To declare oneself a punk in the 1970s and early ‘80s, social convention had to be trampled (preferably under Doc Martens boots), taboos had to be defied and pieties defiled. In the long history of rock music and the will to outrage, it took the punks to strip away the last veneer of good faith and decency. But times have changed, and what might have been shrugged off as tasteless nonsense then now seems like an ugly relic of unevolved thinking.
David Bowie once said some stupid things about Nazis and fascism Bryan Ferry was more recently castigated for praising Nazi aesthetics.Īlthough the straight press and conservative activists might have been inflamed by John Lennon invoking Jesus as a measure of the Beatles’ popularity or the Sex Pistols cursing on television, fans of rock saw all that as fair game and were rarely shocked by rockers’ shock tactics. Bassist Steve Priest donned a similar costume when the Sweet performed on TV in 1973, but glam bands like the Sweet had already fetishized gender-bending fashion as a deliberate provocation in the hopes of getting up people’s noses, he might just as easily have donned a nun’s habit. In 1970, Who drummer Keith Moon, already known for outrageous public pranks, found it good sport to dress up as Hitler and “Sieg Heil” his way around Soho to the consternation of Londoners who could vividly recall the Blitz.
Still, it was not too long ago that Nazi symbols, uniforms and names were casually invoked by musicians. MAGA politicians and talk show hosts with the gall to compare mask mandates and COVID vaccinations to the Holocaust are one thing, but the recent rise of social media opprobrium has made the overt embrace of antisemitism in popular culture nearly unthinkable. You can find the whole list and accompanying essays here. Inspired in part by all the Jewish artists on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Songs, the Forward decided it was time to rank the best Jewish pop songs of all time.
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