Remember When Music Belonged To Everyone?

The beauty of writing a song that revolves around a universal idea is that people feel like it could be theirs: it voices the way they’re feeling.The first time I heard my band Chumbawamba’s hit Tubthumping played at the ground of my local football club, I was standing at the urinal in the toilet underneath the stands, pissing the afternoon away with scores of other blokes, ready for the match. I walked up to my seat and watched people singing along to what had instantly become, in that moment at least, their song.

How nice. A pleasant enough ditty with a repetitive beat. But hardly a great tune that will live forever. Why are we hearing about it now? 

Tubthumping belongs to the guests at the wedding who sing it in celebration. It belongs to the Italian anti-fascists who sing it in defiance on a demonstration. It belongs to cancer patients going through chemotherapy, seeing every successful bout of treatment as a personal victory. I know that all these people have taken the song as theirs, because they write to tell us.

OK, so what are you complaining about? I mean, since this is the 'Guardian' you must be complaining about something.  

But there’s a problem with these universal songs – they can be hijacked by people who clearly don’t understand the spirit in which they were written, and want to use them to aggrandise themselves, or to sell ideas that aren’t universal at all.

Ah. Right.  

Because that’s the thing with songs, with literature, with art, theatre, cinema, with most of the beautiful, creative, cultural things we love – they are very rarely created by those on the political right. The bigots don’t have any good songs of their own.

Are you sure? I mean, in the very same pages we are always reading about how some classic works of the past are really evil right-wing tracts or monuments or institutions produced by blood-soaked right wing demagogues. Even former darlings of the left aren't immune.  

Let me be clear: the song Tubthumping was written to celebrate the resilience and tenacity of working-class folk who keep fighting when the chips are down.

But only if they aren't fighting against having their neighbourhoods and workplaces filled with immigrants, eh, Boff old chum? If that were to happen, you'd be back in the pages of the 'Guardian', squaling that it wasn't written for these working class folk after all.

It has nothing whatsoever in common with wealthy politicians with extremist anti-liberal agendas.

So what? I recall things didn't get better under Blair, in fact, they got worse, so the choice of music reaveals nothing.  

Former Tory prime minister David Cameron listed one of his favourite songs as the Jam’s Eton Rifles which prompted the Jam’s Paul Weller to retort “Which bit didn’t you get? … It wasn’t intended as a fucking jolly drinking song for the cadet corps.” When Cameron also admitted to liking the Smiths, guitarist Johnny Marr said simply: “Stop saying that you like The Smiths, no you don’t. I forbid you to like it.”

Boff thinks this is exposing something about politicians. It's not. It's exposing something about progressive songwriters.