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50 new things in 2023, part 15/50
I almost forgot to try a new thing this week! But I remembered at the end of my weekend, and listened to Billy Bragg's 2021 album The Million Things That Never Happened last night.
I was a huge fan of Billy Bragg in the late 80s. (So much of a fan that a friend once somehow got me a pre-release bootleg cassette of Workers' Playtime so that I wouldn't miss the release while I was studying abroad. It turned out to be perfectly possible to buy the album in France, but I was happy to hear it early.)
Round about 1991's Don't Try This At Home, I started falling out of love with Bragg's music. The great strength of Bragg's early songwriting was his gift for story, and in particular for getting his political points across via story, without being obvious or preachy. And even the songs that were obvious were sharp and clever. But by the early 90s it felt like Bragg was giving in to two fatal impulses: didacticism/moral-drawing, and Big Anthems.
Around the same time I got very interested in Irish traditional music anyway, and stopped listening to rock much for several years. I came back to rock but never to Bragg.
He reappeared on my radar via Twitter, of all things. He's been doing very good work there (and offline) standing up for trans people and sex workers against the likes of J K Rowling. If you're on Twitter, he's worth following.
Anyway, I decided to give his latest a listen. I'm afraid I continue to like his politics better than his post-1980s music. Thematically there's a lot interesting going on: aging, the difficulty of being an older activist seeing young people take new approaches, the transformation of politics by social media, and some looks at depression that feel very personal. But the music and lyrics don't rise up to the themes. Even the best songs have moments of cringe-inducing banal lyrical obviousness, and there are musical choices I can't comprehend, such as the twangy country-and-western sound of a lot of the songs (it feels like musical cosplay) and the painful overuse of a background chorus of women's voices (especially on "Good Days and Bad Days," which is a quiet, affecting song about depression and, specifically, isolation right up until that chorus kicks in and ruins it).
The best song, by far, is the title track, which reflects on the bits of our lives we've lost to the COVID pandemic without ever saying those words. I also enjoyed "Reflections on the Mirth of Creativity," the most joyful song on the album as "The Million Things That Never Happened" is the most elegiac. "Reflections" is a jaunty, boppy look at a day when things go right for the first time in a long time, a feeling we could all use more of.
Some other songs are half-good. "Freedom Doesn't Come for Free," is a funny but over-obvious tribute to the (true) story of a bunch of libertarians who tried to create their own utopia in New Hampshire and predictably failed, while "Pass It On" begins with the aftermath of a parent's death and seems like it's going to be a successor to "The Million Things," but goes very wrong when it tries to be uplifting and anthemic. "Lonesome Ocean" is slight but nice, which is kind of a relief amidsst so many songs that want too badly to be important.
The truth is, a lot of musicians peak early and then decline. How they cope with that decline matters. I may not want to listen to much of his music, but I'm glad that Billy Bragg is still around and still (unlike my other 1980s idol, Morrissey) a person worth admiring.
I was a huge fan of Billy Bragg in the late 80s. (So much of a fan that a friend once somehow got me a pre-release bootleg cassette of Workers' Playtime so that I wouldn't miss the release while I was studying abroad. It turned out to be perfectly possible to buy the album in France, but I was happy to hear it early.)
Round about 1991's Don't Try This At Home, I started falling out of love with Bragg's music. The great strength of Bragg's early songwriting was his gift for story, and in particular for getting his political points across via story, without being obvious or preachy. And even the songs that were obvious were sharp and clever. But by the early 90s it felt like Bragg was giving in to two fatal impulses: didacticism/moral-drawing, and Big Anthems.
Around the same time I got very interested in Irish traditional music anyway, and stopped listening to rock much for several years. I came back to rock but never to Bragg.
He reappeared on my radar via Twitter, of all things. He's been doing very good work there (and offline) standing up for trans people and sex workers against the likes of J K Rowling. If you're on Twitter, he's worth following.
Anyway, I decided to give his latest a listen. I'm afraid I continue to like his politics better than his post-1980s music. Thematically there's a lot interesting going on: aging, the difficulty of being an older activist seeing young people take new approaches, the transformation of politics by social media, and some looks at depression that feel very personal. But the music and lyrics don't rise up to the themes. Even the best songs have moments of cringe-inducing banal lyrical obviousness, and there are musical choices I can't comprehend, such as the twangy country-and-western sound of a lot of the songs (it feels like musical cosplay) and the painful overuse of a background chorus of women's voices (especially on "Good Days and Bad Days," which is a quiet, affecting song about depression and, specifically, isolation right up until that chorus kicks in and ruins it).
The best song, by far, is the title track, which reflects on the bits of our lives we've lost to the COVID pandemic without ever saying those words. I also enjoyed "Reflections on the Mirth of Creativity," the most joyful song on the album as "The Million Things That Never Happened" is the most elegiac. "Reflections" is a jaunty, boppy look at a day when things go right for the first time in a long time, a feeling we could all use more of.
Some other songs are half-good. "Freedom Doesn't Come for Free," is a funny but over-obvious tribute to the (true) story of a bunch of libertarians who tried to create their own utopia in New Hampshire and predictably failed, while "Pass It On" begins with the aftermath of a parent's death and seems like it's going to be a successor to "The Million Things," but goes very wrong when it tries to be uplifting and anthemic. "Lonesome Ocean" is slight but nice, which is kind of a relief amidsst so many songs that want too badly to be important.
The truth is, a lot of musicians peak early and then decline. How they cope with that decline matters. I may not want to listen to much of his music, but I'm glad that Billy Bragg is still around and still (unlike my other 1980s idol, Morrissey) a person worth admiring.