Many of these tracks are not „protest“ songs in the angry and earnest sense that many listeners associate with the style; they often take a more lightly satirical, even a congenial approach. The enjoyable novelty tinged pieces on the then-new threat of atomic energy („Old Man Atom,“ the Golden Gate Quartet‘s alternately somber and swinging gospel number „Atom and Evil,“ Billy Hughes and His Rhythm Buckeroos‘ „Atomic Sermon“) remind us of how ambivalently the nuclear threat was viewed when it was a new thing, and how songs commenting on it sounded rather like they were whistling in the dark.