Swiss Journal of Research in Business and Social Sciences

Music

Rock and Metal Songs Featuring Samples from Famous Speeches


Here are rock and metal songs that feature audio samples from famous speeches that have occurred throughout history.

Musicians frequently collaborate, and it’s not uncommon to hear a familiar voice as a special guest on a song. In these instances, those familiar voices are not other musicians — they’re politicians, scientists, philosophers, religious leaders, and more.

The inspiration for this list came after listening to a specific Guns N’ Roses song, but not “Civil War,” because the spoken-word intro in that track is from a film rather than an actual broadcast. Other artists that have sampled speeches in songs include Living Colour, Lamb of God, and Linkin Park, who have various songs on their 2010 album A Thousand Suns that contain snippets of speeches.

Many songs have sampled famous speeches in the past, and there are several by rock and metal musicians. Whether the song addresses politics or aims to elevate its message in some way, you’ll find tracks listed below featuring snippets from speeches by Martin Luther King Jr., interview excerpts from U.S. military personnel, and more.

READ MORE: 16 of the Most Political Rock + Metal Bands

A few of the songs are instrumentals that only feature spoken-word parts, but we included them nonetheless.

For each track, we included the respective album the song is featured on, which speech is sampled in the song, and the lyrics that contain those specific parts. You may have heard these songs many times without realizing the context of the spoken parts, so perhaps you’ll learn a bit of history while listening and reading along.

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