Category: Sound and Vison
-
Protest Songs P5 -Women’s Rights in Song: A Century of Defiance and Change
The Suffragette Anthem: “The March of the Women” The UK’s suffragette movement had its own anthem, The March of the Women, written in 1910 by composer and activist Ethel Smyth. The lyrics reflected the movement’s readiness for militant action: “Comrades – ye who dared first in battle to strive and sorrow!” Sung during marches and…
-
Everyone Makes Their Barbies Kiss Each Other, Right? – Dreaming Soda – Kissing Stacey
We all had our own way of playing with dolls as kids—whether it was full-blown soap opera drama or Ken and Barbie playing house. With their new single Kissing Stacey, Dreaming Soda— Sydney duo Ella Sterland and Renee Stein—pull us back to those glittery, plastic worlds, only this time with a dose of grown-up hindsight.…
-
Protest Songs P4 – The Civil Rights Movement
The Terror of Lynching and the Birth of “Strange Fruit” Between 1900 and 1939, the United States witnessed 2,805 reported lynchings. In 1937, a Jewish teacher named Abel Meeropol came across a photograph of Black men who had been lynched—bodies hanging from tree branches. Such images were disturbingly common in the South, often displayed publicly…
-
Protest Songs P3 -Songs of War – The 20th Century.
America and WW1 By the time America considered joining the First World War in 1915, the conflict was already in full swing. The idea sparked backlash—most of the public wanted to remain neutral and avoid fighting. That same year, Alfred Bryan and Albert Piantadosi wrote I Didn’t Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier. Performed…
-
Protest Songs – P2 Spirituals
Roots in Resistance When enslavers stole African people from their homeland and brought them to America, they forbade them from speaking their native languages or practising their religions. However, this didn’t stop them. They organised secret meetings, where they sometimes performed Ring Shouts. In these gatherings, they formed a circle and moved counterclockwise while singing,…
-
Protest Songs – P1 The Cutty Wren.
Introduction One of my A-Level English Language coursework assignments was to write about a subject of my choosing and how it had changed over time. It comedised with my discovering Green Day’s cover of Working Class Hero and its music video featuring survivors of Darfur (which I’ll explore in a later instalment). The impact it…
-
He Not Busy Being Born… Is Being Filmed – A Complete Unknown.
Bob Dylan – God, or Judas? Bob Dylan is a notoriously private and cagey character, especially for someone who has garnered such success, a Nobel Prize winner of literature no less. In 2025, James Mangold took on the task of directing A Complete Unknown, giving audiences a backstage pass to the rise of Bob Dylan,…
-
I Have Been a 13-Year-Old Girl. The Virgin Suicides – A Sound Track.
TRIGGER WARNING – This essay openly discusses suicide. If you’re experiencing suicidal thoughts, please know you’re not alone, call 116 123 for the UK’s suicide helpline, every lost life is a tragedy. The Virgin Suicides is a cautionary tale, the book, written by Jeffery Eugenides in 1993 and later adapted into a film directed by…
-
Frank Sinatra? No Thank You. – Rolling Stones Unseen Exhibition.
Please allow them to introduce themselves. Hosted at London’s Dockside Vaults Rolling Stones Unseen 63′ will give audiences insight to the early days of the band until 10th September 2025. Immortalised by Gus Coral, the shots have finally found their stage after the documentary they were snapped for went unfinished over 60 years ago. Before…
-
We Are Rewind Cassette Player.
When I was about 5 or 6, my grandparents gifted me a green Panasonic RQ-CW02 Walkman Cassette player. I didn’t have many cassette tapes, my dad gave me his copy of ‘Revenge’ by The Eurhythmics, one of the two cassettes from Now ’84, and I have vague memories of an Abba album, maybe their greatest…
-
Royal College of Music London – Kurt Cobain Unplugged.
In 1989, MTV began the Unplugged series, presented by Jules Shear, it was a chance to hear popular music performed acoustic, think of it as the Tiny Desk sessions of the 90’s. Many of these performances were later brought out as albums usually titled the band’s name followed by ‘Unplugged’. November of 1993 saw Nirvana…