Yesterday, a lot of Australian musicians were pissed off. After all, according to the Sydney Morning Herald, they’re pretty much all making vacuous, artless music.

In an article titled ‘Where are all the great Aussie protest songs?’, veteran music critic Jeff Apter said that “today’s songwriters seem more concerned with navel-gazing and their fragile broken hearts than weightier, more universal issues.”

Which, if Apter had actually listened to contemporary music instead of playing Midnight Oil, Cold Chisel and Paul Kelly on repeat, he would know is completely incorrect. As a quick retort, The Guardian took 10 minutes or so out of their day to create a playlist proving him wrong. You can listen to it below.

At 20 songs, it’s not an extensive list, but it’s not trying to be. And where Apter’s piece does not name a single woman, this playlist features a mix of voices and issues. Funny that.

It ranges from Indigenous autonomy and rights (A.B. Original’s ‘January 26’, Mojo Juju’s ‘Native Tongue’), sexism and rape culture (Stella Donnelly’s ‘Boys Will Be Boys’, Camp Cope’s ‘The Opener’), homophobia (Jen Cloher’s ‘Analysis Paralysis’), and our abhorrent treatment of asylum seekers (Missy Higgins’ ‘Oh Canada’). You likely know many of these songs: after all, this is what Australia listens to in 2018.

With that in mind, it’s hard to not be cynical and question whether the piece was published purely to generate hate-clicks. But while we might want to say Fairfax is purposefully playing dumb, those in Australia’s music industry know that’s not the case.

they trot out a version of this op-ed every few years. what they’re really saying is that if vance joy isn’t singing political anthems, none exist

— Urthboy (@urthboy) September 26, 2018

Pleeease, isn't @jeffapter's article a perfect indication of what's so stagnant about the Australian music industry. Old man writers that can't let go of the musical past and make no effort to listen to what is out there 😑

— HANDSOME (@iamhandsomer) September 26, 2018

Unfortunately, this isn’t an issue of one ill-thought article. It’s reflective of the deaf ear of Australia’s music gatekeepers — it arrives from the same bloc that writes an incredulous 4,000 word defence of Sticky Fingers while writing off Thelma Plum’s critique of the band based on the contents of her Instagram.

And while a spate of younger and more diverse music critics are gaining voices through a splintering online media landscape (as well as long-form Australian music journalism magazines like LNWY, Swampland and Gusher), the old guard still controls the gates and dictates the canon of Great Australian Music.

Apter’s article is fundamentally inaccurate, but that’s irrelevant. For the Fairfax readership, the article — which, by nature, should be written by an expert — is proof enough that contemporary Australian music is a cultural wasteland. They have no reason to look further.

In 2018, the question facing Australian music isn’t ‘Where are the protest songs?’. It’s ‘Why do old white men still get to decide what’s important and what’s not?’.

Check Your Privilege At My Fist

‘Check Your Privilege At My Fist’ is a lyric from Melbourne industrial duo Habits, off the title track from their Selfie EP, released earlier this year. Fuelled by frustration, it’s a song about reclaiming space from the dude-bros of electronica who refuse to share a club floor or stage with queer or othered bodies. When Habits play live, they conjure this space into existence.

But it’s not exactly the guitar-loaded anthem Apter seems to be looking for, so it doesn’t count. Instead, his lead question is “Whatever happened to all the rock anthems, songs with a political and/or social bent, that once filled the Great Aussie Jukebox?”.

The musical canon has been long-based around two words: ‘cock’ and ‘rock’.

Which cuts to the heart of it: the canon has been long-based around two words, ‘cock’ and ‘rock’ (but not necessarily ‘cock rock’). For centuries, art has been a white cis-man’s world, and music has proved no different: from classic composers to contemporary music, the canon has been used to devalue a majority of voices.

There are cracks in the canon, of course. Distinctions between ‘serious’ rock and frivolous (and funnily enough, female-dominated) ‘pop’ are slowly eroding, though it still needs work. A cursory look at Pitchfork, for example, reveals they deemed Shawn Mendes’ album worth a (pretty negative) review, but never once a release by Selena Gomez. Both are child stars-turned-musicians, equally ‘manufactured’, but apparently only one is worth the time and effort.

Elsewhere, the way we label who is and isn’t a ‘genius’ is being reconsidered. In a recent Guardian feature on the gradual irrelevance of western music canon, Michael Hann argues that Prince and Michael Jackson continue to be underrated for their musical prowess, while women — and especially women of colour — like Erykah Badu, Janet Jackson and Beyoncé are only just being re-contextualised as the GOATS they are.

Which is promising. But still, there’s a fixation on gate-keeping, especially in Australia.

Protest Songs Aren’t Just Rock Anthems

In Apter’s article, he lists off examples of The Greats: Midnight Oil, Cold Chisel, Yothu Yindi, Archie Roach, John Farnham.

As for anything past the early ’90s? Well, only the likes of Powderfinger, John Butler Trio, Silverchair, Dan Sultan and Urthboy make the cut.

One of Australia’s biggest protest songs of the millennium, The Presets’ pro-refugee ‘My People’, is a pulsating dance track.

“So what’s up with the current crop of songwriters?,” he ponders. “…Why the resistance? It’s not like there’s a shortage of subjects to rail against, with everything from climate change denial to refugee neglect and chaos in Canberra dominating the national conversation.”

As per The Guardian‘s quick list, we can see that Australian artists are making music about almost all of those topics. It just doesn’t sound like it used to: there are less guitars, for one.

Arguably, things are a little less didactic, too: in the Fairfax piece, Woody Guthrie is cited as an example of a perfect example of a political artist. In reality, it’s hard to imagine the political folk song having much clout in 2018: it just feels a little too naff.

Which is maybe why one of Australia’s biggest protest songs of the millennium, The Presets’ pro-refugee ‘My People’, is a pulsating dance track.

Similarly, Apter’s suggestion that artists write about the NSW state government moving the Powerhouse Museum or congestion on the Wollongong to Sydney commute show how abstracted the piece is from what protest looks and sounds like in Australia. Of course, he’s not being serious. But still, it’s revealing that his mind suggests the most mind-numbing of artistic topics ahead of what actually concerns Australian artists.

Living without fear, living with humanity: these are primary concerns for many Australian artists, particularly those who come from disenfranchised minorities. In a country where violence is a constant threat for women, queer and non-white bodies, the last thing on an artist’s mind is bureaucracy.

Or when it is, it’s a matter of literal life and death. Last year, Melbourne rapper HTMLFlowers released Chrome Halo, an eviscerating listen aimed at a health care industry that fails Australia’s people with disabilities and terminal illness. Every verse is spat out with palpable anger, like it could be Grant Gronewald’s last. As someone living with cystic fibrosis, it could be.

Artistic protest also isn’t as simple as a one-finger salute to an MP: refusing to succumb to political or cultural narratives is an act of protest.

Whether that’s a sonic rewriting our Australia’s colonial history as with Naarm band Divide and Dissolve, or the establishment of a ‘Woman’s World’ by Okenyo, Miss Blanks and Jesswar, Australian artists are continually protesting against the world they live within. Better than that, they are changing it.

Much of Australia’s protest music might not be heard at marches, but it is praxis, creating communities and spaces, and amplifying voices which once weren’t heard. What a waste to not listen.

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Jared Richards is a staff writer for Junkee, and co-host of Sleepless In Sydney on FBi Radio. Follow him on Twitter.