Song · Rage Against the Machine
“Freedom” by Rage Against the Machine
From the album Rage Against the Machine (1992)
“Freedom” by Rage Against the Machine appears on 11 radio countdowns from 7 stations between 1994 and 2009. It was first released in 1992 on the album Rage Against the Machine. Its best result is #70 on the KROQ Top 106.7 Songs of 1994. In the combined RockLists rankings it is the #183 alternative song of 1994 and #2,770 alternative song of all time.
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Video from YouTube (RATMVEVO). Pressing play loads YouTube's player. Watch on YouTube
"Freedom" was the fourth and final single Rage Against the Machine took from their self-titled 1992 album, released in December 1993, and it's the band at full boil. Tom Morello's guitar grinds, Tim Commerford's bass and Brad Wilk's drums lock into a funk-metal lurch, and Zack de la Rocha, who wrote the words, spits them out like he's been holding them in for years. Garth Richardson produced with the band, and Andy Wallace mixed.
Peter Christopherson directed the video, which premiered on MTV's 120 Minutes. It intercuts the band tearing through the song in a small venue with the case of Leonard Peltier, one of the leaders of the American Indian Movement, including a reenactment of events on the Pine Ridge reservation taken from Michael Apted's documentary Incident at Oglala, while quotes from Sitting Bull and material from Peter Matthiessen's book In the Spirit of Crazy Horse crawl along the bottom of the screen.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
RockLists rankings
Alternative & Modern Rock
Indie & Adult Alternative
All Rock Formats
Year-end countdowns
| Year | # | Station | Countdown | of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1994 | 70 | KROQ Los Angeles, CA | KROQ Top 106.7 Songs of 1994 | 107 |
| 1994 | 90 | Q101 Chicago, IL | Q101 Top 101 Songs of 1994 | 101 |
All-time and decade countdowns
| Year | # | Station | Countdown | of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1999 | 428 | WHFS | WHFS Top 500 Songs of the '90s (December 1999) | 500 |
| 1999 | 387 | Q101 | Q101 Top 1,011 Songs of All-Time (December 1999) | 1017 |
| 1999 | 231 | 107.7 The End | The End Top 1077 Songs of All-Time (December 1999) | 1077 |
| 1999 | 343 | CFNY 102.1 The Edge | CFNY Top 1002 Songs of All-Time (November 1999) | 1002 |
| 2004 | 279 | 107.7 The End | The End Original Alternative 500 (May 2004) | 500 |
| 2007 | 192 | KROQ | KROQ Top 500 Most Requested Songs of the '90s (Labor Day 2007) | 500 |
| 2007 | 610 | WTMD | WTMD Top 897 Songs of All Time | 897 |
| 2008 | 413 | KROQ | KROQ Flashback 500 (Memorial Day 2008) | 500 |
| 2009 | 608 | WXPN | WXPN 885 Desert Island Songs (2009) | 885 |
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