Too many people music is simply another artistic style art form, a piece of poetry with instrumentation to give a listener a sense of aural pleasure, or simply a form of entertainment to get them through the day. Sometimes however, this expressive art form can change people's opinions, give people hope in a time of desperation, inspire future musicians, or indeed change the public's perspective on certain matters. For this essay I will be looking into how popular music can act as a means of resistance and analyse the conditions of how and why the potential act of resistance was plausible at the given times, and discuss the reality of these examples in terms of effect and efficiency. Throughout the essay I will touch on serious subjects such as politics, racism and sexism, and how music has altered these subjects and it's part in resisting tyranny that define our own existence and problems historically as a species on planet Earth. .
A part of the punk movement was the underlying involvement in politics, either directly or indirectly and the ideology has been associated with leftist attitudes and the concept of anarchy. The first wave of punk sparked at a time in the 1970's when Great Britain was "heavily indebted to the International Monetary Fund and stretched to its limits by the recessionary effects of the Arab oil embargo of 1973 " (Bromberg, 1991) With the nation submerged in one of the worst recessions in British history, it was said Britain "was now in danger of becoming the first industrialized nation to joining the Third World ". What came with recession were the high unemployment rates, to which Malcolm McLaren commented "60% of those unemployed in Great Britain were only 18 years old ". The youth were deeply affected by the economic and political atmosphere at the time and when the new medium known as punk rock came along it gave those a sense of unity and self-worth.