Left Behinds

The anti-andrewsullivan.com. Or, the Robin Hood (Maid Marian?) of bright pink Blogger blogs.

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

A Different Different Class

This has been my jam for the past few days. He has now written the two best pop songs ever written about class.



There are two versions on Youtube, a mock-karaoke and a live version. The live performance is probably only for die-hard fans.

I wish all pop music were like this, seriously.

UPDATE:

What the hell, here are the lyrics.

Well did you hear, there's a natural order?
Those most deserving will end up with the most?
That the cream cannot help but always rise up to the top,

Well I say, “Shit floats”.

If you thought things had changed,
Friend, you'd better think again,
Bluntly put, in the fewest of words:

Cunts are still running the world,
Cunts are still running the world.

Now the working classes are obsolete,
They are surplus to society's needs,
So let 'em all kill each other,
And get it made overseas.
That's the word don't you know,
From the guys that's running the show,
Lets be perfectly clear boys and girls,

Cunts are still running the world,
Cunts are still running the world.

Oh feed your children on crayfish and lobster tails,
Find a school near the top of the league,
In theory I respect your right to exist,
I will kill you if you move in next to me,

Ah, it stinks, it sucks, it's anthropologically unjust,
Oh but the takings are up by a third,
Cunts are still running the world,
Cunts are still running the world.
(Cunts are still running the world)
(Cunts are still running the world)

The free market is perfectly natural,
Do you think that I'm some kind of dummy?
It's the ideal way to order the world;
“Fuck the morals, does it make any money?”

And if you don't like it? Then leave.
Or use your right to protest on the street,
Yeah, use your right but don't imagine that it's heard,


Not whilst cunts are still running the world,
Cunts are still running the world,
Cunts are still running the world,
Cunts are still running the world,
Cunts are still running the world,
Cunts are still running the world,

Cunts are still running... the world.

8 Comments:

  • At 2:42 PM, Blogger Antid Oto said…

    This was one of the new songs Kiki covered last Wednesday.

     
  • At 2:45 PM, Blogger Solomon Grundy said…

    The perfect storm of my favorite cultural production.

     
  • At 5:06 PM, Blogger Eustacia Vye said…

    It pains me to say but -- it's a bit easy, isn't it? Tired and flat? Where's the wit? And the sniping about feeding and schooling the children in high style is hypocritical. The ever vigilant British tabloids took special note when the pregnant Cockers booked a spot at the Portland Hospital, probably the most expensive maternity hospital in the country (it's where Victoria Beckham goes for her birthings-cum-tummy tucks). He's married to a fashion stylist with one of those hyphenated names, for Christ's sake. Nothing wrong with any of this, but I would imagine it would excuse you from writing songs about the stink of the ruling classes.

    I still love you, Jarvis.

     
  • At 5:39 PM, Blogger Solomon Grundy said…

    Heh I was hoping you'd weigh in.

    OK, it's not subtle, and I may have been hyperbolic when I called it the greatest songer ever written about class.

    But I am desperate for a cultural shift in which the free market's flaws are popularly discussed. It's one salvo against 40 years of right-wing "screw you hippies" propaganda. Have you ever tried talking about neoliberalism or class with strangers at a party? There's a variation of Godwin's Law in which it's inevitable that within a few sentences someone will say either "you almost sound like a socialist" or, if they're generous, "but Russia [sic] proved that communism doesn't work" and then giggle, signalling the subconsciously policed limit of discourse. Every single time.

    But maybe not in Jarvis' UK. I'm hoping.

    Oh, and as far as him marrying a stylist: yes, you're right, it's one of history's cruelest injustices that he didn't marry either you or me in 1995. But we did OK.

     
  • At 5:53 PM, Blogger Solomon Grundy said…

    Also: I disagree that being bourgeois "would excuse you from writing songs about the stink of the ruling classes."

    No way! The whole point of talking about this stuff is to appeal to everyone's sense of injustice. I would hope that Jarvis, pace Anya Kamenetz, would always maintain some perspective and never use himself as a case study, for example. If he wrote a song about how tough it is to be rich rather than super-rich (cf. about a million articles in the NYT the past year or two) I would throw my copy of Different Class onto a bonfire. But I absolutely love that he's stuck to his political guns and written a song about the myth of meritocracy.

    The movement needs Jarvis and other bourgeoisie with hearts of gold. Eustacia Vye, the movement needs you!

     
  • At 5:57 PM, Blogger Solomon Grundy said…

    I mean, look at how cute he is with his fist in the air muttering "thank you, smash the system" as he recedes into a gingerbread house. It's so adorably British: irony with a heart.

     
  • At 1:26 PM, Blogger Eustacia Vye said…

    Before calling others out on their personal choices, one has to make sure one is not throwing stones in glass gingerbread houses. That said, I don't think I would have a problem with said stone-throwing if it were a better song.

     
  • At 4:05 PM, Blogger Antid Oto said…

    Feeding and educating one's children in high style is only a problem if you promulgate an ideology that claims education is the key to success in an era of global capitalism. It isn't, and that's the point of the song. Jarvis isn't one of the cunts running the world for his own benefit while claiming everything is actually fair.

     

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