Typically not.
Political songs are okay just as long as you have the sense to understand that rock and roll songs can't provide you with any real answers. But they can point you in the right direction. A three-minute pop song can't make complicated matters go away, but they can simplify them to help you sort out your basic feelings about them. I was convinced that vegetarianism was in almost every way a better choice than eating slaughtered animals after reading about it in the local library, but I would never have read those books and articles if "Meat Is Murder" hadn't appealed directly to my heart.
In Morrissey's case, I think his best, most effective political songs are not overtly political. Opening people's minds about problems of gender, sex, and class using humor, irony, and highly personal writing is far better than screaming through a bullhorn. He gives you just enough of a political hint, in most songs, that you don't take away a specific political message but rather a new sense of what exactly the word "political" encompasses. In "The Queen Is Dead", the line "Life is very long when you're lonely" is far more provocative than any of the "political" stuff about law and poverty, but used in the same song each gives the other an added richness.
Sometimes the farther you go in the opposite direction, the nearer you come to your destination. For this reason "Nowhere Fast" and "Interesting Drug" work much better as "political" songs than "Margaret On The Guillotine" or "America Is Not The World". I mean, the funniest, most cutting comment he's made about government came in a song about obsessional love-- the line about high court judges in "The More You Ignore Me". I love Morrissey's instincts when it comes to politics, but the more he discusses various subjects, the more you wish he'd keep quiet. A bon mot that skewers Blair is fantastic, but beware further listening.
Among other artists, I think The Clash did politics pretty well. So did The Jam. Billy Bragg is wonderful, but sadly he's almost more of a pamphleteer than a poet; all his best writing is about love. U2 is good for bombast-- sometimes that's not a bad thing. R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe has keen insight into politics, but you can't understand half the shit he sings. Actually, the smartest political band of all was The Dead Kennedys. Too bad the majority of their music is totally unlistenable. Still, in the end they're the only thing a political band should be: inspirational.
