I think it's hard for most electronic musicians to convey a political message without any lyrics. Typically, I would say most listeners want to feel some type of emotion from electronic music, or have it make them dance uncontrollably. Even with lyrics, it'd be a tough task to make a song with a strong political message that a listener wouldn't immediately write off as corny. Or, that's how I'd analyze something like that myself.

I think protest music had it's heydey with rock & roll during the 50's-80's. A lot of hip-hip nowadays and during it's rise is politically charged. I haven't really heard much electronic music that's sounded like that. If it were to be done well, I'd for sure give it a listen.

In short, I think politics has a place in music, just less so electronic music.

If it makes good music, it makes good music. Done right, it gives musicians something inspiring to write about; done wrong, it just takes you out of the music.

why are you talking about wil.i.am lol,  the man is a disgrace to music, he ripped of mat zo and arty's track rebound, and called it his own track, he cant even DJ for shit and tried to DJ at a festival and it backfired lol

I actually hate it. I've heard bunch of protest songs over the years and I can honstly say that I hate how political emotions connected to the topic of the protest song overpower the actual music. It would be OK if the idea expressed in the lyrics was somehow ethernally true or inspiring in some way, but that doesn't happen very often with protest songs. It's usually a "melodyfied propaganda". ...so your actual liking of the song depends on how much you agree with the expressed opinion. Music itself gets out of the way. I hate that.

...so for example I like that "Dear Mr. President" song by Pink, but I feel like if this song was more right-wing oriented, I wouldn't like it that much. ...and that fact I ironically hate.

Have you guys seen the video for Kill The Noise - Kill it for the Kids? That definitely has a political message that a lot of people missed. Jake has always had a political message in a lot his music.

I tried to put political messages in my first album. 'Moderate Stimulation' is about our generation's inability to focus on things that aren't pure entertainment

To answer the thread title question, politics has a place in music. In just about all cases, that place is "making it worse".

More often than not, musicians don't know crap about how the real world works. Especially not musicians in popular genres, who tend to be young, unmarried, and without kids. The best most musicians can do is come up with a new poetic way to say something that is a long-established truth figured out by people who are smarter than them (and since it's a long-established truth it's not very interesting).

Musicians tend to be strong on expression and weak on things like depth of thought and knowledge of the world. If you're going to express political opinions, you don't even need those last two things, strictly speaking, but you should at least question your own biases, and most musicians never have a reason to do that in the political echo chamber of the entertainment industry.

Personally I hate all "protest" music, and most political music (if I can tell it's political). Anything with a left-wing political message is not worth the acetate or hard-drive space it's recorded on, and most right-wing music is too low quality to actually listen to (chalk that up to the law of large numbers I guess).

Unfortunately, I am motivated to write political music (I know! I can't help it!) but it's never "overt". In a lot of cases, you wouldn't even know it was political unless you understood the very specific references I place in it in my own coded imagery. I try to stick to the rule of only writing a political song if there's nothing better or more interesting I can think of to write about, and then while I'm writing it I try to find something universal and non-political about it as a frame to sort of "hang" it on..

I think that's one of the reasons why if music is going to be political, I prefer right-wing messages. It's at least got some balls to it.

See and that's what I'm talking about. Then you can have perfectly nice song with left-wing message, that you'll tend to ignore just for the message. Music gets out of the way.