A certain Mr Jagger and Mr Richards have been no strangers to scandal, but which one makes this week’s list?

Readers recommend: songs about scandal – results

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The Irish church institutions to Native American oppression, apartheid to oil exploitation, RR’s redoubtable regular sonofwebcore picks a scandalous playlist from last week’s topic

Though set in Ireland, Joni Mitchell’s The Magdalene Laundries, might well be about any of those institutions which exploited vulnerable young women on three continents between 1758 and the late 20th century. Her focus is fixed on the plight of the institutionalised Irish, who had it bad, more than 30,000 of them. The Irish government is still seeking compensation from the Vatican.
Steve Earle’s Justice In Ontario conjoins two stories separated by a hundred years. In neither case was justice sought or achieved. In the 19th century the Donnelly family, including their children, was wiped out by a mob fuelled by rumours and feuds, and led by prominent townspeople. Despite eyewitness evidence the case was thrown out of court. In the 20th century a Port Hope man was shot and killed in a bar-room attack. Six bikers went to jail, while the shooter stood outside the courtroom, scot free.

A certain Scotland Yard man liked nothing better than busting pop stars for drugs. Infamously, one of his raids led to Mick Jagger being sentened for three months and Keith Richards for a year. The Times asked: “Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?” Demonstrations ensued before the Lord Chief Justice’s intervention led to the rockers’ release. The Rolling Stones’ We Love You forgives the transgressions of the law, kind of … The cop was jailed for corruption in the early 1970s.

Readers recommend: songs about scandal | Peter Kimpton

H2Ogate Blues is Gil Scott-Heron’s extended examination of the Watergate break-in and cover-up. In this poem government tentacles are seen everywhere, tying everyone in knots, including the government itself.
Bono claims that U2’s Sunday Bloody Sunday isn’t about any particular event; not even Derry’s Bloody Sunday which saw British paratroopers shoot 26 unarmed civilians, killing 14. Watch the singer’s nose grow. About to perform the song in Belfast, Bono asked the audience’s permission to sing it. Only a few walked out.
Probably the world’s largest-ever rock group, Artists United Against Apartheid, made a stance against South Africa’s policy of paying outrageous sums to northern hemisphere performers in order to legitimise its apartheid system in the face of its international pariahdom. Rather than list the superstars who played the casino, or those who gave their time to make the record, let’s focus on the intent of Sun City, and the fact that you can dance to it.
“Birmingham Six, Bridgewater Four, Crown Prosecution totting up the score. Kings Cross Two, Guildford Four, Winston Silcott - man, how many more?” Asian Dub Foundation’s Free Satpal Ram seethes with outrage. Satpal was attacked by racists in a Birmingham restaurant, glassed and beaten. He struck back with a knife and was convicted of murder. His claim of self-defence was ignored by the jury, which was not provided with an interpreter for the Bengali-speaking witnesses. The judge claimed that he could translate, though he didn’t. Ram spent 15 years in prison, during which time he was racially and physically abused. His parole was overruled by then Home secretary, Jack Straw, but the European court of human rights intervened, establishing that the home secretary had no right to overrule the parole board.

Fighting for Native American justice – Buffy Sainte-Marie in 1960. Photograph: CA/Redferns

Buffy Sainte-Marie’s grievances are centuries old, but Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee”, while utilising Native American rhythms and chants, and modern rock values and arrangement, is a modern song which examines that people’s current plight. There is an overwhelming air of grief and anger as Buffy relates her people’s almost hopeless battles with government-backed energy companies and their covert operations.
Belying its jaunty country-tinged tune, Steve Forbert’s The Oil Song illustrates the tremendous ecological toll exacted upon the world’s marine environments. Forbert looks closely at several tanker disasters, laying the blame at cost-cutting, bad practice, and the registering of ships in countries whose maritime inspectors can be convinced to look away from evidence of unseaworthiness.
Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain uses the backdrop of a lobotomised movie star’s difficulties with film companies to highlight his own sense of martyrdom at the hands of his record company. Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle doesn’t deal directly with Farmer’s issues, but both troubled stars were manipulated by commercial systems. Cobain’s subsequent suicide was shocking enough, but Farmer’s suffering was much more protracted as she was abused by her supposed carers over many years.
Thom Yorke wants to know if Dr David Kelly, biological weapons expert, fell or was pushed. Harrowdown Hill was where Kelly’s body was found two days after his public vilification by the foreign affairs select committee. His crime was an off-the-record rubbishing of the government’s “45 minutes to destruction by Saddam” claim. The journalist revealed his source. The government ordered an inquiry into Kelly’s death, the evidence from which was hit with a 70-year classification order by Lord Hutton.

Ah, yes, the ex-prime minister who won’t be judged by you and I, because only God can judge him. Karine Polwart nails the hypocrisy of high office in Sorry. Not that he is.

Billy Bragg wants us to face the facts. The Price Of Oil is war. Bragg is better able to express himself in song than his critics are in print. He asks was Saddam more evil the second time? If not, why didn’t we sort him out the first time around and save all the death and destruction? In examining a war in which $3tn remain unaccounted for, Billy is quite restrained in his questioning.