Protest songs in the United States Tom Paxton ("Lyndon Johnson Told the Nation" - about the escalation of the war in Vietnam, "Jimmy Newman" – the story of a dying soldier, and "My Son John" – about a soldier who returns from war unable to describe what he's been through), among others. The first protest song to reach number one in the United States was P.F. Sloan's "Eve Of Destruction", performed by Barry McGuire in 1965. The civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s often used Negro spirituals as a source of protest, changing the religious lyrics to suit the political mood of the time.
Protest song song intended as a feminist protest song is "Rights of Woman" (1795), sung to the tune of "God Save the King", written anonymously by "A Lady", and published in the "Philadelphia Minerva", October 17, 1795. There is no evidence that it was ever sung as a movement song, however. A more recent song advocating sexual liberation is "Sexo" (1985) by Los Prisioneros. The sociologist R. Serge Denisoff saw protest songs rather narrowly in terms of their function, as forms of persuasion or propaganda. Denisoff saw the protest song tradition as originating in the "psalms" or songs of grassroots Protestant religious