas in a New York drunk tank, we can feel the ache of bro­ken dreams set in high relief against hol­i­day lights.

The song’s his­to­ry itself makes for a com­pelling tale, whether we believe the ori­gin sto­ry in accor­dion play­er James Fearnley’s mem­oir Here Comes Every­body: The Sto­ry of the Pogues or that told by Mac­Gowan, who main­tains that Elvis Costel­lo, the band’s pro­duc­er, bet the singer that he couldn’t write a Christ­mas duet. (Fearn­ley writes that they were try­ing to top The Band’s 1977 “Christ­mas Must Be Tonight.”)

Either way, a Christ­mas song was a good idea. “For a band like the Pogues, very strong­ly root­ed in all kinds of tra­di­tions rather than the present, it was a no-brain­er,” says ban­jo-play­er and co-writer Jem Fin­er. Not to men­tion the fact that Mac­Gowan was born on Christ­mas Day 1957.

Fin­er began the song as a tale about a sailor miss­ing his wife on Christ­mas, but after the ban­jo play­er’s wife called it “corny” he took her sug­ges­tion to adapt the “true sto­ry of some mutu­al friends liv­ing in New York.” Mac­Gowan took the title from J.P. Donleavy’s 1973 nov­el A Fairy Tale of New York, which hap­pened to be lying around the record­ing stu­dio. After a promis­ing start, the song then went through two years of revi­sions and re-record­ings before the band final­ly set­tled on the ver­sion mil­lions know and love, pro­duced by Steve Lil­ly­white and released on the 1988 album If I Should Fall From Grace with God.

Orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed as a duet between Mac­Gowan and bass play­er Cait O’Riordan, a ver­sion record­ed with her was “not quite there,” gui­tarist Philip Chevron has said. Soon after, O’Riordan left the band, and Mac­Gowan record­ed the song again at Abbey Road in 1987, singing both the male and female vocal parts him­self. Even­tu­al­ly Lil­ly­white took the track home to have his wife, Eng­lish singer Kirsty Mac­Coll, record a tem­po­rary guide vocal for the female parts. When Mac­Gowan heard it, he knew he had found the right foil for the char­ac­ter he plays in the song.

“Kirsty knew exact­ly the right mea­sure of vicious­ness and fem­i­nin­i­ty and romance to put into it and she had a very strong char­ac­ter and it came across in a big way,” Mac­Gowan lat­er remarked in an inter­view. “In operas, if you have a dou­ble aria, it’s what the woman does that real­ly mat­ters. the man lies, the woman tells the truth.” As part of her character’s “vicious­ness”, she hurls the slur “f*ggot” at Mac­Gowan, who calls her a “slut.” The offen­sive words have been cen­sored on radio sta­tions, then uncen­sored, and good cas­es have been made for bleep­ing them out (most recent­ly by Irish DJ Eoghan McDer­mott on Twit­ter).

Mac­Gowan him­self has issued a state­ment defend­ing the lyrics as in keep­ing with the char­ac­ters. “Some­times char­ac­ters in songs and sto­ries have to be evil or nasty in order to tell the sto­ry effec­tive­ly,” he writes, adding, “If peo­ple don’t under­stand that I was try­ing to accu­rate­ly por­tray the char­ac­ter as authen­ti­cal­ly as pos­si­ble then I am absolute­ly fine with them bleep­ing the word but I don’t want to get into an argu­ment.” What­ev­er posi­tion one takes on this, it’s hard to deny that Mac­Gowan, co-writer Fin­er, and Mac­Coll total­ly hit the mark when it comes to authen­tic­i­ty.

The gen­uine emo­tions “Fairy­tale of New York” taps into has made it the most beloved Christ­mas song of all time in TV, radio, and mag­a­zine polls in the UK and Ire­land. It has become “far big­ger than the peo­ple who made it,” writes Lynskey. Or, as Fearn­ley puts it, “It’s like ‘Fairy­tale of New York’ went off and inhab­it­ed its own plan­et.” An artist can’t ask for more. See mak­ing-of videos by the BBC and Poly­phon­ic at the top. Watch the band slop­pi­ly mime the song with Mac­Coll on Top of the Pops fur­ther up (Mac­Gowan can­not actu­al­ly play the piano). And just above, see the offi­cial video, star­ring Drug­store Cow­boy’s Matt Dillon—filmed inside a real police sta­tion on the Low­er East Side dur­ing a freez­ing Thanks­giv­ing week in 1987, for max­i­mum hol­i­day vérité.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie & Bing Cros­by Sing “The Lit­tle Drum­mer Boy”: A Won­der­ful Christ­mas Chest­nut from 1977

Stream 22 Hours of Funky, Rock­ing & Swing­ing Christ­mas Albums: From James Brown and John­ny Cash to Christo­pher Lee & The Ven­tures

Stream a Playlist of 68 Punk Rock Christ­mas Songs: The Ramones, The Damned, Bad Reli­gion & More

Hear Paul McCartney’s Exper­i­men­tal Christ­mas Mix­tape: A Rare & For­got­ten Record­ing from 1965

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness