Raise Your Voice

Ten years to the date, Bad Religion released their tenth LP, No Substance!

An album I had been meaning to listen to again for a while now, especially knowing it was soon ten years since being released. So I decided to play it now, and I checked, and it was released May 15th 1998!

There are many tracks I could have chosen from, I initially was thinking of "The Biggest Killer in American History", which is about Edward Teller, who is dubbed "the father of the hydrogen bomb", but instead decided to choose "Raise Your Voice"

"Raise Your Voice" in my opinion could be the second "Punk Rock Song", as it states how we should raise our voice, be heard, as opposed to being silent. A pretty huge topic, that applies to the vast majority of humankind.

If the entire population of the United States had raised their voice, and excercised their right to vote, who knows who could have been the forty third president of the United States of America. Maybe it wouldn't have been a two party system.

We can wonder all we want, but the world is the way is.

If everyone was heard, knowing what we know now about global warming, it could bring corporations to their knees, and force them to switch to 100% earth friendly vehicles. Animal cruelty could be a thing of the past, and so on.

The point being government, and corporations hold the power now, and despite being 'democratically' elected (in some places), we feel they could still do a much better job. This is where you and I come in. If we make ourselves heard instead of being "silent in shame", we can change the world. Ben Harper comes to mind: "I can change the world, with my own two hands" (from Diamonds on the Inside, 2003)

So... Raise Your Voice!

All the lyrics:

(Spoken)
I think this is a song we could redo in every language of every country we go to.

Fa fa fafa fa fa fafa raise your voice!
Don't be played like someone else's board game
Don't be classed out like some desolate redoubt
Don't be misled you've got a lot on your head
And nobody's gonna pay attention when you are dead
So, fa fa fafa fa fa fafa raise your voice!
It's the primary rule, you gotta wanna be fooled
It's our daunted restraint that keeps us silent in shame
It's our nature to be adversarial and free
Our evolution didn't hinge on passivity
Fa fa fafa fa fa fafa raise your voice!