Top 5 Conservative Rock Stars

1. We Won't Get Fooled Again - The Who.

Every Tory's favourite band had to take pride of place. And it's easy to see how the song could be conservative, if you wanted it to be -it's anti-hippy, yes, but it's really just nihilist. The Who were always great at youthful disenfranchisement, and inarticulateness. I.e. being angry at the current wisdom, but not knowing where to start constructing an alternative, and that's what the song is about.

And remember: Pete Townshend was just doing research for a book about child porn; it was all completely innocent.

3. Sympathy for the Devil - The Rolling Stones.

And every Tory's second favourite band in at number 3. Those damn liberals always thinking they can murder the Russian aristocracy, kill Jesus, start World War II and get away with it. Mick Jagger will put you right! 

3. Sweet Home Alabama -Lynnard Skynnard.

Fair Enough - really don't see why this one wasn't first. The song fits in a verse about how they still "love the Governor", and Watergate doesn't trouble their conscience, and a verse calling bullshit on Neil Young's ode to southern stereotypes. The song's perfectly anti-liberal. But repeat plays in every student bar, and house parties, and "best ever drinking songs" compilation has turned it into the musical equivalent of furniture shopping - beige furniture.

7. Revolution - The Beatles

Shitty covers not withstanding; this song still packs quite a punch. But again, it's more anti-hippie, than pro-Tory. The anti-communist regime message is only really conservative in the broadest sense. Then again, what do you expect from that great conservative John Lennon?

7. Bodies - the Sex Pistols

Sorry guys, here is another one which I have to say, doesn't really count. It's an anti-abortion song by the Sex Pistols! How does that not ring a little hollow? I'm pretty sure they were just being provocative.

12. Neighborhood Bully - Bob Dylan

Again, fair enough, a song about Israel's right to defend herself, from Dylan's best album of his worst/saddest period. The lyric: "Then he destroyed a bomb factory/Nobody was glad/The bombs were meant for him/He was supposed to feel bad?" really leaves no ambiguity. And good on him rhyming "glad" with "bad", and having the courage to phone it in every now and then.

17. Stay Together for the Kids - Blink-182

Yeah, stay in a loveless relationship, ‘cos a shitty pop-punk band told you to (in one of their shittier songs no less). Explaining to your kids that they're the source of your unhappiness is much kinder than making them live in two homes. Yay traditional values!

20. Rock the Casbah - The Clash

Again pretty unambiguous, but a little more ideological; the idea here being that when those in repressed societies receive western luxuries (here Rock ‘n' Roll), revolution will surely follow. That's pretty right wing for the guys who wrote ...pretty much everything else the Clash wrote.

21. Heroes - David Bowie

It's a song about two lovers stuck on either side of the Berlin wall. Again one might think it was only right wing in its opposition to a communist regime. But it's a song about a clash of political systems. "And the shame/Was on the other side/Oh we can beat them/For ever and ever"- we capitalists have nothing to be ashamed of; we'll win in the end. Right on!

28. Janie's Got a Gun - Aerosmith

Glam-metal, guns, and feminism have formed the backdrop of American politics since 1990 when this song was released, forever kicking "God", and "gas" out of the alliterative slogan. Seriously "guns stop rape"? That's a pretty heavy message from the guys that brought you "Love n the Elevator".

40. Wake Up Little Susie - The Everly Brothers

A bit of an own goal this one. It's 1950, and a panicking young man tries to wake his special girl, who's fallen asleep at the drive in, before anyone thinks that anything dodgy has happened. "We fell asleep/Our goose is cooked/Our reputation is shot/So Wake up little Susie". Surely this is more of a cautionary tale about the dangers of ultra-conservative sexual politics, and the awesomeness of Chet Atkins.

48. Why Don't You Get a Job? -The Offspring.

They really lost it with this one. National Review thinks it's a song about welfare reform. Let's not correct them, and let them believe that, it'll be so cute.

The rest of the list is here: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/25/arts/music/25brockweb.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2