Neil Young's quixotic crusade: a song can't change the world.

• Author: Doherty, Brian

Eggheads and dumbbells alike have overestimated pop culture's power to transform society--a misapprehension that goes back to Plato, who believed that when the modes of music changed, the walls of cities shook. In fact, it's usually just the hairstyles that change. Sometimes footwear.

Still, the news that Neil Young rush-recorded an album titled Living With War, containing a song called "Impeach the President," has had the media world abuzz, both pro and con. Young told CNN he wanted the record to carry a message of togetherness and unification. Most likely it will unite us in revulsion or boredom. The last president brought down by a working popular entertainer was Lincoln.

There are many potential pitfalls on the path from political pop to real-world change. As with Bruce Springsteen's bitter vets lament, "Born in the USA," the music can be hijacked by political forces you despise, such as Ronald Reagan; it can turn into a largely ineffectual part of a hip marketing image, as with Rage Against the Machine; or it can be covered by Peter, Paul, and Mary. The least likely effect is to change the larger political world in any appreciable way (though we can thank Styx's Kilroy Was Here for averting--so far!--a rock-'n'-roll-banning theocracy).

That's not to say a song can't be a useful, delightful combination of aesthetic merit and political wisdom. But when it comes to pop music, from the most Satanic metal to the most heavenly Jesus pop, nothing's funnier than earnestness. No one joined the Peace Corps after hearing "Dawn of Correction," the liberal establishment Spokesmen's answer song to the hippie anthem "Eve of Destruction"; it just became a silly track to fill out modern hipsters' mix CDs. (Sample lyric: "What about the things that deserve commendation?/ Where there once was no cure, there's vaccination/Where there once was a desert, there's vegetation/Self-government's replacing colonization." Yes, they were serious.) "Abraham, Martin, and John" and "They Killed Him" lament fallen heroes, but they inspire more derisive chuckles than tears, despite their serious and well-intentioned subject matter.

No doubt (OK, given the poor quality of most of Young's recent work, there's some doubt) Living With War will move many souls. Private life pleasures become all the more important as the specter of war and dysfunctional politics haunts the land. The real problem is, no matter how many citizens are unhappy with Bush--more than half of us these...