It’s almost the election, which means we need protest songs.
I know, I know — there’ve been a bunch out all year. The last four years, even. Which means that it’s important to highlight the GOOD ones. Edan Archer’s “Not So Great Again” is a true standout.
The Gainesville-based singer is known for combining classic country and a punk-rock ethos, and we totally get that here — both in her strident delivery and the lyrics, a clever collocation of treasured American anthems and poetry with candid descriptions of the increasingly disturbing events of the last four years.
The video itself is brilliantly put together: a newsreel of the many disasters during this presidency with the lyrics displayed on a CNN-style chiron. I’m not going to lie — it’s a tough watch, to see so many of the horrors we’ve endured concentrated into a three-and-a-half-minute video. But that’s what makes it a must-see video, particularly in a YouTube subgenre (lyric videos) that are generally not compelling.
If you’re on the fence and this doesn’t galvanize you, I don’t know what will.