Why do populists so often use the work of artists who despise them? Because they don’t have any good songs of their own
The beauty of writing a song that revolves around a universal idea is that people feel like it could be theirs: it voices the way they’re feeling. The first time I heard my band Chumbawamba’s hit Tubthumping played at the ground of my local football club, I was standing at the urinal in the toilet underneath the stands, pissing the afternoon away with scores of other blokes, ready for the match. I walked up to my seat and watched people singing along to what had instantly become, in that moment at least, their song.
Tubthumping belongs to the guests at the wedding who sing it in celebration. It belongs to the Italian anti-fascists who sing it in defiance on a demonstration. It belongs to cancer patients going through chemotherapy, seeing every successful bout of treatment as a personal victory. I know that all these people have taken the song as theirs, because they write to tell us. This is how songs become “folk songs”: songs that belong to our shared histories, not to a single version performed by a single artist.
Boff Whalley is a musician and writer, and the former lead guitarist of Chumbawamba
