Is Music Getting More Political Again?

In years gone by, it was normal, almost expected for musicians to have a political voice. Song has long been a method of getting one's point across and often this has been used for political reasons. This is a very brief history of some major political movements in relation to the music they inspired.

In the 1960s we had great social change - youth culture was blossoming, railing against parents who had grown up in a completely different era, perhaps in the interwar years or during the Second World War, accustomed to a climate of austerity and duty. America was now sending its children to die in a war, claiming to fight for democracy, while on its own soil, there were still deep-set racial democratic issues. It's almost poetic, that the line between good and evil, so clear during the Second World War, was becoming blurred. Bob Dylan sang The Times They Are A-Changin', a song about racism and social change, begging Congressmen to listen, and telling parents that their children were out of their control. Looking back on it as a young person today, the 1960s seem like a brilliant time for really meaningful music. Neil Young's Southern Man, The Beatles' Revolution and Cat Stevens' Peace Train are all examples of some of my personal favourites from the decade.

In the 1980s, both the U.S.A. and U.K. were dealing with some of the most notorious right wing governments in living memory. On the world stage, South Africa was beginning to experience political pressure, exerted by other countries due to its policy of apartheid. At home, there was financial instability, brought about by free market policies and debt culture. In Britain, Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister, who spent much time closing down mines and putting much of northern England out of work in the process. Unemployment was reaching record levels. Once again, the music scene had something to say about this. Gone were the days of gentle folk music, hippies smoking weed and holding hands, chanting for change. Music had changed. The punk scene had been and to some extents, gone, but it had left its mark on the music scene and gradually the discomfort about the state of affairs grew, boiling over into music, and even film.

Morrissey woefully sang "the kind people have a wonderful dream, Margaret on the guillotine". Although the song Margaret on the Guillotine is softly played and sang, it's lyrics hiss with venom and contain a violence that can only have been influenced by the anger of the punk scene. The Clash sang about the Brixton Riots in no uncertain terms, singing of how the police were too heavy handed when dealing with the rioters. Music left little doubt what it was talking about in the 1980s. There was no dressing it up, the songwriters cut straight to the point in their messages.

A song that is often overlooked it Peter Gabriel's Biko. This song is about apartheid in South Africa; more specifically it us about the murder, at the hands of the Secret Police, of Steven Biko, a black activist, peacefully protesting for change. The song's final lyrics are "the eyes of the world are watching you now", Gabriel, like other artists wasn't about to use pretty metaphors or obscure lyrics, disguising his views; he just put them out there for all to see. Obviously, this is just one example of a pretty hot topic from the 1980s, but it's one that always stuck out in my mind. On a slightly different note, if this is something you do not know much about, I would strongly recommend watching Richard Attenborough's Cry Freedom. It's based on the true story of journalist Donald Woods and his friendship with Steven Biko. It was made during apartheid and it one of the (many, many, many) reasons it was brought to attention as a global issue. You never know, you might learn something!

Then in the 1990s, something happened in the UK. Labour won a landslide majority and suddenly it was as if there was nothing for people to sing about. Everyone knew that the Conservatives were the bad guys. Billy Bragg had spent the whole of the 1980s convincing people to vote Labour, as did celebrities more recently such as Noel Gallagher, but what now? Labour was in power and musicians had nothing to sing for. What was the alternative? An idealistic socialist or communist state which was never going to happen? The Conservatives that many musicians had grown up writing scathing songs about? Or maybe some sort of anarchy? Musicians didn't know anymore.

What happened in music between 1997 and 2010 did not truly mean anything. Bands like Radiohead and Muse decided to go off and make vaguely political references in some of their work, but Muse mostly stuck to viewing the world through what we like to refer to as the Orwellspecs. By writing songs as if they were in a George Orwell book, and that the government is secretly spying on everything we do, Muse were able to do something vaguely political without any real substance. Nowhere in their lyrics did they mention specifics, instead, "they" is used. Who or what is "they"? The establishment? The government? The Illuminati?! Who knows, but it worked and we loved reading in to it. Radiohead took this view with OK Computer (this lucky reader once read an entire article on how OK Computer is just one big reference to Nineteen Eighty Four by, you guessed it, George Orwell). In 2003, Radiohead did seem to make an explicit reference to a certain event - they named their 6th studio album Hail To The Thief, which many believed to be a reference to George W. Bush's victory in the 2000 American Presidential Election. Thom Yorke then spent the next year or so trying to make the title sound a whole lot more pretentious than it really was, because he didn't want to 'state the obvious'. It was almost as if musicians didn't want to address issues that bothered them anymore.

Bands like Franz Ferdinand and Bloc Party opted to stay away from overtly political messages on their first albums - they just wanted to make people dance. One of the biggest bands of the last decade, the Arctic Monkeys stay far away from making broad political statements, preferring observational remarks about everyday life. Even Frank Turner, who seems to have roots firmly planted in folk, folk-punk and protest music doesn't want to be labelled as such, and many of his songs just seem to document the tales of him and his friends feeling disillusioned with life, rather than with the politics of today. Arguably the closest thing to an accurate political observation was when Kaiser Chiefs sang I Predict A Riot and were only about 6 years off with their predictions...

Currently, the coalition government have been in power for almost 2 years. There is so much artists can write about with regard to this. Firstly, there's a Conservative as Prime Minister, secondly, the Liberal Democrats joined them in government. Thirdly, the Liberal Democrats went back on their promise to cut tuition fees for university and instead voted to triple them. Basically, quite a lot. Plus, there's a pretty bad financial crisis going on, there's really high unemployment and we still have troops in Afghanistan. So where'a all the political music?! I hear you cry that Rage Against the Machine got Christmas number 1 not too long ago with their overtly political Killing in the Name, but that was the public rebelling against the manufactured television competition pop of the X Factor, not a genuine political movement - besides, the song is over 10 years old and refers to mainly American issues. So where are the British political musicians we used to pride ourselves on? We were so wrapped up in the awful state of the music industry that somewhere along the way, we forgot how bad other things have got in recent years.

Every now and then, the NME rears its ugly head, writing an article or two about politics, Love Music Hate Racism or how awful David Cameron being from Eton is. It's not like it used to be. In the riots in the UK last summer, countless teenagers claimed they were 'getting their taxes back' and that they were 'showing the government what it was about'. Even riots have lost their political edge, people were just filming it on their Blackberries, getting a cool pair or trainers and putting up a Facebook status about it. There was no heart and soul to it anymore, just like music. Artists don't seem to know how to complain about stuff anymore, or write a hard hitting song. As much as a tune Take Me Out is, I hardly think Franz Ferdinand will be remembered for their impact on society the way that people like Bob Dylan or the Beatles will be.

Is popular music in the UK getting more political again? That's one big fat 'no' from where we sit.

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