A little bit of history
 

I was listening to the local college NPR station in the car tonight. It's Irish night, and it got me to thinking. There used to be songs immortalizing historic events. Massacre of Glencoe and Will Ye No Come Back Again come to mind. When I was younger we had Neil Young's Ohio and Gordon Lightfoot's The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

Is anyone doing stuff like this anymore?

Keep on Rockin' in the Free World? Ok that's gotta be old enough to drink now, so I don't know.

Rage Against the Machine and Rise Against come to mind. Rise has done songs on Katrina and gay youth suicides.

How mainstream do they have to be? How recent?

Mark Knopfler - Sailing to Philadelphia
Phil Cody - Orphan Train
Elton John - Goodby England's Rose

There have been a number of Katrina odes to New Orleans as well...

Yes, definitely.