They Gave Me A Lamp – Public Service Broadcasting
This sweetly soothing instrumental builds to a euphoric climax on the back of rousing brass and angelic backing vocals but the emotional weight is carried not by the growing grandeur of the arrangement but by the words of two working class women from the valleys of South Wales recalling their own humble contribution to an historic struggle for workers’ rights…
Running the World – Jarvis Cocker
In the summer of 2006, little had been heard from Jarvis Cocker in a while. After more than 20 years as Pulp frontman, he was dropped by Island Records following the release of Pulp’s final album We Love Life in 2001. He had dabbled, almost anonymously, as half of a very low-key indie duo going under the name Relaxed Muscle, but the project had petered out after releasing an album in 2003. So when Running the World came along it ought to have been a big event in the music calendar…
Walls Come Tumbling Down – The Style Council
Former Jam frontman and “Modfather” Paul Weller was determined that The Style Council’s 1985 UK Top Ten hit Walls Come Tumbling Down should be a “balls-out soul tune” from the Motown mould and so you could be forgiven for failing to notice at first that this hip-swaying Eighties pop hit is a red-blooded, revolutionary protest song with the very positive and provocative refrain of “Governments crack and systems fall / ‘Cause unity is powerful / Lights go out, walls come tumbling down”…
Mother – Idles
Listening to this furious, caustic, industrial NSFW anthem is like witnessing the nervous breakdown of the British underclass crushed under the boot of an uncaring state. But amongst the confused ramblings that take in escalating working hours, sexual violence, social inequality and media sedation, there’s an embittered clarity – a message for a jaded generation sick of the machinations of politicians in their ivory towers…