# most real-world-influential song **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 6, 2020, 6:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-real-world-influential-song/848995 "2020-03-06T06:13:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![jaycat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jaycat/32/3015_2.png) [@jaycat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jaycat)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2020, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-real-world-influential-song/848995/21 "2020-03-06T22:33:38Z")
> [@Leaffan](#): > > Three very poignant songs, and who the hell doesn’t sing Auld Lang Syne at new year’s? [Perhaps the most poignant version of all.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdOCBFfB2Wo) ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2020, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-real-world-influential-song/848995/22 "2020-03-06T23:16:32Z")
> [@Little Nemo](#): > > I feel “We Shall Overcome” is a song that was adopted by the civil rights movement after it was already up and running. It was a mostly forgotten slave song until it was updated and popularized as part of the Civil Rights movement. beginning in the 1940s. I think it counts. [Gloomy Sunday](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloomy_Sunday) supposedly drove at least 19 people to commit suicide. To be fair, though, [Hungarians don’t need much encouragement to commit suicide.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3698008/) > [@RioRico](#): > > One line: **You’re old enough to kill but not for votin’** - those eleven syllables drove passage of the 26th Amendment granting the franchise to 18-year-old citizens. THAT was impact. No offense, but the concept of letting 18 year-olds vote was first brought up[during World War 2, before P. F. Sloane was even born.](https://www.history.com/topics/united-states-constitution/the-26th-amendment) Even Richard Nixon supported it. It was Vietnam, not a protest song, that brought about the 26th Amendment. You may as well give credit to _The Lips That Touch Liquor Shall Never Touch Mine_ for bringing about Prohibition. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2020, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-real-world-influential-song/848995/23 "2020-03-07T01:27:01Z")
> [@Kent\_Clark](#): > > It was a mostly forgotten slave song until it was updated and popularized as part of the Civil Rights movement. beginning in the 1940s. I think it counts. My understanding is that it was considered as a anthem for the labor movement in the thirties and forties. It wasn’t associated with the black civil rights movement until April 1960 when Guy Carawan performed the song at a civil rights rally ([cite](http://culturalequity.org/alan-lomax/friends/carawan)). This was after the Brown decision, Emmett Till’s murder, the Montgomery bus boycott, the founding of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Little Rock Nine, the Civil Rights Act of 1957, and the Greensboro sit-in - so well into the civil rights era. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2020, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-real-world-influential-song/848995/24 "2020-03-07T01:33:28Z")
> [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](#): > > If Vincent Bugliosi is to be believed, several Beatles songs resulted in mass murder. I don’t think a grand total of eight killings is any comparison to the influence of most other songs mentioned here. ---
**Author:** ![Leaffan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leaffan/32/299_2.png) [@Leaffan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaffan)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2020, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-real-world-influential-song/848995/25 "2020-03-07T01:38:08Z")
> [@jaycat](#): > > [Perhaps the most poignant version of all.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdOCBFfB2Wo) Nm ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2020, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-real-world-influential-song/848995/26 "2020-03-07T01:53:12Z")
Maybe not world-changing, but the 1967 Grateful Dead anthem **The Golden Road (to Unlimited Devotion)** would have enticed MY ass out to Frisco for the Summer of Love, if I hadn’t been six years old at the time. https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZjQcCNUva6Y?feature=oembed&wmode=opaque&list=RDZjQcCNUva6Y ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2020, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-real-world-influential-song/848995/27 "2020-03-07T01:55:27Z")
You can also see why Jerry grew a beard. DAMN, that was one ugly-looking band. ---
**Author:** ![Banksiaman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banksiaman/32/3334_2.png) [@Banksiaman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banksiaman)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2020, 6:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-real-world-influential-song/848995/28 "2020-03-07T06:18:37Z")
Three songs formed a bit of a soundtrack to making the indigenous land rights and reconciliation movement in Australia more politically mainstream - ['Treaty’](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_(song))by Yothu Yindi, '[My island home’](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Island_Home), originally by the Warumpi Band, and ‘[Beds are burning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beds_Are_Burning)’ by Midnight Oil. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2020, 9:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-real-world-influential-song/848995/29 "2020-03-07T09:31:14Z")
> [@mbh](#): > > The Third Estate declared itself to be the National Assembly in June 1798. > The Tennis Court Oath was taken in June 1798. > The Bastille was stormed in July 1798. > Feudalism was abolished in August 1798. > The Declaration of Rights of Man and the Citizen was published in August 1798. > The Church’s authority to tithe was abolished in August 1798. > Monasteries and convents were closed in February 1790. > The first constitution, which enshrined popular sovereignty, and severely curtailed the king’s power, took effect in 1791. > > _La Marseillaise_ was not written until 1792, and not adopted as the national anthem until 1795. I will not nitpick your typographical errors, substituting ‘1798’ for ‘1789’ dates. But you’re right, _La Marseillaise_ (written by a monarchist!) wasn’t composed to support the Revolution itself, but in response to the Counter-revolution launched by almost(_) every European Kingdom to support the Divine Right of King’s against the French insolence. (_ - I guess Spain dropped out of the First Coalition and supported France against the Second Coalition.) That the song targets foreigners as enemies is explicit in its lyrics: _Qu’un sang impur Abreuve nos sillons ! … Quoi ! ces cohortes étrangères Feraient la loi dans nos foyers !_ Off-topic: Am I the only one who never gets tired of [listening to Mireille Mathieu roll her R’s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIxOl1EraXA)? ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2020, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-real-world-influential-song/848995/30 "2020-03-07T15:02:48Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > I don’t think a grand total of eight killings is any comparison to the influence of most other songs mentioned here. I think you fail to appreciate the effect those murders had on the attitude of an entire nation toward the greatest countercultural Revolution in its history. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-real-world-influential-song/848995.md?page=1)