Can William Hague Save Pop Music?

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Marilyn Manson is on record as saying he would vote for Bush so that things would get violent and ugly and art would therefore become more interesting. Personally I find this argument about as convincing as that of Tony Blackburn, who advised that we voted Tory in the '80s to preserve pirate soul radio stations (don't ask - the '80s were an odd time). Still - Blair in power, the world collapsing, and we have Star'Say and Hearsailor as our minstrels of wisdom. Can the return of 11th-century barbarism that would be guaranteed with a Tory election victory provoke our sleeping muses into making angry, passionate and lateral art?

Me? I'm voting Plantagenet.

― Marcello Carlin, Monday, 23 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Voting Tory round here is effectively voting for the Countryside Alliance. You look in their faces and realise that they still hate having to *pay* the three people left working in the fields.

Which might encourage reanimations of anti-ruling-class protest songs a la Ultramarine / Wyatt. That's not enough reason, though. The Lib Dems have my vote. Don't even mention Billy Bragg's fundamentally wrong-headed scheme.

― Robin Carmody, Monday, 23 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

an interesting one... don't forget that during the FATCHER years we not only had post-punk, Creation records, the birth of rave etc etc but infinitely *more so* power ballads and self congratulatory air punching shoulderpadded ROCK just squealing to find its way into corporate sales conferences in the bit just before the VP comes on to the podium. I remember it well my friend, and Snub TV was like a breath of fresh, jasmine scented air in a suffocating, pitch black mineshaft.

It was a time of heaven and hell, and I'm not sure at all whether that makes it better than now. And Arsesailor are possibly the living paradigm of impossibly shite, but Carter USM were worse, and so were Bucks Fizz, for that matter.

― Peter, Tuesday, 24 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

and another thing - violent and ugly society = good art? So Orson Welles would tell us in the Third Man, but isn't this a bit of a cliche, didn't the early 90s do violent and ugly to death a bit? (Mapplethorpe, Koons, etc etc)

― Peter, Tuesday, 24 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Koons violent and ugly? Lovely, I'd have said, in a kind of exaggerated, sickly way. But yeah, certainly in art/photography/movies I think a kind of violence set the tone for a lot of the 1990s - some art critic or other talked about the "urban pastoral" - the way certain images of inner-city life and fashion came to stand for a sort of grittily realistic evocation of the 'good life' circa now in the way shepherds and shepherdesses had been a peasant fantasia for romantic artists to dream about.

This argument popped up a lot last year with the US election - oh shit Bush got in but at least now we'll get some good music etc. It's not an argument I particularly buy (particularly cause I think 97-01 have been great years for pop) - it seems to me to be born out of the same rather desperate hunting for a Rebel Rock grail which renders most music criticism being done currently so irrelevant.

― Tom, Tuesday, 24 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I don't think so. Musically I loved the early eighties (under thatcher) but hated the mid-late '80's (also under thatcher) . Obviously the kind of political "leaders" we get has some effect of art/music etc, but I don't think its in terms of better or worse quality. I think a good imaginative artist wil produce good work whatever the circumstancer- -within reason, onviously.

x0x0

― norman fay, Tuesday, 24 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

The answer is no. Writing songs is a labour that you just have to go through. Living under a Tory government is another, and separate, kind of ordeal. The first has its own challenges (and rewards) to which one doesn't need to add the misery of the second (which has no rewards).

― the pinefox, Thursday, 26 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

one month passes...

After 100+ days of pResident Bush in the Oval Office, making a royal mess of things, and the music scene being relatively the same as it was before he was installed by the 5 Supreme Court Justices from Hell, does anyone still hold the opinion that "crap politics=good music"? The only ones I knew making that argument over here pre-Bush were Naderites, which should tell you everything one needs to know about the truth of this assertion.

Let this be a lesson to the Brits before they vote!

― Tadeusz Suchodolski, Sunday, 27 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Hey, c'mon Tadeusz - be fair. 100 days isn't very long! You can't expect miracles. The music scene is still wrestling with the problems inherited from the previous administration. Years of underinvestment etc.

― Nick, Tuesday, 29 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

So, can William Hague *now* save pop music? He might have a bit more time on his hands in which to do it.

― the pinefox, Saturday, 9 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Doesn't look like it, does it? Nor will Portillo save it. Seems as though it's down to us.

― Marcello Carlin, Saturday, 9 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

one year passes...

If I believe, others believe.

― Ed, Saturday, 20 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link

eleven years pass...

the united kingdom is one of the most open-hearted countries in the world

― A Skanger Barkley (nakhchivan), Thursday, 28 November 2013 19:37 (ten years ago) link

william hague has a terrible case of vocal fry

― A Skanger Barkley (nakhchivan), Thursday, 28 November 2013 19:38 (ten years ago) link

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