Margaret Thatcher-related songs??

[borneoman]

Are there any Margaret Thatcher-related songs that have been released thru the years?

I can think of a few...

Sinead O´Connor - Black Boys on Mopeds (Margaret Thatcher on tv/Shocked by the deaths that took place in Beijing / It seems strange that she should be offended / The same orders are given by her)

Frank Turner - Thatcher F**ed the Kids

Morrissey - Margaret on the Guillotine

any others?

[suedehead]

Evis Costello - Tramp The Dirt Down
The Beat - Stand Down Margaret

[ManicKangaroo]

V.I.M - Maggie's Last Party

[raliverpool]

Billy Bragg - Between The Wars
Kirsty MacColl - Free World
The Style Council - Walls Come Tumbling Down
Ewan MacColl - Daddy, What Did You Do In the Strike
Robert Wyatt (cover version of Elvis Costello penned) - Shipbuilding
Mogwai - George Square Thatcher Death Party
Alexei Sayle - Get Me Mrs Thatcher

Two songs about Thatcherism:

Pet Shop Boys - Opportunities (Let's Make Lots Of Money)
Harry Enfield - Loadsamoney (Doin' Up The House)

Or you could go old school regarding Thatcher "The Milk Snatcher"

Herman's Hermits - No Milk Today

[Shireblogger]

A significant proportion of both of UB40's first 2 albums, "Signing Off" and "Present Arms" was anti-Thatcherism, most notably the single "One In Ten".

[vastar iner]

Glen Matlock said that Thatcher was the truest beneficiary of punk. Punk's cri de coeur against the descent of seventies Britain was a visual manifestation that persuaded many that an Iron Lady was required to beat against the tide of disaster.

So it's perhaps fitting that the best song about Margaret Thatcher is a punk one.

Although I'm not entirely sure the sentiments are serious.

[Deleted]

"Oh my darling oh my darling oh my darling heseltine, you're a tosser you're a tosser and

you're just a tory swine"

www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyMNqSoHHhQ

[thehitparade]

I'd forgotten about 'Celebrate The Day After You' by the Blow Monkeys and Curtis Mayfield, but by the looks of the iTunes chart, so's everyone else.

[thehitparade]

Also Mrs Hitparade tweeted this one this morning, from the thinking person's Elvis Costello:

[Earl Purple]

It doesn't say the artist name there but it's Hefner.

[Deleted]

Has anyone suggested "Ghost Town" by The Specials yet?

[Whitneyfan]

I've got a CD given away with Mojo magazine one month called Mojo presents Panic which has a song credited to Wah featuring Pete Wylie, and it's called 'The Day That Margaret Thatcher Dies (A Party Song)'

[Whitneyfan]

Oh and there's 'No Clause 28' by Boy George, which was a song in protest of the bigoted law that Maggie Thatcher brought in in the 80's.

[vya]

"Life At A Top People's Health Farm", possibly the Style Council's weakest single (their atrocious take on "Promised Land" apart), was a kind of tale of Thatcherite go-getting achievement and entrepreneurship.

Mildly sarcastic, from this group, obviously (although...I vaguely recall that Paul Weller was adamantly *pro*-Thatcher in 1979), but it does include the line (such in the persona of someone who has made wealth by setting up and running the health farm of the song title) "Thank you Margaret Thatcher, May you never come to harm"

The Blow Monkeys (with Sylvia Tella) also did "Choice?", which was a pretty direct (and, unlike "Celebrate The Day After You", even, memorable) critique of numerous aspects of Thatcher's policies "It's your choice?....that's no choice at all. With your market forces and your 28 clauses...."

"Good Morning Britain" by Aztec Camera and Mick Jones was also a fairly long attack on various policies of Thatcher's Government, although a little more general rather than personal.

I'm surprised I can't think of overtly (or, even, implicitly) pro-Thatcher pop songs. Granted she was unpopular in other parts of the UK, but I lived in Essex for the whole of her premiership, where was was (and still is) admired, even loved. The less said about Depeche Mode's quasi-"political" lyrics from the mid-80s the better, though.

[Razzle Dazzle]

Communards - Breadline Britain
The The - Heartland
The Style Council -Money Go Round
Billy Bragg - Which Side Are You On?

[raliverpool]

More Thatcher "tunes":

Tears For Fears - Sowing The Seeds Of Love ”Politician granny with your high ideals; Have you no idea how the majority feels: So without love, and a promised land: We’re fools to the rules of a Government plan: Kick out the Style, bring back The Jam”
Fine Young Cannibals - Blue
Style Council - The Lodgers (She Was Only a Shopkeeper’s Daughter)
AR Kane - Baby Milksnatcher
Terry Edwards & The Scapegoats - Margaret Thatcher We Still Hate You
The Shamen - (She's) sh*tting On Britain
Duran Duran - Meet El Presidente
The Jam - A Town Called Malice
UB40 - Madame Medusa
New Model Army - Spirit of the Falklands
Pink Floyd – The Post War Dream
Pink Floyd – Get Your Filthy Hands Off My Desert
Pink Floyd – The Fletcher Memorial Home
Pink Floyd – Not Now John
The Levellers - Battle Of The Beanfield
The Levellers - Sell Out
Renaud – Madame Thatcher
The Men They Couldn’t Hang – Ironmasters… “And oh the Iron b*st*rd – She still gets her way!”
Christy Moore - Margaret Thatcher
Martin Carthy - Abeggin I Will Go "I am a Victorian value I’m enterprise poverty / Completely invisible to the state and a joy to Mrs T"
Aimee Mann – You’re With Stupid Now
Tin Machine - Maggie's Farm (live) (where David Bowie changed the Bob Dylan lyrics to include references to the Poll Tax and her lack of compassion)
Human League – The World Before Last
David Diamond – Some Talk Of Ronald Reagan
Deborah Holland – Pinochet and Margaret Thatcher
Thomas Dolby – May The Cube Be With You
Braintax – Decade on Panorama
Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine – Evil
Ragga Twins – Iron Lady
Attila The Stockbroker – Maggots 1 Maggie 0
Inner City Unit - Blue Rinse Haggard Robot
The Cancer Detectives - Confessions of A Greengrocer’s Daughter
The Neurotics – Fighting Times
Newtown Neurotics – Kick Out the Tories
Punk Legends Riot Squad - f*** the Tories
Kitchens of Distinction - Margaret’s Injection
The Grief Brothers - Goodbye Margaret

[thehitparade]

Isn't the Tin Machine version of 'Maggie's Farm' based on the Specials cover though? Obviously that doesn't mention the poll tax, but they deserve some credit for the concept.

[vastar iner]

Apr 13, 2013 11:39:10 GMT 1 vya said:

I'm surprised I can't think of overtly (or, even, implicitly) pro-Thatcher pop songs.

Not that surprising, given that most political popular music is rebelling against the status quo, rather than rejoicing in how everything's OK. As Yes Prime Minister pointed out, the only plays more boring than those criticizing the government are those praising the government. (I'm sure Max Bygraves did one mind.)

Plus there's the general trend that artists tend to the Left. Perhaps because they're more likely to get subsidies from Labour than Conservative. Perhaps because those on the Right tend to prefer business to leisure.

It could be argued that any song that evokes personal freedom against the dictates of society though is on the libertarian side of the divide. Which would include most (anarcho-)punk.

[vya]

Apr 13, 2013 17:12:53 GMT 1 vastar iner said:

Apr 13, 2013 11:39:10 GMT 1 vya said:

I'm surprised I can't think of overtly (or, even, implicitly) pro-Thatcher pop songs.

Not that surprising, given that most political popular music is rebelling against the status quo, rather than rejoicing in how everything's OK. As Yes Prime Minister pointed out, the only plays more boring than those criticizing the government are those praising the government. (I'm sure Max Bygraves did one mind.)

Plus there's the general trend that artists tend to the Left. Perhaps because they're more likely to get subsidies from Labour than Conservative. Perhaps because those on the Right tend to prefer business to leisure.

It could be argued that any song that evokes personal freedom against the dictates of society though is on the libertarian side of the divide. Which would include most (anarcho-)punk.

Indeed, this is all true (and certainly applied all the more strongly by the time that the Government of Thatcher was really the established order).  

But! there was something radical and rebellious about Thatcher (who in many regards was far closer to being a classical liberal than she was a traditional conservative - although there were elements of that too), and at least certain of the values and policies that she promoted,  that clearly had some kind of relationship (ambigious, but present, certainly) with libertarianism and individualism - although, it almost certainly was the case that the sort of people that this side of her appealed to were more inclined to start up their own business, rather than write songs or create art...  

There was something there of the rebel there about her - - and she really did smash "the old order" in all manner of ways: her government was close to revolutionary in its mandate to "roll back the frontiers of the state". Maybe it's all too geekily political (but maybe no more so than anything Billy Bragg wrote about...)  - but I think there are themes there (quite possibly of a mostly destructive nature...) that an artist with sufficient imagination could have got their teeth into and made something interesting of...

Although...yes....there is nothing more tedious and unengaging than "pro-government art" as a general rule...

[thehitparade]

I suppose there can be an element of groupthink going on in pop (as elsewhere of course), with people inclined to write songs about what it's fashionable to write about; and that means that even pop stars who sympathise(d) with Thatcherism wouldn't necessarily be willing to write about, even if they didn't think it was the status quo. Which is why we started this thread with Frank Turner, whose actual political views seem pretty close to hers, writing an anti-Thatch song.