What Artists Do in Times Like These: A Protest Song Revisited

Guest Opinion

By Annette Summersett | April 11, 2026

In 2005 I wrote a protest song entitled “Americans Anonymous.” I’m sure you can guess why based on timing. Wait! What? There were actually no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?

It has been appalling to realize that now, 20+ years later, my song feels even more relevant then it did back then. In those days, fresh off the boat from the U.P. living in Los Angeles and exploring what it meant to be a young adult in the real world, I thought what was happening was as bad as it could get. (Says 2026 to 2003, “Hold my beer!”) I released my angst through my folk rock music. In the spirit of Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in a Free World,” I drew fortifying breaths through my wailing harmonica.

It was raw for me because my classmates were fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. When you grow up in a small town, your classmates are like your family, whether you like it or not. You don’t get to choose your family and you don’t get to choose the kids you go to school with in a village. Dysfunction or whatever else, you are a part of each other. The armed services recruit heavily in rural areas for obvious reasons. It was a good opportunity for many of my schoolmates to enlist, and for some, it was the only way to get out of town. You better believe that I was pissed off at the lies and bad decisions putting my “family” in harm’s way!

Our country’s insistence on re-electing the perpetrators of those big lies didn’t help. I traveled from L.A. to Minneapolis to record “Americans Anonymous” as the 10th and final track on my folk rock album (released 2006). This is the height of irony for me now. I chose to cut the album in Minneapolis because I had the opportunity to work with the late, great producer/musician Ed Ackerson, which not only brought with it the incredible experience of having a Minneapolis music scene legend as my producer but also the ability to record with bassist Marc Perlman of The Jayhawks and superb Minneapolis drummer Peter Anderson.

With everything happening currently, I’m reflecting on the recording session of my protest song and I wonder what Ed would think today if he were alive (he unfortunately passed in 2019), in the wake of his beloved city being terrorized by the federal government.

Ed had misgivings about the song at first because the lyrics were so straightforward that he feared it could be taken as cliche (songwriting taboo). But I insisted on its form. We butted heads about it, and it actually almost killed the vibe of the recording sessions, but after we had a “come to Jesus” talk and pushed the track to the end of the sessions to give it some time to marinate, we compromised on some minor lyric tweaks for flow purpose and ended up rocking the hell out of the song.

Ed got to know me better through recording the other album tracks first and he realized that my words in “Americans Anonymous” were exactly what I was feeling and how I wanted to express myself in earnest. I am forever proud of the song, and his musical imprint lives on in the recording.

My personal story with protest through song is one tiny piece of the vast human collective. I believe the artist’s role in resistance to tyranny is incredibly important! I naturally think about the many musicians throughout history that have taken a stand through song, like Sam Cooke, Woody Guthrie, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen, and newcomer Jesse Welles, to name a few.

However, when I say “artist,” I’m referring to artists of every articulation. When you create art, you are expressing the most beautiful parts of your humanity and just the act of creating is resistance to the dehumanization that the tyrants of the world need to happen in order to exert control.

I see today that my song is relevant again because the tumult is cyclical in the human experience. Renowned poet Sylvia Plath said it perfectly in her essay “Context” when she wrote, “For me, the real issues of our time are the issues of every time—the hurt and wonder of loving; making in all forms—children, loaves of bread, paintings, buildings; and the conservation of life of all people in all places, the jeopardizing of which no abstract double-talk of ‘peace’ or ‘implacable foes’ can excuse.”

Despite the fact that people who seek to control are often oppressively loud, I truly believe good folks outnumber the bad. I implore my fellow kindred spirits to open your eyes, ears, and hearts wide! Create if you can, but at the very least, practice the subtle art of kindness. Do not forfeit your agency. And thus, keep participating in the process of re-humanizing.

Annette Summersett is a producer/singer/songwriter/composer/visual artist and Yooper now living and creating in Traverse City.