Why 1976? Explaining the rise and fall of protest music

Street, J., Worley, M. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3049-8714 and Wilkinson, D. (2025) Why 1976? Explaining the rise and fall of protest music. In: Manabe, N. and Drott, E. (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Protest Music. Oxford Handbooks. Oxford University Press, Oxford. ISBN 9780190653866 doi: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190653866.013.0003

Abstract/Summary

The popular media myth is that the protest song and the protest singer are in decline. It is unclear how anyone would know; there is no standard measure for the presence or absence of protest songs. Nonetheless, the myth raises an interesting question about how we might explain the rise and fall of protest music. Is it a matter of context, of exogenous changes in the state of the world? Or is it determined by internal processes, endogenous shifts in genres, or the music business more broadly? Taking our lead (and our title) from Richard Peterson’s article, “Why 1955?,” this chapter examines the case of punk in the UK from 1976 to 1978. It reveals that internal political and musical factors are just as important as the broader social and political trends (rising unemployment, industrial decline, new right policies) to understanding punk’s moment of protest.

Item Type	Book or Report Section
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/120443
Item Type	Book or Report Section
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Arts, Humanities and Social Science > Modern European Histories and Cultures
Publisher	Oxford University Press
Download/View statistics	View download statistics for this item