IN 2005, Conor Oberst was hard to categorise. Bright Eyes, the band he led with Nate Walcott and Mike Mogis, had just released two albums on the same day: I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning, which prompted “new Dylan” comparisons, and the electronic Digital Ash In A Digital Urn. Signed only to his brother’s DIY label, and having started out recording in his bedroom, the 25-year-old had somehow just become the first artist in eight years to occupy both top spots on the Billboard charts.

Performing on NBC’s Jay Leno should have been an easy task. But Oberst used his platform to play neither one of his chart-topping singles. Instead, he appeared solo, armed with just an acoustic guitar, to play a song he had never released. What followed was one of the bluntest and most overt protest songs of the 21st century.

In the censored clip (the song was removed from YouTube and iTunes without explanation), Oberst appeared on stage wearing a cowboy hat, seeming to parody a country musician and folk protest singer, all at once. But there was no folk earnestness in the lyrics, which drew more from the lacerating anger of Masters of War than Blowin’ in the Wind: