A song about 1979 and 2019

Time for another song. This is 1979, from our Bring The Good Times Back EP.

If you think it sounds like late-seventies post-punk, that’s entirely deliberate: what we’ve tried to do musically is echo what I’ve done lyrically, which is to connect 1979 and 2019. The song is about political parties promising to make Britain great again while throwing the most marginalised people under the bus and I wanted it to sound like the angry post-punk of my childhood, political pop you can dance to in a big black coat.

They said, hey you! It’s gonna be okay!
Just don’t be poor, don’t be sick, don’t be brown, don’t be trans or gay
Because we’re going to bring the good times back
I’m all right Jack, wave your union flag

The song’s written from the perspective of someone in Scotland or the North of England, and the disconnect between what we see on the largely London-based media and in our own communities. The Union flag-wavers of the song didn’t know about the policy of managed decline for the UK’s industrial heartlands; today’s equivalent believe that our remaining industrial base is worth sacrificing for blue passports.

I chose 1979 because I think that’s when the social contract was ripped up, when we went from “we’re all in this together” to “I’m all right, Jack”. Ever since we’ve seen politics based on division, on scaremongering, on telling the majority that minorities are coming for what you’ve got.


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