I seem to have a bit of a backlog of these columns given that this one is about the May election. Never mind, not as if I predicted a winner…

Woody Guthrie’s ‘Dustbowl Ballads’ is 75 years old. For the uninitiated, Guthrie was a pioneering US protest singer, a prototype for Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen. Ok, for the uninitiated, a protest singer is a musician who combines politics with popular song.
But you could be forgiven for asking the question, as in the run-up to this election, musicians making political statements have been a rarity.
It’s not always been this way. From Guthrie’s acolytes, including John Lennon and Joe Strummer, to a whole swathe of punk rockers and anarchists, we arrived at Rock Against Racism – a response to a drunken rant by Eric Clapton – and Red Wedge, formed by Billy Bragg and a Paul Weller still guilty at his youthful vote for Margaret Thatcher.
Nowadays, the biggest news is celebrity mouthpiece Noel Gallagher having a pop at Nigel Farage. The older and more sensible (ahem) Gallagher brother has promised to vote for “something ludicrous”, but not UKIP, Having given up on Labour he’s presumably still embarrassed by ‘Cool Britannia’, which saw 1990s pop and politics make for very queasy bedfellows.
So what’s happened to political pop? It may well be that there is less to protest about – gay rights have improved since the days of Boy George and Bronski Beat, the battle for the pits was lost, but at least Nelson Mandela was freed. But Thatcher is still the biggest bogeywoman, as publicity-hungry Madonna found when her latest publicity stunt – tweeting a liking for the deceased former PM – backfired horribly.
As Gallagher says: “You know where you were with Thatcher… the enemy”.
Nowadays the right and left are at times indistinguishable – a fact mocked in the Green Party election ‘boy band’ broadcast. Meanwhile, the politicians, and their spin doctors, have taken the lead, David Cameron professing a liking for the Jam, and The Smiths, much to the chagrin of the bands concerned.
Bizarrely, the most motivated pop singer is Paloma Faith, who has taken political writer Owen Jones on tour. And One Direction urged their 20M twitter followers to lobby George Osborne concerning corporation tax and foreign aid. But these are the exceptions. Super Furry Animals’ Cian Ciarán said: “I wish… Ed Sheeran, George Ezra and Sam Smith would join us.”
That seems unlikely.
Gallagher’s Britpop nemesis Damon Albarn – who turned down his Downing Street invite (too busy recording with Ken Livingstone) – cites the “selfie generation”. And it may well be that current acts only care about themselves. However, it’s more likely they feel they have too much to lose by nailing their colours to one particular mast. “Cool Britannia” has a lot to answer for.

Robert Pollard
Faulty Superheroes
(Fire)
Robert Pollard is as well-known for the length of his career as the brevity of his songs. The former leader of Guided By Voices has recorded over 40 albums in 25 years, but
crucially, most of these sported at least 20 tracks. The band’s high point, ‘Alien Lanes’, had 28 tunes, several under 30 seconds, and nothing conforming with the traditional three minute template for a pop song. Despite that, even the shortest of his songs is guaranteed to come with a whistleable hook.
Pollard, now solo, hasn’t quite sold out, but several of the tracks here are prog rock epics by comparison. The extended pop jangle of ‘What A Man’ could be a hit in anyone’s language, but it’s the woozy 90 second sprawl of ‘The Real Wilderness’ that shows where Pollard’s real talents lie. ****

(This piece originally appeared in the Burnley Express)