When the Politics gets in the way of the Pop. And a dozen great times it did not.
Also: why Facebook is shit, but I just can't quit.
Late in his incredible recent book Listen: On Music, Sound And Us, author Michel Faber comes to the defense/defence of Morrissey. Given that Faber has already dedicated chapters of his book to confronting historical white supremacy in rock criticism, and the endemic mansplaining of musical Wikipedia, even the most socially liberal of readers feels duty bound to hear him out.
Or, rather, to read him out, because Faber’s argument is that almost nobody is hearing Morrissey the musician anymore due the noise of a different kind around Morrissey’s politics. He cites the media furor surrounding the singer’s 2019 covers album California Son. In particular he references the review by The Guardian’s Laura Snapes (born after The Smiths broke up, he notes with the attention to detail that renders the book so compelling overall), who opens it condemning Morrissey for sporting a far-right (UK) political party badge on a (US) TV show a week earlier, a lengthy single sentence which concludes “it is impossible to hear a number of the covers on California Son in anything but a chilling light.”1 Faber also quotes a review in Canada’s Exclaim which likewise takes Morrissey (the man, not the musician) to task for his political statements, and concludes the review with an instruction: “Do not listen to this album!”
I did not see either review at the time, though I did read this article the Guardian published about the California Son project as soon as it was announced, two months ahead of release, which didn’t so much as take Morrissey’s invited North American collaborators to task as to judge them in the paper’s court of public opinion, receiving a duly contrite apology from Broken Social Scene singer Ariel Engle for daring to collaborate with an established artist without checking their political profile first. (The article begrudgingly notes that the singer’s political views about his UK homeland don’t tend to register with his following across the Americas.)
Either way, the stigma stuck. I did not listen to California Son. I confess that, like many former fans, I find it hard to distinguish Morrissey’s current public persona from his current music, so I take the easy option. I opt out. There’s no shortage of music about, after all.
Michel Faber understands my kneejerk reaction – “Melodious noises are not the only thing he brings into the world” he writes of the singer’s often simply odious comments (and actions) – but believes that cancel culture has us openly closing our ears to music that might otherwise have merit, and which has often provided prior meaning in our lives. This chapter, it should be noted, is called “Impossible To Hear: On Rolf Harris, R. Kelly, and Morrissey.”
And to really prove his point, he gets intricate about one of the cover versions on California Son: Joni Mitchell’s “Don’t Interrupt The Sorrow,” on which the synth player, the celebrated Roger Manning, Jr., for “barely a second” introduces a sound that Faber classes as somewhere between Fender Rhodes and Moog, a sound that Faber believes is a conscious nod to one heard elsewhere on the same Mitchell album that contained the song “Don’t Interrupt The Sorrow.”
But he can’t prove this. And the reason he can’t prove it is because “no journalist is ever going to ask if that Moog is an homage. Instead… they will ask Morrissey what the hell he was thinking on the 15th of May 2019, when he wore a badge promoting a fringe political party on a late-night talk show.”
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I feel exactly the same way about the media furor currently surrounding groups on the opposite side of the political persuasion: primarily Kneecap, though given what’s gone on in the last week, I should probably add the name Bob Vylan. I have been reading about Kneecap’s political stance for what feels like about a year now; I have read nothing about their music. In May, when I went back to England for the FA Cup Final, the “noise” about their stance over Palestine and Israel had grown to the point of potential media blackouts, festival cancellations and/or visa problems, and Eamonn Forde that week in The Big Issue forewarned of the dangerous pitfalls of their controversy being played out on social media. But while this was clearly stated as an “opinion” piece and so the music was not the remit, nor was it mentioned.
The social media storm pre-Glastonbury then led to personal endorsements of the act’s political stance by people I know personally and respect, including Billy Bragg and Johnny Marr. Neither commented on their music. Post-Glastonbury I was pointed via socials to a review in Rolling Stone now behind a paywall, but which I read in full and which detailed the act’s on-stage comments and subsequent reactions - but not their music. And so loud has the noise risen in this past week following Glastonbury, that the Clash Fans Against The Right Facebook page went so far as to declare (and battle comes down?) that “this group stands in 100% solidarity with Kneecap and Bob Vylan,” and that “anybody who objects… is welcome to leave the group.” Neither “solidarity” nor “objects” is defined, but I presume it’s not solidarity with or objection to the music that they are concerned about, because they have not been talking about it.
While 1976 Joe Strummer may have been similarly didactic about things, his quote from that year which is a key part of The Clash fans’ group’s excellent film, On Resistance Street - “We’re anti-fascist, we’re anti-violence, we're anti-racist and we’re pro-creative” - did not say The Clash were anti-discussion. And while I can’t prove it any more than Faber can prove whether that synth sound is an homage, I do suspect that the Strummer who left us so early, in 2022, may have preferred we sit around his campfire at Glastonbury and try and talk through our differences instead.
Throughout all this, I have still to come across a single review – positive or negative - of Kneecap’s music. I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THEY SOUND LIKE. Well, that’s not entirely true. The Rolling Stone review put the words “Irish trio” in their sub-header and included the photo below up top, so maybe I should consider that they consider themselves rappers. But are they? Or are they not? Do they sound like Pop Will Eat Itself, The Beastie Boys, or 3rd Bass? Or not? Are they any good? Or are they not? Does anyone care? I suspect not. Because NOBODY IS TALKING ABOUT KNEECAP’S MUSIC.
There is a part of me who says: it was always this way. Humans have always shouted at each other; the art has often been lost in the controversy surrounding it. Plenty of people hated the Sex Pistols without ever hearing them, and some literally bought into the controversy: my late mother gave me money to go buy “God Save The Queen” in the summer of 1977 because she wanted to hear what the fuss was all about for herself. (Famously, the shop was sold out, I bought The Jam’s “All Around The World” instead and thus did my life change.)
But there is a bigger part of me who knows it is worse now than ever. And that social media has much to do with it. As Forde predicted in the Big Issue, I can’t open Facebook right now without someone quoting someone else quoting someone from Kneecap, or from Bob Vylan, or from a newspaper about them, and if it’s not them, it’s the wider politics surrounding this, the historic mess of prejudice and hatred amid the background of religious bigotry that has riven not just Jews and Muslims from each other, but also Jews and Christians, and Muslims and Christians, and if you deign to remember such atrocities, Hutus and Tutsis, and which white Christian settlers of the Americas used to justify their genocide of indigenous peoples and subsequently slavery of those who remained and Black people from Africa. And just because you may believe yourself to be an atheist, does not mean you aren’t takeing an -ist view with your hastily published stance(s).
All of this vitriol is social media catnip, and forgive me for stating the obvious, but the Zuckerbergs of this world get rich off of ensuring we see the controversial stuff, because the more we rise to the challenge and post our (often hasty, kneejerk) thoughts and responses, the more traffic they generate, the more ad dollars they collect, the more data they gather.
I don’t have great pearls of wisdom to offer here, except to say what I believe has been empirically proven in the platform’s brief existence: You can’t change the world on Facebook. At least not for the better; you can certainly make it worse.
And yet I can’t quit Facebook. While I stubbornly resist jumping into the political fray, I cannot bring myself to stop visiting, let alone to delete my account. Annoyingly, Facebook is the modern equivalent of a global phone book and Yellow Pages combined, and has helped me find people for any manner of reasons and subsequently converse with them via Direct Message. Though I rarely return the favo(u)r, I can wake up on April 27 each year knowing that with the time difference, I will have multiple online birthday greetings waiting for me from the UK and beyond. Once a decade, when I win a race, I can post about it and most people will be congratulatory - and as with the birthday wishes, I’m not beyond the odd ego-rub, I admit.
There are commercial reasons for sticking around, also. On a good day, when I beat the algorithms, I might just be able to get a few more people to listen to the music I make. And on a rare but very good day, when the stars align and FB somehow does not relegate Substack links to the bottom of its distribution feed, I can connect with potential readers. This happened two weeks ago with my feature on American Hardcore, though instantaneous kneejerk reactions on the Subcultures, Popular Music and Social Change site confirmed all the worst tendencies of small-minded social media (non-)thinking, a downer partly relieved by the 200 or so people who found their way to the article from that link, several of whom then took time out to post much more informed comments.2
So. Michel Faber’s discussion of California Son’s music inspired me to finally listen to Morrissey’s covers album, six years after release. The synth sound he discusses is instantly identifiable and much of the rest of the album is notable. In fact, I wrote three paragraphs about it for the first draft of this particular piece before concluding it is tangential to my major purpose today. What I will say is that a review should be objective as well as subjective, and so while Thompson, here in Exclaim, may have found it “boring” and “hypocritical,” on no purely musical grounds can California Son possibly be considered a one-star album, as per Snapes in the Guardian.
I am similarly willing to be talked into listening to Kneecap. But not a single one of the many people I follow/read/listen to has yet encouraged me to do so. The comments section is open if you know enough about their music to have that part of the discussion. (This is another occasion where I wish that Substack would allow comments from subscribers only.)
In the meantime, I have been inspired to dig out and listen to multiple examples of where the music carried a powerful message, but the message never got in the way of the equally powerful music. No doubt you will have your own favo(u)rites, and the comments section is open for that as well. Deciding to share my choices as videos, my only real criteria was that there had to be a video for you to watch.
This eliminated Carbon/Silicon’s “Oil Well,” which seems especially relevant this month and would have allowed Mick Jones into the playlist alongside his old Clash band mate Joe Strummer, included here covering Bob Marley in his final released recording. It also eliminated Brother D’s “How We Gonna Make The Black Nation Rise?” which came back across my turntable this week, and a couple of fave James album tracks. But I think the examples speak for themselves, and I’ll lead with one of the most inspirational songs and videos I’ve heard and seen in the last decade. Enjoy. And be good to each other in person and online, pretty please.
Having located the review, I can add that Snapes then gives the album a single star. Nothing if not consistent in her denigration of Morrissey, she slated his next collection of original songs a year later also, though awarded this one a second star out of five.
The first comment, however, was a negative kneejerk reaction posted within 3 minutes of the feature going online, indicating that the commentee had not read it. Fellow Substack writers, yes this does indicate the platform’s slow but steady descent into social media land.
The irony is that the newspapers, generally those with right-wing agendas, that draw attention to acts whose lyrics and behaviour they condemn, invariably succeed in increasing their reach which in turn adds to their popularity (and earnings).
I'm a little surprised you haven't heard Kneecap; you should certainly watch the doc. about them - it may give you some deeper context...and you'll hear the music!