STRANGE FRUIT

That song, first recorded by Billie Holiday, might be the first social commentary protest song.  Most unusual for 1939 when Ella Fitzgerald did her jazzy version of "a-tisket a-tasket, the old nursery rhyme. Today's generation and probably at least one before it grew up with "message" songs about some social issue.  No so for me.  Songs were for fun and romance. "Strange Fruit" is  about a lynching. The word doesn't appear but but the meaning is there.