Has Rock Gone Conservative?

Some of my nastiest comments have come from lefties who were upset by my Neil Young and NRO's Top 50 conservative Rock Songs.

This article by Mark Gauvreau Judge of JRW will totally bum them out dude.

At some point you've gotta feel sorry for the Left. Over the past 40 years conservatives have laid claim to their every issue.

National defense? Truman and JFK are gone, their toughness claimed by Ronald Reagan. Color-blind Civil Rights? It's the Right fighting for poor black kids to get into decent schools. Religion? You're kidding, right?

And now we have captured the flag of rock and roll. For at least ten years I've been arguing that rock and roll - or at least most of it - is a conservative art form. Recently John Miller in National Review charted the 50 greatest conservative rock songs. The hipster left went nuts, with Dave Marsh quoted in the New York Times saying Miller's list was apathetic game of catch-up by the right, which had "lost the culture war." The Washington Post quickly listed a counter list of 50 great liberal rock songs.

But let's face it, kids: conservative Middle America has absorbed rock and roll and made it their own. Or at least, they have made the best of it their own. The Beatles, the best of the Rolling Stones and the Who, U2, Radiohead, Mary J. Blige are not considered scandalous, dangerous of ghetto. They are considered pop songcrafters the way Sinatra, Ella, and Jan and Dean once were.