No Kings and No Landlords: Songs About Freedom

We’re talking about freedom this week on A Symposium of Popular Songs, and I demonstrate my freedom by going all the way from “guy with guitar” folk to overcranked contemporary R&B. On…

Michial Farmer

September 1, 2025

We’re talking about freedom this week on A Symposium of Popular Songs, and I demonstrate my freedom by going all the way from “guy with guitar” folk to overcranked contemporary R&B. On the way I’ll try to convince you that the concept of freedom is so nebulous as to be easily used by any politician trying to sell you anything at all. Send me your song recommendations at symposiumofsongs@gmail.com!

0:00
Joni Mitchell, “Free Man in Paris” (Court and Spark, 1974)
4:35
The Choir, “Sled Dog” (Free Flying Soul)
8:14
Reading: Richard M. Weaver, “Ultimate Terms in Contemporary Rhetoric”
10:52
Bob Dylan, “Chimes of Freedom” (Another Side of Bob Dylan, 1964)
19:24
Beyoncé featuring Kendrick Lamar, “Freedom” (Lemonade, 2016)
25:43
Torres, “Sprinter” (Sprinter, 2015)
30:40
Reading: Isaiah Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty”
33:47
Pierce Pettis, “A Mountaineer Is Always Free” (State of Grace, 2001)
37:40
Reading: Jean-Paul Sartre, “Existentialism Is a Humanism”
39:27
Kris Kristofferson, “The Burden of Freedom” (Border Lord, 1974″
42:46
Son Volt, “Live Free” (Trace, 1994)
47:11
Reading: Plutarch, “Lycurgus”
50:03
Reading: Thucydides, “Pericles’s Funeral Oration”
52:18
Funkadelic, “Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow” (Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow, 1970)

Michial Farmer

Michial Farmer is a poet, essayist, and history teacher. He is the author of Imagination and Idealism in John Updike’s Fiction (Camden House, 2017) and the translator of Gabriel Marcel’s Thirst (Cluny, 2021). He lives in Atlanta.