Election Day Soundtrack

For Barack Obama: Judas Priest's "United"

British Steel is best-known for "Living After Midnight" and "Breaking the Law," but the third single, "United," is the most National Anthem-worthy metal song ever recorded. The rousing chorus and patriotic theme would make it a perfect campaign song for the President. Republicans would probably squawk about it being written and performed by a non-American band, but then again, most of them also don't think Rob Halford should be allowed to get married.



For Mitt Romney: Metallica's "Breadfan"




Budgie's depiction of a scrooge was revamped on a Metallica's "Eye of the Beholder" b-side, perfected with a key change and tighter, more aggressive breakdown. Hear it as a censure of trickle-down economics, and you have a clearer interpretation of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan's $5 trillion tax cut than either of them have offered thus far.

The Best of Rage Against the Machine

For the second time in this election cycle, a campaign co-worker has told me that she has never heard the most important political rock band of our time.



The Best of Rage Against the Machine

1. Bombtrack
2. Killing in the Name
3. Know Your Enemy
4. Wake Up
5. People of the Sun
6. Bulls on Parade
7. Vietnow
8. Down Rodeo
9. No Shelter
10. Testify
11. Guerilla Radio
12. Calm Like a Bomb
13. Sleep Now in the Fire

Rage Against the Machine has never released a "Best of." For such an infamously opinionated band, my guess is that RATM believes that they're too good for it. I'd agree--I don't usually like "Best ofs" for top bands, and this one is no exception. Its tracklist is as generic as its title. Not only have I boiled down Rage's impeccable recorded history into an insufficient 13 songs, I picked the same 13 songs that any casual Rage fan who only likes what he's heard on the radio would pick. Paul Ryan probably could've made this mix CD.

Then again, this mix is for someone who isn't a fan yet. Almost certainly one of the songs here is the one that made you a Rage Against the Machine fan, and I'm hoping at least one of them will connect with my co-worker. Listening again, they're better than I remembered--all the rap-rock that followed Rage might have temporarily diluted some of their glory. It will probably restore itself once my generation takes over the media, or at least when more folks forget about Linkin Park.

Song of the Day: Twisted Sister, "We're Not Gonna Take It"

One day when I was staying home sick from school, a baby-sitter brought in a CD of Twisted Sister's Stay Hungry to keep me entertained. There were only two great songs, but it was still a lot to take in for a boy who only associated the 1980s with Billy Joel and Weird Al.



This was before "We're Not Gonna Take It" was included in Rock of Ages:



Featured on The Glee Project:



Re-written as "Oh Come All Ye Faithful" for A Twisted Christmas:



Included on Kidz Bop 80s' Gold:



And finally, employed by Paul Ryan for his campaign rallies:



To the surprise of no one, Dee Snider sent in a cease and desist. The current top comment on YouTube for "We're Not Gonna Take It" imagines Ryan as the music video's authoritarian (played by Mark Metcalf, Animal House's Neidermeyer) getting his ass kicked by the band.

Can this song take it anymore? Like "My Generation" or "Jailhouse Rock," what was once an anthem of rebellion is now safe enough to be performed on an Oxygen reality show.

My answer is that yes, this is still a rebel song. People who will never hear of Black Flag need their belligerence odes just as much as those of us who pretend we're too enlightened listen to Taylor Swift. In separate contexts, "We're Not Gonna Take It" works just as well as "Rise Above," and is just as necessary.

For much of the world, which includes people who don't spend 95% of their days thinking about music, "We're Not Gonna Take It" is as revolutionary as Che Guevara. Dee Snider hopes that the novelty of hearing Christmas carols performed by a hard rock band will sell. Paul Ryan, who apparently overlooks rock music's philosophies as well as he misses senior citizens' needs and women's rights, hopes this song will paint him as an iconoclast. Rock of Ages even gets it wrong by selecting "We're Not Gonna Take It" as the religious right's anthem while the "rock" fans get stuck with "We Built this City." Maybe there are some things that Twisted Sister is still too cool for.

Song of the Day: Rage Against the Machine, "Know Your Enemy"

This week, VP hopeful (not Origin guitarist) Paul Ryan turned a few extra heads when he expressed an appreciation for Rage Against the Machine. It doesn't sound quite as strange when you remind yourself that Ryan was 22 when "Killing in the Name" dropped, but the ideological contrast between the most outspokenly left wing rock band on the planet and a man who claims that Ayn Rand inspired him to get into public service is still fun to look at.

"Paul Ryan's love of Rage Against the Machine is amusing, because he is the embodiment of the machine that our music has been raging against for two decades," guitarist Tom Morello recently wrote in Rolling Stone. "He can like whatever bands he wants, but his guiding vision of shifting revenue more radically to the one percent is antithetical to the message of Rage."

Morello continues, "Don't mistake me, I clearly see that Ryan has a whole lotta 'rage' in him: A rage against women, a rage against immigrants, a rage against workers, a rage against gays, a rage against the poor, a rage against the environment. Basically the only thing he's not raging against is the privileged elite he's groveling in front of for campaign contributions."

In honor of Paul Ryan's commendable musical taste and abhorrent policies, here is Rage Against the Machine's "Know Your Enemy." That's Tool's Maynard James Keenan singing and Jane's Addiction's Stephen Perkins drumming on the bridge.



Nobody literally puts the pedal to the metal like Tom Morello. His riffs are pretty straightforward (in fact, this one sounds a little like Edgar Winter's "Frankenstein,") but his brilliance lies in his limb-like effects. I'm also sold on Zack De La Rocha's spitfire delivery, if not his claim that hypocrisy and brutality are American dreams. But when the music is this great I can overlook disagreeable messages. Kind of like Paul Ryan.