Music - Shaping our Culture - Sport, Song & Screen: the Power of Popular Culture

ELVIS - CULTURAL LIBERATION

Elvis Tribute to Martin Luther King
In the aftermath of his assassination, millions of people paid tribute to his courage, his eloquence and his determination.

Elvis Presley was one of them. He recorded the song “If I Can Dream” just two months after the murder, and the emotional intensity with which he delivers it still brings back the shock and grief that gripped America in the wake of King’s murder.

BANNED SONGS OF THE 70s

Balwyn Calling
Toorak Cowboy He gets his hair cut at Marini's And he drives a Lamborghini The finest thing that ever walked this earth His flat is just divine He buys yogurt and buys wine A million dollars is what he's worth Well, he's a village playboy Toorak Cowboy, yes, he is Well, he's a village playboy Toorak Cowboy, yes, he is He dyes all his gray ends And he's got lots of gay friends He is twenty-nine if he's a day And he wears tinted glasses And his girls have got tight arses And if he's camp he wouldn't like to say Well, he's a village playboy Toorak Cowboy, yes, he is Well, he's a village playboy Toorak Cowboy, yes, he is He'll be at the supper show on Friday night Goes once a month just to make it look right At interval he'll say the movie's a drag As he gets a cigarette from his leather shoulder bag Well, he's a village playboy Toorak Cowboy, yes, he is Well, he's a village playboy Toorak Cowboy, yes, he is Well, he bought his first dope outside the South Yarra Arms A whole matchbox full in his hot little palms Nineteen Sixty-Eight and the scene was cool And all of his friends knew that he wasn't a fool He knows the antique dealers And all those other stealers I'll be glad when he goes overseas My friends, he don't do nothin' He just ain't got no stuffin' He's just another social disease Well, he's a village playboy Toorak Cowboy, yes, he is
The Pill Lynn’s iconic hit details more than just the liberation from pregnancy offered by the contraceptive pill, including the fun she will have, the clothes she will wear, how “the feelin’ good comes easy now / Since I got the pill”. Naturally, country radio flipped its wig at the scandalous notion of a woman enjoying sex and banned it widely.