Rock History Essay

“I Want to Conquer the World” by Bad Religion – 1989 Bad Religion is a Los Angeles based band of the punk rock genre that was formed in 1979. The punk rock genre began its emergence in the mid 70’s and is the basis of many genres since its birth. The main topics of punk rock music usually come from political ideas and violence; yet it is not limited to these two topics by any means. The song “I Want to Conquer the World” comes from the Bad Religion album called No Control, it was written and also released in nineteen eighty nine by Epitaph Records and is a great example of political expression while actually conveying how the writer Brett Gurewitz (guitarist) desires people to seek for peace, not violence. The main theme of the song explains the tragedies of the world in which we live; from hypocritical Christians to soldiers that are ruining people’s homes on a massive scale, then, in the hook Gurewitz proclaims his intentions of what he wants to do in order to make the world a better place. It can also be argued that much of the song is anti-religious mostly based off of the bands name which is actually a common misconception. The band members claim to not be in accordance with any specific religion and more specifically Brett Gurewitz considers himself a provisional diest, which is the belief system of reason and observation of the natural world are a sufficient way of deciding if god is actually fact or fiction. The lyrics of the song reflect the time period of about the past twenty years or so when people were beginning to really notice lies from institutions including government. The lyrics of this song are mostly consistent with deep metaphors in order to explain what it is that outraged Gurewitz. The song is comprised of a lot of natural delivery and shifts to shouting during the hook most likely so as to give emphasis to the central idea of the writers passion to fix world problems. Two of the lyric numbers that have a great metaphor is