On TikTok, a new group of folk musicians are taking the genre back to its political roots

When the U.S. And sion launched strikes on islamic republic of iran belatedly endure month, songster and musician Joseph Terrell says he couldn't get the conflict off his mind. Soon, his thoughts were taking the shape of song lyrics.

"I started thinking about that myth we have about ourselves in the United States, that we are some sort of violent explorer riding our horses in glory into the sunset," said Terrell, who is based in North Carolina.

"And so the song I wrote is called Cowboy Movie and it's where I sing about how these myths started, and how what's obvious to us now is that we're not the good guys."

The song isn't about any specific politician, Terrell says, because "so many of them fit the bill, it'd be a shame to narrow it down."

But it does reference specific events, like the bombing of a girls school in Iran on the first day of the conflict, which killed at least 165 people, mostly children. No country has claimed responsibility for the bombing, but the New York Times reported that a preliminary investigation indicated the U.S. Was responsible.

As he does with many of his songs — some political, some not — Terrell shared the first verse and chorus on TikTok. His most popular political tune, about the killing of Renee Good by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers in Minneapolis earlier this year, has racked up more than 735,000 views.

Terrell has many contemporaries online, where a new generation of artists are reviving the folk protest song for a digital audience, energizing a genre that's long had political roots.

While the folk genre was home to protest music throughout a few decades in the 1900s, as the genre became commercialized and started to go out of style in the late 1960s, songs with a political message shifted to rock and roll, according to Noriko Manabe, professor and chair of music theory at Indiana University who studies protest music.

Only now has this singer-songwriter style of folk made a comeback as a political genre, she says, noting that country music's popularity could be giving it a boost — as could the genre's simplicity in a tech-dominated age.

"In this age of AI, there is something very authentic and personal and artisanal about having a person with a guitar singing with his out-of-tune voice," Manabe said. "There's something kind of real and authentic about it."

This new age of protest songs also call out politicians and administrations by name with hyper-specific lyrics, and they're often shared online within days of a big news event. Manabe says that responsiveness and "clever" lyricism likely also helps the songs resonate on social media.

Terrell did it with Cowboy Movie, but Jesse Welles is one of the best-known singers making these kinds of pointed tracks.

The Arkansas musician has amassed 1.5 million followers on TikTok writing music about the war in Gaza, the renamed Department of War and immigration enforcement. He's also played on Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert's late night shows in recent months.

And his tracks are released quickly. Songs like Tylenol, which references U.S. President Donald Trump's unproven claims linking Tylenol use to autism, and Charlie, appealing for empathy after the assassination of right-wing figure Charlie Kirk, came out six days and one day, respectively, following the events that inspired them.

In 2025, Welles released six albums of topical songs.

These kinds of lyrics make the new age a little different than folk music of the past. 

Folk music with a message has been around since about the Civil War, with songs like John Brown's Body serving as an anthem for troops.

But often, artists layered new lyrics over old, familiar tunes like I've Been Working On The Railroad. Folk singers/activists like Joe Hill and Woody Guthrie often did this when writing music about workers' rights in the 1930s and '40s, though they also wrote original music, too. 

Later, in the '60s, those like Joan Baez, Phil Ochs and Bob Dylan wrote a lot of their own music about social issues like the Vietnam War and civil rights, but also revived folk tunes of the past and sang those at protests — like the unofficial civil rights anthem We Shall Overcome.

According to Holly Swartzendruber, an associate professor of music at Bethel College in Kansas, naming specific administrations or politicians was also not quite as common in older folk music.

While some song did — Ohio by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young about the Kent State shooting names then-president Richard Nixon multiple times — others like Strange Fruit are more general in themes of anti-racism and anti-lynching, she points out.

"You don't hear Ku Klux Klan or [the words] white supremacists mentioned. It's implied," Swartzendruber said of the iconic song.

But this new era of protest music also tends to live online rather than at concerts or political rallies, and Swartzendruber says the trend cycle of the internet could make the movement more short-lived.

"After a while, does it become white noise? Do people want something different instead of another song?" she asked.

Protest music sees a resurgence

If this wave of political folk is going to survive, Swartzendruber says it will need to move into the real world somehow.

Manabe agrees. While the point of protest music isn't always to encourage in-person protests or organizing, she notes that is one way it's used within political movements.

"I would like to see more of these people get off Instagram and get on the road, and actually engage with their audiences in a meaningful way," Manabe said.

She recently got the chance to see Welles in concert and said the venue was packed with fans who knew all the words to his lyrically-challenging songs — indicating a pretty dedicated fanbase.

Folk artist Olive Klug, who's based in Massachusetts, recently came off a tour, where they got the audience engaged in a call and response song. 

Klug left their job in social work to make music, often singing about things like the detriments of AI or conspiracy theories. At each stop on their recent tour, Klug taught the crowd the response part of I Don't Want Your Millions Mister by The Almanac Singers, dedicating the cover to people who were out of work at the time due to a government shutdown.

"So many people came up to me afterwards and they were like, 'That made me feel hopeful in the face of losing my job,' " Klug said. "Everyone was so loud and it was really inspiring."

Others, like American musicians Carsie Blanton, also educate their fans about local causes at concerts and have tables for them to sign up and get involved. Klug and Terrell have also donated some proceeds from the sale of merch or songs to charities in an effort to effect more material change.

Terrell says he knows his songs alone aren't enough to do that, but he hopes they can play a small part.

"We need more than music, we need, you know, material changes. But as long as music can point people in that direction … it's a good part of the conversation."

Journalist

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