March 2, 2024
Now It's Gone
A folk song about the erosion of rights, norms, and freedoms, addressed in turn to brother, father, mother, sister, comrade, and children. Each verse names a different category of loss. The refrain is the...
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Songs Tagged: authoritarianism
17 songs
September 22, 2018
Time
A dark political song about the collapse of norms and the narrowing of public life. Its urgency is sharpened by how little it needs to say.
January 11, 2024
Predator
A song about a specific type of political figure — hand grenade, dark-side clown, machine that consumes. The chord sequence borrows from Blaze Foley's "Oval Room," and the acknowledgment is in the notes. The...
Rough Working Demo
Video
December 17, 2024
I Know What I Know
A political song, working through the full catalog of conspiracy theory and authoritarian propaganda — chemtrails, birtherism, QAnon, end-times belief — from the inside. The refrain identifies the emotional...
April 20, 2024
I Don't Get It
A furious song of disbelief aimed at people who keep mistaking cruelty, fraud, and manipulation for strength. Its anger is sharp, but it never fully gives up hope that those being used might still wake up.
2016
Comes the Flood
A slow, searching song about damage that may already be beyond repair. Its repeated refrain makes the recognition feel heavier each time it returns.
Rough Working Demo
May 19, 2019
This is How it Goes
A political song built as a rolling catalog of public types, false prophets, and ordinary people trying to get by while things decay around them. The refrain carries a tired fatalism, but the song itself still...
September 29, 2018
Deplorable
A blues song addressed directly to people the singer cannot understand. What gives it force is that the refrain is not only accusation but genuine bafflement.
2016
The Man is Back in Town
A plainspoken political song, with a gallery of characters each responding differently to a new authoritarian presence. Jethro Bodine, Jihadi Jack, Martha Sue, the corner guy — each verse inhabits a type...
Rough Working Demo
January 1, 2025
New Years Day, 2025
A New Year's Day reckoning that catalogs crisis after crisis without softening any of it. The repeated questions at the center are as plain as they are hard to answer.
Rough Working Demo
March 25, 2026
Evil is Out Walking
A song built on the traditional doubled-line verse structure. The verses accumulate: evil is talking, scheming, grasping, using a whippin' boy, fooling frightened minds. The refrain names the target without...
Rough Working Demo
Video
March 25, 2026
The Blues Have Got Me
A song about succumbing to sorrow even while trying to name it, joke with it, and sing through it. The title tells the truth up front and lets the verses live inside it.
Rough Working Demo
February 25, 2026
Ballad for the ICE Man
A folk-blues structured as a community's collective voice speaking directly to immigration enforcement. The verses escalate from neighborhood to schools, from refusal to warning. The final line repeats slowly,...
Rough Working Demo
May 18, 2025
A Thin Veneer
A folk song, about watching someone reveal themselves as something they didn't appear to be. The verses track from initial perception to current behavior to the question of how it will be viewed by history....
Rough Working Demo
Video
May 3, 2025
Winter of Hate
A folk song, about the Boomer generation's transformation from Aquarian idealism to fearful authoritarianism. The verses describe the movement — tired of the establishment, now become the establishment,...
March 25, 2025
Can of Worms
A satirical folk song that turns its attention to public figures and the stories that gather around them. It lets the details speak for themselves, allowing the tone to shift between humor and unease without...
Rough Working Demo
Video
March 9, 2025
Liberty
A political song spoken in the voice of Liberty herself, protesting the way her image has been turned against the people she was meant to welcome. Its anger is sharpened by grief for the promise being betrayed.
