Any song I could name is way too recent.
I’ll offer “Choice of Colors” by The Impressions from 1969 as a benchmark for others to post earlier thans.
Edited to add: I read “R&R” in the thread title as “R&B”.
Blowin’ In The Wind-Bob Dylan. 1963
Depending on your definition of “pop”, Pete Seeger would have a number of songs going way back.
Nominating “Abraham, Martin and John” released in 1968 by Dion.
I offer Eve of Destruction, an anti-war song from 1965.
If we’re counting folk music, we’d have to go back to Woody Guthrie, old union songs, and arguably even a lot of old traditional stuff. I’ll assume we’re talking specifically about the rock era, so no “Strange Fruit” or the like. I’ll add “Society’s Child” (1967) by Janis Ian.
Strange Fruit sold a million copies when it was recorded in 1939.
If you mean in the rock era, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” hit #22 for the Kingston Trio in 1962; Peter, Paul, and Mary had it on their best-selling first album that year, too.
Slave songs were undoubtedly socially-conscious and some were popular across regions. The lyrics tended to be “coded” so Massa wouldn’t realize exactly what they were singing about. While I, too, assume that the OP is talking about recorded popular music, the roots of R&B/pop/rock/folk/jazz/etc. can be traced right back to those slave songs. Social consciousness has always been a part of American popular music, although the messages were not usually overt. That obviously changed in the '60s.
The aforementioned Strange Fruit is a notable exception. It was boldly and unapologetically about lynching:
Black bodies swingin’ in the Southern breeze
Strange fruit hangin’ from the poplar trees
It was also very popular. A million copies was a LOT back then.
My vote goes to Billie Holliday’s Strange Fruit in 1939, with an honorable mention to Woody Guthrie’s This Land is Your Land, published in 1945.
[quote=“randwill, post:2, topic:688452”]
I’ll offer “Choice of Colors” by The Impressions from 1969 as a benchmark for others to post earlier thans.
[/QUOTE]An absolutely wonderful song I’ve always loved. But in the R&B field, “A Change Is Gonna Come” by Sam Cooke precedes it by several years.
By the way, for the purposes of this thread, I think pop/R&R can easily encompass R&B as well. It’s a judgment call as to whether we should take it back as far as “Strange Fruit,” which straddles several genres.
We should probably eliminate folk from consideration, which has a pedigree of songs of this nature that stretches back centuries. There were blues songs that also addressed social issues — being somewhat “underground” by comparison with mainstream pop, they could get away with doing so.
IMHO, in the spirit of the thread, the best thing to do is to make the cut-off 1955, which is generally acknowledged to be the dawn of the rock ‘n’ roll era (as exemplified by Joel Whitburn’s Billboard chart reference works, the Gold Standard).
i doubt if they are “earliest”, but I think “We Gotta Get out of This Place”, by The Animals (1965) and “Dead End Street” by The Kinks (1966), both about poverty, deserve a mention. Depending on you definition of “socially conscious”, The Animals “The House of the Rising Sun” (1964) might count too.
And how about “America” from West Side Story (1957). Is that pop/rock enough?
Along with njtt, I nominate “Satisfaction.” Not the earliest, but notable.
“We Gotta Get Out of This Place” and Paul Revere and the Raiders’ “Kicks” (anti-drug) were both written by pop legend Cynthia Weil. Weil also wrote the lyrics for the 1963 song “Only in America” which included blunt and direct references to racism.The song was too controversial for the intended artists (The Drifters) and the record label (Atlantic) and ended up watered down into a love song for Jay and the Americans.
And there were a ton of socially conscious country songs, although most of them tended to take a conservative bent.
Um, where is the social consciousness there? It is about a guy feeling sexually frustrated and getting annoyed by adverts on the radio.
I see it as more of an sly skewering of the banality of modern society and the received messages from advertising rather than a song about a horny guy.
What I came in to mention. Billie Holliday, taking no prisoners. Her, Paul Robeson.
Percy Mayfield’s “Please Send Me Someone to Love” from 1950 should get a mention, although the message might be considered muted compared to the other songs on this list.
Not the deepest of songs, but Teenager’s Mother (Are You Right?) by Bill Haley & His Comets (1956) may qualify.
Good nomination!
I first came to know this song through Fred Neil’s version from his Sessions album. He apparently did it from memory, as he omits most of the verses, and sings “somebody” rather than “someone.” Still, it’s a moving rendition.
Sticking with the parameters I outlined earlier (rock and pop from 1955 onward), several Four Seasons songs from the mid 60s played on the themes of class consciousness (rich vs. poor), even if they did so within the framework of doomed romance. Among others, “Rag Doll” and “Big Man in Town” come to mind.
Taking it back a couple of years previous, Dickie Lee’s “Patches” came from that same place.
If I’d seen this thread before it was restricted to 1955 and after, I’d have mentioned “Black and Blue”, a 1929 Fats Waller/Andy Razaf song. When Louis Armstrong sang this, he included the line “My only sin is in my skin”… I’m not sure that was in the original version.