Voices of Dissent: A Multimodal Analysis of Protest Songs through Lyrics and Audio

Utsav Shekhar, Radhika Mamidi

Keywords: protest music, linguistic features, audio features, multimodal analysis, social meaning, computational linguistics, music and language, Classification

TL;DR: We present a multimodal, computational analysis comparing protest and non-protest songs using lyrical and audio features across diverse genres and decades.

Abstract: Music has long served as a vehicle for political expression, with protest songs playing a central role in articulating dissent and mobilizing collective action. Yet, despite their cultural significance, the linguistic and acoustic signatures that define protest music remain understudied. We present a multimodal computational analysis of protest and non-protest songs spanning multiple decades. Using NLP and audio analysis, we identify the linguistic and musical features that differentiate protest songs. Instead of focusing on classification performance, we treat classification as a diagnostic tool to investigate these features and reveal broader patterns. Protest songs are not just politically charged they are acoustically and linguistically distinct, and we quantify how.

Archival Status: Archival

Paper Length: Long Paper (up to 8 pages of content)

Submission Number: 53