Don’t leave me this way

Brexit is ugly but we still have the music

This article was first published in the Spring-Summer edition of Fórsa magazine (Issue no.6), which is now circulating in workplaces and which you can download HERE.

Our UK neighbours may be losing their minds over Brexit and the ‘debate’ hasn’t been great for Anglo-Irish relations. Rather than despair, we compiled a list of tunes celebrating the best of British music with a bit of a Brexit theme. RAYMOND CONNOLLY, BERNARD HARBOR and NIALL SHANAHAN fashion a musical backstop with no legally binding guarantees. You can listen to our Spotify playlist here which includes bonus tracks nominated by our editorial team.

The Specials  The Lunatics
A reinvention of Fun Boy Three’s 1982 showstopper The Lunatics have taken over the asylum. Originally written at the height of nuclear war tension, the song is possessed by the spectre of institutionalised power-mongers ready to hit the dreaded nuclear switch. “I see a clinic full of cynics / who want to twist the people’s wrist” to a bossa nova shuffle is a sensational mix. It’s from The Specials new album Encore. A fantastic take on modern day Britain, a must-have record. The perfect going away gift. (RC)

UNKLE (featuring Thom Yorke) Rabbit In Your Headlights (1998)
“Washed down the toilet / Money to burn / Fat bloody fingers are sucking your soul away” – There is a beautiful fatalism at work here, as Radiohead’s Thom Yorke emits an existential howl into the void as the music builds. That’s the sound of a no-deal Brexit. (NS)

The Kinks Days (1968)
“Thank you for the days / those endless days those sacred days you gave me.” The sweetest pop song of them all. Even in the dying embers of the telephone landline in the ‘90s, the great institution that was the Yellow Pages chose Days as its signature tune. It could be about a loved one, a lost one, a hero, The Arsenal! Covered by Kirsty McColl is a compliment. Covered again by Elvis Costello classifies it as legendary. So as Britain prepares to walk alone, in musical terms, thank you for the days. (RC)

Dusty Springfield I Don’t Want To Hear It Anymore (1969)
Dusty anticipated “project fear” by almost 50 years with this genuinely tear-jerking plea from a young woman ground down by the neighbours’ tittle-tattle about her philandering man. (“He sure wasn’t thinking about her today”). Taken from the magnificent Dusty in Memphis, an album title that hints at a hankering for that Brexiteers’ fantasy, a sympathetic trade deal with the USA. (BH)

Blur This Is a Low (1994)
“Hit traffic on the Dogger Bank / Up the Thames to find a taxi rank / Sail on by with the tide / And go to sleep” – The lyrics come from a handkerchief emblazoned with names from the shipping forecast. There’s a theory that Britpop is partially responsible for Brexit but I’m not buying it. This is a sweeping paean to England, but it’s looking outward, pining for friendship. (NS)

Amy Winehouse Love Is A Losing Game (2006)
You know you’re doing something right when Prince covers your song and George Michael takes to Desert Island Discs to declare it his top track of all time. This is one of Britain’s greatest songs from perhaps its best-ever songstress. (I know that’s a bold claim but, hey, this is a Brexit-themed feature). It’s a game Amy wished she’d never played. “Oh, what a mess we made.” (BH)

The Who I’m a Boy  (1965)
“A couple have three girls but the fourth is a boy. The mother isn’t happy so she brings him up as a girl. He questions his gender identity. It was, like so much of Pete’s music, way ahead of its time” says Roger Daltrey. So when The Beatles were ooh-ing to Baby you can drive my car, Townshend was dealing with transgender issues way before society was ready to comprehend them. Hats off to British tolerance of the day. I’m not sure Ireland in 1965 would have been able for this, in the days when even condoms were illegal. (RC)

The Pretenders Brass In Pocket (1979)
They don’t come much better than this from Chrissie Hynde, and I’ll never forget seeing the band at a dangerously-packed Brighton Top Rank the week it topped the charts. A declaration of sassy, soon-to-be-squandered, solvency? Her UK audience will certainly have to dig deep into that pouch post-Brexit. (BH)

Joy Division New Dawn Fades  (1979)
“Directionless so plain to see” – Quite possibly the most Brexit song of the bunch. From my all-time favourite album Unknown Pleasures, it draws on the science fiction of JG Ballard and the crumbling architecture of post-industrial Manchester and channels that mood into a crop of timeless songs. The title captures the ironies of Brexit’s hollow promise. (NS)

Spice Girls Wannabe (1996)
This reached number one in 37 countries back in the mid-90s. A truly global power at one of those rare moments when it was hip to be a Brit. I hear it’s soon to be covered by the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, with added emphasis on the lyric “tell me what you want, what you really, really want.” (BH)

The Beat Too nice to talk to (1981)
Deftly combining ska and new wave, this captures the creativity and energy of Birmingham’s finest. Frantic guitar lines, walking bass and nailed-on saxophone make this a compulsory repeat play record, before the lyric even kicks in. Tense boy spots girl in club. Tense boy keeps drinking and is stuck to the ground while developing conversational lockjaw. Girl does a bunk. The story reminds me that our next door neighbours are as equally possessed by self-doubt as ourselves. I’m not sure this story could be told in the same way in mainland Europe. (RC)

(And we raise a toast to the greatest rude boy of them all, Ranking Roger, RIP. Roger Charlery, 21.02.1963 – 26.03.2019)

Massive Attack Angel (1998)
“Her eyes, she’s on the dark side” – A much abused track by TV current affairs editors as they insist upon using it every time they run a story about crack addiction or serial killers. Nevertheless, as an opener to the seminal Mezzanine by this soon-to-split-acrimoniously Bristol trio (though now partially reformed), its brooding bass-heavy menace draws you into the dark underbelly of the album’s ethereal world. (NS)

All Saints Black Coffee (2000)
I watched them perform a wonderful a cappella version on the Jools Holland show and immediately became an enduring fan of this quietly influential electro-R&B classic. It rightly reached number one in the UK, but achieved a more lukewarm number ten spot here in Ireland. Who’d have thought you’d be discouraged to be in Number Ten? (BH)

The Jam Down in a tube station at midnight (1978)
Probably the most evocative song written about modern London. In the days before the tragic 1987 Kings Cross underground station fire, strewn newspapers and sweet papers at the side of escalators were commonplace. A sad tale of a young married man going home with a takeaway curry and being beaten to a pulp by right wing yobs in a tube station. “They smelt of pubs /and Wormwood Scrubs /and too many right wing meetings”. A work of true genius. I’m not sure it could be recreated today. How would you fit Oyster card and tap your Nat West card here into a lyric? (RC)

Elbow Grace Under Pressure (2003)
“We still believe in love so fu*k you” – A defiant and hopeful note. The refrain of this secular hymn was recorded live at the Glastonbury Festival in 2002, as sung by the audience during the band’s set. I like to imagine a more enlightened generation gathering at some point in the future to sing this defiant refrain while demanding a People’s Vote. (NS)

This article was first published in the Spring-Summer edition of Fórsa magazine (Issue no.6), which is now circulating in workplaces and which you can download HERE.