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| “We should be on the streets” tweeted Paloma Faith after the UK election (Credit: Getty Images) |
The UK’s recent general election signals a change of key – while rock stars are becoming apathetic, pop is speaking out, writes Mark Beaumont.
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On 7 May, the UK went to the polls in what we were told would be the closest-run general election in living memory. The coalition government of David Cameron’s Conservatives and Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats was facing a strong challenge from Ed Milliband’s Labour party and virtually every pundit and poll predicted a hung parliament. It was the election of a lifetime, when everyone with a voice and a platform could sway the result, from high-profile comedian and activist Russell Brand, who switched his non-voting stance to support Labour at the last minute to the legions of Twitter users who, after a picture of Milliband awkwardly eating a bacon sandwich was used to slur him by his opponents, posted pictures of themselves covered in foodstuffs with the hashtag #JeSuisEd.
Traditionally, when there’s a chance of ousting a right-wing government, a swathe of rock stars come out in force to support Labour, so where was the alternative rock voice in 2015? Well, if anyone emerged from the 2015 general election looking worse than Nick Clegg, who resigned after his party’s vote collapsed, it was Faris Badwan from psych rock band The Horrors. Days before polls opened, he was quoted in an NME article on the demise of protest music: “Voting is for people who don’t have their own imagination. It’s for a different generation. You’re not accomplishing anything.”
The internet lit up. “The Horrors’ Faris Badwan Offers Staggeringly Stupid Opinion on Politics & Voting” read one site’s headline, and the Guardian’s online story brought out packs of vulpine commenters scenting prey. An “irresponsible” “unknown halfwit cretin” they called him, Twitter dealt out far worse. Yet, dotted between politically astute comments from Young Fathers, Enter Shikari, Sleaford Mods and The Enemy, Faris’ disassociation from the political process was echoed by several other contemporary musicians in the same pages. “Most of our friends are our age and most feel really disaffected,” said Drenge’s Eoin Loveless, “I don’t want to side myself with a party.” “It is hard to know how to get involved,” said Dan Snaith from Caribou.
Even the NME’s cover stars The Prodigy took a similar arms-length slant. “They’re all crooks and they’re all liars,” said Keith Flint, “I wouldn’t vote for any of them.”
Tracing the reaction of the music world to the election, Badwan’s argument that voting was for “a different generation” seemed to be borne out in the days that followed the Conservatives’ surprise victory. “An horrific right-wing government has got into power,” Super Furry Animals’ Gruff Rhys told the webcams beaming their London show across the globe the following night. “Get angry, and stay angry for five years.” The old guard, it seemed, was up in arms, but where was rock’s youthful protest voice? Even a new act as tub-thumping as punk band Slaves, whose new single Cheer Up London attacks the hopelessness of life in the capital, kept relatively quiet. When chants of “we all hate the Tories” went up at their show in Manchester two days after the election singer Isaac Holman instructed the crowd to “leave the politics out of this, I’m fed up of hearing about it.”
‘No comment’
At first glance, it looked like the new generation of musicians was confirming the widespread belief that politics have been media trained out of music, with stars being advised to avoid the subject at all costs. After the Britpop set lived to regret turning up at Number 10 to celebrate the election of Tony Blair in 1997, feeling let down by Labour’s 13 years in office, the traditional alliance between alternative rock and left-wing politics was fractured. Most musicians took a side step when questioned on current affairs: “I don’t know enough to comment” became a familiar refrain. Voicing any opinion, their labels no doubt warned them, came with risks. Take the cautionary tale of Frank Turner, that previously unthinkable concept of a punk singer who’d attended the UK’s most exclusive establishment public school of Eton alongside princes and future party leaders. When a Guardian journalist dug up old interviews in which Turner had described the ultra-right British National Party as a “hard left party” and claimed “socialism’s retarded”, Turner received death threats online. Faced with no mainstream party to represent them and dire consequences for expressing ‘incorrect’ views, most artists passed over their chance to influence the direction of their generation and kept schtum.
Even on Twitter, that bastion of digital youth outbursts, it was the older acts that typed loudest. The Charlatans’ Tim Burgess likened the Tories to an awful band “that nobody actually admits to liking, but they always seem to be in the charts” and foul-mouthed punk poets Sleaford Modsunleashed a stream of sweary tweets at the Cameron regime demanding “we don’t want work….We want freedom”.
Generation game
Among younger acts, response to the election result ran surprisingly against type. The indie rock community barely went further than tweeting a supportive picture of Ed Milliband holding their first NME cover (Peace) or simply encouraging their fans to vote (Wolf Alice) – the most revolutionary it got was Jack Lawrence Brown from White Lies claiming he was “heading to the pub for 5 years” when the result was known. But the real shock was how politically open the traditionally issue-shy pop world had become. Charlotte Church took to the streets to address an anti-austerity rally in Cardiff “I’ll miss the NHS” tweeted La Roux’s Elly Jackson; “we must take to the streets!” added Paloma Faith. The openness of social media had freed such acts from their traditionally tight PR reigns and the accepted norms of political pop commentary were overturned. Rock shrugged, pop revolted.
Of course the more outspoken rock activists had their say. Rou Reynolds of politically charged rap rockers Enter Shikari tweeted extensively throughout the election, voicing his support of the anti-austerity marches that descended on Whitehall in the wake of the result and posting pictures of policemen gesturing back at demonstrators with the caption “HEEEEY MACARENA!”. Tom Clarke of The Enemy posted a lengthy article on the band’s Facebook page attacking the anti-EU United Kingdom Independence Party and cynical career politicians. “Elections used to be won and lost on values and ideals,” he wrote, “on visions for the future direction of nations. Political parties used to represent opposing sides of big societal issues. The right would fight the left, everybody was clear on where they stood and Billy Bragg would write a song about it all. Now the two main parties are so closely aligned on most key issues that elections have become a competition to find out who's most attractive when eating a bacon sandwich and Russell Brand tells us not to vote for anyone.”
There were also signs of subversion among some of the newest alternative acts – the likes of quirk-pop hopeful Oscar Scheller (“Let’s all move to Canada”), Leeds psych freaks Hookworms (“Well done everyone. You’ll all be burning books next”) and rising girl gang The Big Moon all waded in to the flood of post-election dejection online. But in all, the 2015 general election saw a distinct shift of step in music’s eternal shuffle around the beartrap-strewn political dancefloor. Alternative rock stepped back from the front-line, assuming the roles of careworn commentator or apathetic objector to the whole sorry circus. Meanwhile, the pop stars manned the barricades, shouting rebellion to their Twitter millions. Which suggests an intriguing possibility. Could we be about to see an era when mainstream pop fans become a politically-connected force worth reckoning with?
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