The story of how Joe South reinvented the protest song in 1968Whether it is Bruce Springsteen’s recent song ‘Streets of Minneapolis’ following the controversial ICE brutality on immigrants and subsequent deaths in Minnesota, or Lana Del Rey’s ‘Looking for America’ about mass shootings in Texas, protest songs have the ability to define a moment in time, like a hand reaching out to people en masse. However, ‘Games People Play’ was about examining human hypocrisy, apathy and the ways people convince themselves they are doing the right thing while contributing to the problem. That message helped ‘Games People Play’ become a major international success, the song later reaching number six in the UK charts in March 1969 and winning the Grammy Awards for ‘Song of the Year’ and ‘Best Contemporary Song’. Joe South passed away in 2012 at 72, and while he never enjoyed the kind of enduring legacy of singers like Bob Dylan, he did something few songwriters had done before. With ‘Games People Play’, he carved his own genre of protest song, laying the blueprint for a more introspective form of protest music, the message behind which, some 50 years later, feels just as relevant as it did in 1968.