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These 27 songs changed the world – how many have you listened to?
From the rock’n’roll revolution to era-defining protest anthems, Jonathan Wright reveals the tunes that helped shape the modern age
- Jonathan Wright
Published: May 30, 2026 at 4:30 PM
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“To quote sharp-witted Amanda Prynne in Noël Coward’s Private Lives, “Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.” However, there’s nothing that strange about the way the simplest songs can take on a deep significance. That’s because such songs so often become part of our lives, forever associated with specific moments in time.
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Looking back, these tracks in particular – whether they are protest songs, anthems calling for change or just songs that illuminate cultural shifts – can help us to understand the past.
We’ve gone back to the beginning of the rock’n’roll era to choose 27 tracks that, in their different ways, show how popular music has impacted history. And, conversely, how historical events have shaped popular music.
And if you can’t believe we haven’t written about the moment David Bowie put his arm around Mick Ronson on Top of the Pops when performing ‘Starman’, or the status of Gloria Gaynor’s ‘I Will Survive’ as both a gay and feminist anthem, believe us, we could easily have chosen twice as many songs here.
Elvis Presley performs in California, 1956. Two years earlier, the young and charismatic singer had made waves with his cover of blues musician Arthur Crudup’s ‘That’s All Right’ (Image by Getty Images)
1. That's All Right
Elvis Presley (1960)
While many singles have been cited as the first rock’n’roll record, there’s only one contender for the performance that kicked-started the rock’n’roll era. On 5 July 1954, Elvis Presley, accompanied by guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Black, laid down a cover of a song written by delta blues singer Arthur ‘Big Boy’ Crudup.
The session hadn’t been going well until Elvis began improvising the song – in the words of Moore, “jumping around and acting the fool”. Producer Sam Phillips, the owner of the Sun Studio in Memphis and a man looking for someone who could sell the sound of the black musicians he recorded to wider audiences, could end his search. Three days later, ‘That’s All Right’, a skittering slice of rockabilly, made its public bow on the WHBQ Memphis Red, Hot & Blue show hosted by Dewey Phillips (no relation).
Audience reaction was so immediate that it’s said Dewey played the song 14 times. Handsome, charismatic, and possessed of a voice that could handle gospel, R&B, pop, show tunes and country with equal aplomb, Elvis had entered the building.
Motown’s record label headquarters, c1975. The hugely successful company dubbed its Detroit base ‘Hitsville USA’ – a boast reflecting the extraordinary number of hits produced there (Image by Getty Images)
2. Shop Around
The Miracles (1960)
In 1959 and 1960, Berry Gordy founded the record labels Tamla Records and Motown Records – the latter named for Detroit’s ‘Motor Town’ nickname. Operating under the Motown Record Corporation, the company mirrored the city’s car industry by creating a hit-making “production line” that generated dozens of Top 10 singles on the US Billboard Hot 100.
Motown was so successful that its HQ, which housed a recording studio, was dubbed ‘Hitsville’. In the civil rights era and as an African-American-owned business, it had huge significance in breaking down racial barriers. Recorded by The Miracles, a vocal quintet featuring the young Smokey Robinson, ‘Shop Around’ was an early example of the ‘Motown sound’, which nodded to both soul and pop. It was Motown’s first million-selling single
With its futuristic synthesiser melody, The Tornados’ 1962 single ‘Telstar’ provided the perfect soundtrack to the space race (Image by Tasty Records)
3. Telstar
The Tornados (1962)
The space age began in earnest with the launch of Sputnik in 1957. Five years later, it finally had a soundtrack with the release of the instrumental ‘Telstar’, named for the first active communications satellite.
Recorded by British instrumental group The Tornados, the track was written and produced by Joe Meek, one of the first to realise the recording studio could function almost as an instrument. Its otherworldly melody was played on an early analogue synthesiser, which made the track sound eerie, science fictional. The single topped the charts on both sides of the Atlantic.
Joan Baez and Bob Dylan perform during the March on Washington on 28 August 1963. Dylan’s hit ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ became closely associated with the civil rights movement (Image by Getty Images)
4. Blowin' in the Wind
Bob Dylan (1963)
Bob Dylan is reputed to have taken just 10 minutes to write ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’. The result of this quick-fire work was a track that incorporated Biblical-tinged language and was heavily influenced by the spiritual ‘No More Auction Block’.
The song consists of three verses that ask rhetorical questions, interspersed with the refrain, “The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind.” Its ambiguities left ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ open to wide interpretation, including by those who heard it as dealing with civil rights. They included gospel singer Mavis Staples. In Martin Scorsese’s Dylan documentary No Direction Home, she describes being astounded by how a skinny white kid had summed up the frustrations and hopes of African-Americans.
The Beatles arrive to packed crowds at JFK Airport, New York, February 1964. Days earlier, their single ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ had soared to the top of the US charts (Image by Getty Images)
5. I Want to Hold Your Hand
The Beatles (1963)
The sentiments of ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ may seem innocent to modern ears, but its impact was extraordinary. The Fab Four’s fifth single, it was released in the UK in November 1963. In a nation gripped by Beatlemania, it took a couple of weeks to reach number one, but only because ‘She Loves You’ held it off the top spot.
In January 1964, it entered the US charts. On 1 February, it became the band’s first American chart-topper. The phenomenon of teenagers, especially but not exclusively girls, screaming, weeping and even wetting themselves in the presence of The Beatles had crossed the Atlantic. On 7 February, John, Paul, George and Ringo visited the US for the first time, to be greeted by thousands of fans at JFK airport. A third of the US population, 73 million viewers, tuned in when The Beatles appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show on 9 February.
For Americans, The Beatles represented freedom and hope. Especially to the likes of satirist Joe Queenan, who recalled for the Beatles ’64 documentary how his violent and alcoholic father banned him from watching the Sullivan broadcast, which of course only made the band more important to his son.
Sam Cooke performs at New York’s Copacabana nightclub, June 1964. His death just six months later meant he never lived to see the true impact of his protest ballad ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’ (Image by Getty Images)
6. A Change Is Gonna Come
Sam Cooke (1964)
In October 1963, gospel singer and soul star Sam Cooke called ahead to book a stay at a Holiday Inn in Shreveport, Louisiana. On arrival, the desk clerk told him there were no vacancies. Cooke was furious and an argument ensued. Later that night, Cooke was arrested for breaching the peace.
Incensed by such overt displays of racism, and because he was acutely conscious that he hadn’t written a protest song as powerful and poignant as ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’, Cooke composed a plaintive and gospel-tinged yet righteously angry ballad that became a civil rights anthem. Sadly, Cooke – who was shot dead in December 1964 – didn’t live to see how deeply ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’ has embedded itself within American cultural history.
Aretha Franklin’s gender-swapped version of Otis Redding’s ‘Respect’ gave the song new meaning and turned it into an anthem for civil rights activists and women across the US (Image by Alamy)
7. Respect
Aretha Franklin (1967)
As performed by its writer, the soul legend Otis Redding, ‘Respect’ was first and foremost a story of a man working all day and feeling under-appreciated at home. It was a terrific single. Nevertheless, reframed and performed by Aretha Franklin, ‘Respect’ seemed to grow.
In part, this was simply a case of Franklin’s version, featuring call-and-response lyrics exchanged by Aretha and her sisters, Carolyn and Erma, motoring along in thrilling fashion. But it’s also that Aretha’s flipping of the song’s gender pulled off the contradictory trick of simultaneously making the song universal, a plea for human dignity for both genders at a time of racial tensions in the US and an anthem of second-wave feminism.
Protesters pass through Boston Common on an anti-Vietnam War demonstration, 9 August 1969. Songwriter John Fogerty openly criticised the rich and powerful who used their personal connections to avoid conscription (Image by Getty Images)
8. Fortunate Son
Creedence Clearwater Revival (1969)
Multiple American politicians have faced scrutiny for avoiding the draft during the Vietnam War era – including Bill Clinton, Joe Biden and Donald J Trump. These later controversies would not have surprised John Fogerty, the principal songwriter for Creedence Clearwater Revival. His ‘Fortunate Son’, which reached number three in the US Billboard Hot 100, was an outburst of anger directed at those with the connections to avoid being sent into combat.
As Fogerty later noted, “They weren’t being touched by what their parents were doing.” In contrast, Fogerty’s narrator had the misfortune of being neither a “senator’s son” nor a “millionaire’s son”. For reasons that are self-explanatory, the song was adopted by the anti-Vietnam War movement.
Ozzy Osbourne (left) and Tony Iommi performing under Black Sabbath’s original name, Earth, in c1969. The band’s music became popular among ‘outsiders’ – particularly the disaffected teenagers of industrial postwar Britain (Image by Getty Images)
9. Paranoid
Black Sabbath (1970)
Heavy metal is sometimes described as a folk music of industrial Britain, a steelworks or factory rendered in sonic form. You can find ample evidence for this theory in the output of blue-collar Birmingham metal pioneers Black Sabbath.
Famously, guitarist Tony Iommi lost the tips of his right-hand ring and middle fingers in an accident at a sheet metal factory, a mishap that forced him to use power chords to make playing easier. This fed into the sheer heaviness of the band’s music. ‘Paranoid’, a study of alienation sung with all-too-convincing intensity by future international treasure Ozzy Osbourne, was an outsider anthem that continues to resonate with disaffected teenagers – and residents of rust belts – across the world.
Initially blocked by Motown executives, Marvin Gaye’s ‘What’s Going On?’ went on to become a major success, capturing the mood of unease that pervaded the US in the 1970s (Image by 1971 Motown Record Corporation)
10. What's Going On?
Marvin Gaye (1971)
In 1970, soul singer Marvin Gaye was unhappy with life at Motown. Matters came to a head when label founder Berry Gordy initially refused to release ‘What’s Going On?’, in part because he thought the track would alienate Gaye’s mainstream audience. Gaye promptly threatened to stop recording.
Inspired by Obie Benson of The Four Tops witnessing police brutality, ‘What’s Going On?’ captured the sense of unease afflicting the US in the early 1970s. It preceded an album of the same name, a state-of-the-nation song cycle told from the perspective of a Vietnam veteran returning home to an unjust and unequal US. Marvin had spent long hours talking with his own brother, Frankie, who had been drafted and served in Asia.
Donna Summer, seen here in 1978, caused a stir with her erotic disco hit ‘Love to Love You Baby’ (Image by Getty Images)
11. Love to Love You Baby
Donna Summer (1975)
By 1975, Bostonian Donna Summer had been living in Germany for seven years after moving to Europe to star in Hair. In Munich, the future ‘Queen of Disco’ passed on an idea for a decidedly erotic lyric to her writer-producers, Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte.
Initially, Summer recorded ‘Love to Love You Baby’ only as a demo. However, Moroder was so impressed by Summer’s moaning, groaning performance – conjured up by Summer imagining she was Marilyn Monroe playing someone in the throes of sexual ecstasy – that he persuaded her to put her name to the track. It was widely banned but a 16-minute-plus version filled dance floors worldwide. The era of the 12” single and disco dominating the pop charts had arrived.
The Sex Pistols are interviewed by Today host Bill Grundy, 1976. The colourful encounter quickly became infamous: the Daily Mirror ran the headline ‘The Filth and the Fury’, which was later used as the title of a documentary about the band (Image by Alamy)
12. Anarchy in the U.K.
The Sex Pistols (1976)
Until December 1976, The Sex Pistols were a band little known outside London and the pages of the weekly music press. Things might have remained that way for longer but for Queen cancelling an appearance on Thames Television’s primetime magazine show, Today. The Pistols took their place.
A notorious encounter between the band, their punk entourage and host Bill Grundy followed. Amidst much swearing, including Pistols guitarist Steve Jones colourfully calling Grundy “a f****** rotter”, the show deteriorated into farce. The next day, the tabloid Mirror newspaper ran with the headline “THE FILTH AND THE FURY”, councillors banned the Pistols from performing, and EMI cancelled their contract after just one single, which was deleted from the label’s catalogue to further distance the label from controversy.
That ‘Anarchy in the U.K.’ began with frontman Johnny Rotten sneering the words, “I am an antichrist” did little to stem the sense of a nation gripped by a moral panic. Punk, which with the benefit of hindsight seemed somehow to foreshadow the unravelling of Britain’s postwar settlement under Margaret Thatcher, had arrived.
Bob Marley performing at Brighton Leisure Centre, July 1980. Later that year, and nearing the end of his life, Marley released ‘Redemption Song’ – a powerful reflection of the beliefs that shaped his music (Image by Getty Images)
13. Redemption Song
Bob Marley and the Wailers (1980)
On Uprising, the final studio album released by the Wailers during reggae superstar Bob Marley’s lifetime, the dying singer returned repeatedly to his religious and personal beliefs. That’s never clearer than on the album’s closer, ‘Redemption Song’, performed by a reflective Marley solo on an acoustic guitar.
When Marley sang, “Emancipate yourself from mental slavery / None but ourselves can free our lives,” he was quoting a 1937 speech by the Jamaican political activist Marcus Garvey (1887–1940). Garvey was a proponent of Pan-Africanism, an anti-colonialist movement to strengthen bonds between indigenous people born in Africa and those of African descent. Marley was well aware of his status and his admiration for Garvey could hardly have been clearer or more pointed.
The iconic final shot in the music video for Michael Jackson’s hit song ‘Thriller’. Jackson’s ambitious production helped show that video could be both a serious creative medium and a vital part of the music industry (Image by Alamy)
14. Thriller
Michael Jackson (1982)
When MTV launched in 1981, most of the artists whose videos it played were white. This led to accusations the station operated a ‘colour barrier’. Whatever the truth of this idea, one story that has passed down the years is that Walter Yetnikoff, the president of CBS, threatened to pull his company’s product from the station unless it played Michael Jackson’s ‘Billie Jean’.
Famously, the big-budget video featured the singer dancing on a sidewalk where tiles lit up as he walked. With all concerned presumably emboldened by this success, the John Landis-directed, zombie-tactic video for ‘Thriller’ was even more ambitious. Having initially struggled to get airtime at all on MTV, Jackson proved music videos could be a serious art form.
Frankie Goes to Hollywood – pictured performing in Washington DC, 1984 – ruffled some feathers with their sexualised song ‘Relax’. Despite this, it was widely successful, selling millions of copies (Image by Getty Images)
15. Relax
Frankie Goes to Hollywood (1983)
Promoted with an advert carrying the slogan, “All the nice boys love sea men,” Frankie’s debut single was intended to shock from the off. Moreover, in an era where overt homophobia was commonplace, the imagery around Frankie made it clear that two of its members, Holly Johnson and Paul Rutherford, were gay.
Despite this, the band scored an appearance on the BBC’s Top of the Pops and ‘Relax’ entered the Top 10. A few days later, BBC DJ Mike Read criticised the single’s sexualised sleeve and its lyrics promoting carnal restraint (“Relax, don’t do it / When you want to come”). A ban followed, but this only added to Frankie’s allure. ‘Relax’ sold two million copies in the UK alone.
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The Special AKA’s record ‘Free Nelson Mandela’ helped raise global awareness of Mandela’s imprisonment and contributed to his status as a ‘father of the nation’ figure (Image by Alamy)
16. Free Nelson Mandela
The Special AKA (1984)
In the early 1980s, leaders such as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher regarded Nelson Mandela as a member of a terrorist organisation, the African National Congress – insofar as they ever thought of him at all. So how did we go from here to the idea of Mandela as the near-saintly father of his nation?
‘Free Nelson Mandela’ had much to do with this. Unlike many protest songs, it’s not downbeat or mournful but joyful, incorporating South African influences. Jerry Dammers, who wrote the song after he went to an anti-apartheid concert in 1983, has often expressed his shock at its impact. Despite being officially banned in apartheid-era South Africa, it was regularly played at football matches in stadiums where black fans congregated.
Freddie Mercury dons his ‘I Want to Break Free’ costume at the Rock in Rio Festival, 1985. Some Brazilian fans objected to the frivolous outfit, believing it undermined the song’s fundamentally political message (Image by Getty Images)
17. I Want to Break Free
Queen (1984)
The second single from Queen’s The Works LP, ‘I Want to Break Free’ immediately drew attention for its video. This featured the band in drag parodying the soap opera, Coronation Street. British audiences thought this was all a bit of a giggle. Many Americans weren’t so sure.
According to Freddie Mercury, when the band undertook a promo tour of the Midwest, a typical reaction was, “We can’t possibly play this. You know, it looks homosexual.” The song has also become a freedom anthem in Europe and South America – so much so that, when Mercury donned a wig and boobs to perform ‘I Want To Break Free’ in Rio in 1985, fans objected because they thought this diluted its political message.
The title track of Madonna’s second album, ‘Like a Virgin’ marked a shift in control for the young singer – and paved the way for many female pop stars who followed (Image by Getty Images)
18. Like a Virgin
Madonna (1984)
In 1984, while her debut LP had been successful, Madonna was determined the follow-up would be stronger. ‘Like a Virgin’, her new album’s title track, signalled Madonna taking control. The song itself was poised between risqué and, dealing with new love, sincerity. It’s a sweet spot where many of Madonna’s most successful projects have subsequently resided.
More subtly, this sincerity has often made those who attack her, as when Pope John Paul II called her Blond Ambition tour “one of the most satanic shows in the history of humanity”, seem silly and overblown. The accompanying video – Madonna in Venice, Madonna in white, Madonna with a lion – was bonkers but brilliant.
By 1985, teenagers were dressing like Madonna. Madge was what she’d always wanted to be: a superstar. She had also set the template for how female pop stars could take control of their careers.
Live Aid at Wembley Stadium, 13 July 1985. The event followed the success of Band Aid’s ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’, which had raised millions for famine relief in Ethiopia (Image by Getty Images)
19. Do They Know It's Christmas?
Band Aid (1984)
On 23 October 1984, BBC journalist Michael Buerk described the famine then afflicting Ethiopia as being of “biblical” proportions. Pictures of the emaciated bore out his words. Among those moved by what they saw was Bob Geldof, who teamed up with Midge Ure to write ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’, and assembled pop’s great and good to record the track.
Geldof was a blunt campaigner, swearing and haranguing people to give cash, and getting into a spat with the government over waiving VAT on sales of the single. Live Aid and Live 8 followed. Latterly, the song has been criticised as condescending. Geldof’s perspective? “This little pop song has kept hundreds of thousands if not millions of people alive.”
David Hasselhoff performs ‘Looking for Freedom’ at the Brandenburg Gate, 1989. The song, re-released for a third time in 1988, had become an anthem for German reunification (Image by Alamy)
20. Looking for Freedom
David Hasselhoff (1988)
‘Looking for Freedom’ had twice been a hit in Germany when its co-writer, producer Jack White, brought the song to David Hasselhoff. The lead single from the Knight Rider star’s third album, it was a hit across Europe. But that’s not primarily why it’s remembered.
On New Year’s Eve 1989, just weeks after the Berlin Wall had been breached, David Hasselhoff performed the song with rather more enthusiasm than finesse at the Brandenburg Gate from atop a crane. He wore a leather jacket covered in motion lights and a keyboard-patterned scarf. The crowd joined in. A song about a rich kid who wants to make his own way in the world morphed into an anthem for German reunification.
Rappers MC Ren and Eazy-E of N.W.A perform on the Straight Outta Compton tour, June 1989. Their infamous song ‘F*** tha Police’ shocked many on release but took on new resonance during the 1992 Los Angeles riots (Image by Getty Images)
21. F*** tha Police
N.W.A (1989)
When N.W.A’s debut LP Straight Outta Compton was released, the band gave a name to their music: “reality rap”, although it would later be dubbed gangsta rap. N.W.A's point was they were writing about inner-city life and disaffection.
But even by the standards of a band dogged by controversy, ‘F*** tha Police’, a howl of rage against police brutality and racial profiling played out as a parody of court proceedings, didn’t go down well. The FBI’s Milt Ahlerich, for example, took it upon himself to write a letter to the band’s label expressing his disapproval.
Longer term, N.W.A played a key role in politicising African-American youth to speak out against institutionalised racism. The track took on anthemic status during the 1992 LA riots that followed four white officers being acquitted of beating up Rodney King, a black motorist.
Members of Public Enemy, seen here with director Spike Lee, film the music video for ‘Fight the Power’, a song that served as a powerful social critique and resonated with protest movements around the world (Image by Getty Images)
22. Fight the Power
Public Enemy (1989)
As album titles such as Fear of a Black Planet attest, Public Enemy were political from the off. As was director Spike Lee, who commissioned ‘Fight the Power’ for Do the Right Thing, a film dealing with racial tensions in Brooklyn. The band’s Chuck D has called the song “the most important record that Public Enemy have done” and he’s right.
Referencing the civil rights movement, African-American history, black churches and classic funk, it builds to function as a scathing critique of the US in the 1980s and still finds time to aim barbs at Elvis and John Wayne. And ‘Fight the Power’ travels. In 1991, it soundtracked protests against the government of Slobodan Milošević in Serbia.
Elton John performs ‘Candle in the Wind’ at the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, on 6 September 1997. The song captured the national sorrow at the sudden loss of the ‘people’s princess’ (Image by Getty Images)
23. Candle in the Wind
Elton John (1997)
On 31 August 1997, Diana, Princess of Wales died in a car crash in Paris. The outpouring of grief was immediate and, in the UK, threatened to overwhelm a royal family deemed to be cold and distant over the tragedy.
Then, a new version of Elton John’s 1973 song ‘Candle in the Wind’ – also known as ‘Goodbye England’s Rose’ – helped give expression to people’s sorrow. With revised lyrics by Elton John’s longtime writing partner, Bernie Taupin, the song was released as a tribute to Diana and became the best-selling single in UK history. Elton John has sung the 1997 version of the song just once live, in Westminster Abbey at Diana’s funeral.
George Michael – pictured on MTV Live in New York City, 1998 – released ‘Outside’ as an unapologetic response to being outed as gay. The song celebrated sex and helped make queer culture visible in the mainstream media (Image by Alamy)
24. Outside
George Michael (1998)
When, in April 1998, George Michael was arrested for “engaging in a lewd act” in a toilet in Beverly Hills, protocol dictated he would issue a public apology. But a forcibly outed George hadn’t read the script. Instead, he went on the offensive with ‘Outside’, in which he portrayed himself as bored with sex indoors.
The song’s video doubled down on the lyric both by celebrating sex in the open and showing George and dancers performing in a men’s toilet. If nothing else, the video confirmed gay and queer culture were going mainstream. In an odd footnote, Marcelo Rodriguez, the undercover officer who arrested George, filed an unsuccessful $10 million lawsuit on the grounds the video made fun of him.
Members of Pussy Riot, pictured in January 2012. That same month, they performed ‘Putin Zassal’, which called for an uprising against the Russian leader and brought them into conflict with the authorities (Image by Igor Mukhin)
25. Putin Zassal
Pussy Riot (2012)
The riot grrrl movement first began to coalesce in Olympia, Washington in the late 1980s. Mixing feminism, bare-bones punk and politics, it spread rapidly. Britain’s “girl-boy revolutionaries” Huggy Bear, for instance, released their first EP in 1992. But for all that so many riot grrrl bands have confronted vested interests, none have taken risks comparable to Russia’s balaclava-clad Pussy Riot.
On 12 January 2012, eight members of the collective performed ‘Putin Zassal’ (‘Putin has Pissed Himself’), a song calling for a popular uprising, in Red Square. In a further provocation to the authorities, Pussy Riot followed up in February by gatecrashing Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour to perform before being escorted away. A video for a track entitled ‘Mother of God, Drive Putin Away’ featured footage from the cathedral.
In March, three Pussy Riot members – Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich – were arrested over the performance and charged with hooliganism. The Russian authorities continue to harass Pussy Riot, who refuse to be silenced.
Psy performs ‘Gangnam Style’ at the 2012 MTV Europe Music Awards. The song became an international hit after going viral online, with thousands copying its distinctive dance routine (Image by Getty Images)
26. Gangnam Style
Psy (2012)
The advent of the world wide web has made it much easier to discover culture from other nations. So, it is likely that, right now, one of your younger relatives is listening to K-pop (literally Korean pop) or watching Japanese anime.
The international success of Psy’s ‘Gangnam Style’ in 2012 highlighted how this process works. A song about the nouveau riche lifestyle of the affluent Gangnam region of Seoul, the track went viral via YouTube. Pretty soon, videos of people doing the ‘invisible horse dance’ were everywhere.
Further evidence of the track’s impact abounded as campaigners co-opted the song. Even in North Korea, not a nation noted for fun, there was a parody version aimed at South Korea’s president-elect, Park Geun-hye.
Taylor Swift’s Instagram post announcing her support for Kamala Harris in the 2024 US presidential election. The singer’s 2014 track ‘Shake It Off’ marked a definitive move away from her country roots and towards the influential pop career she has today (Image by Alamy)
27. Shake It Off
Taylor Swift (2014)
The first single from Taylor Swift’s 1989 album, ‘Shake It Off’ was aptly named in terms of being the song where Swift shed her image as a country artist and wholeheartedly embraced pop. It was an international hit.
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Taylor Swift was about to become one of the most famous people in the world, an inspiration to millions of devoted Swifties. What does this mean in cultural-historical terms? Heaven alone knows, but a measure of Swift’s importance was the fuss surrounding her endorsement of Kamala Harris in 2024 – in a social media post signed off as “Childless Cat Lady”, a mocking reference to JD Vance calling leading Democrats “a bunch of childless cat ladies”.
Authors
Jonathan Wright
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