A chorus of disapproval

MARION MCMULLEN looks back at artists whose protest songs tried to change the status quo

- MARION MCMULLE

KATE Bush, Annie Lennox and Damon Albarn are among more than 1,000 recording artists who have come together to record a silent album in protest at proposed changes to copyright law around artificial intelligence (AI).

Entitled Is This What We Want?, the album features recordings of empty studios, meant to represent what will happen to human musicians if AI is allowed to use copyright works. All profits will go to the charity Help Musicians.

It's a powerful statement and the latest in a long line of protest songs that have made musicians' voices heard on everything from apartheid to homelessness.

American singer Joan Baez was famous for her socially conscious lyrics and said: "The hardest song to write is a protest song, a topical song with meaning." Her first hit single in the 1960s was We Shall Overcome, a rendition of a gospel song associated with the Civil Rights movement in the US.

She was also an outspoken critic of the war in Vietnam and founded the Institute For The Study of Non-Violence in California. Joan was one of 124 anti-draft demonstrators arrested for blocking the entrance of an armed forces's induction centre and was jailed for 10 days.