Conor Oberst Says Writing Direct Protest Songs in the Trump Era Feels “Almost Impossible”

Conor Oberst has been trying to write directly about the current political climate, but the effort keeps stalling. Speaking to the New York Times’ Popcast, the Bright Eyes singer-songwriter said he finds it “almost impossible” to bring back the pointed protest voice he wielded in the early 2000s.

During the George W. Bush administration, Oberst routinely attacked the war in Iraq and the president’s policies onstage. His song “When the President Talks to God” became a defining moment of that opposition, amplified by a late-night television performance that placed Oberst in a long American tradition of topical songwriting. The track felt, he said, like it meant something.

Under Trump, the same approach has failed him. “You can’t satirize . . . what’s already like a parody” or a “disgusting, gross cartoon,” he explained. The sheer volume of events—what he called “an avalanche of insanity”—makes it hard to isolate and shape a single target. The absurdity arrives faster than a songwriter can metabolize it.

Oberst added another reason for the broader silence: fear. “I think people are scared,” he said. “I think they have gone out of their way to try to intimidate all of us.” He hasn’t stopped writing—the political unease seeps through most of his recent work—but direct confrontation remains out of reach. For now, the question of where the new protest song is stays unanswered, even by the artist who once delivered it.