Apparently there's an election going on. The most obvious impact this has on the music world is the much-maligned party campaign song. The trouble is that such songs are maligned for a reason: D:Ream's "Things Can Only Get Better" had even John Prescott admitting he was "bloody fed up" with hearing it, and Labour's choice of U2's offensively bland "Beautiful Day" for this election will probably fare little better. With this in mind, I've sought out some more interesting campaign soundtracks: songs you can happily use to drown out the monotonous pledges and semantic rows over policy.
Frente's "Labour of Love" would be a brilliant choice for the party in red: folksy pop that would remind supporters of their roots. Frente are an Australian quintet who for a while seemed to be the house band of Neighbours - don't hold that against them, though. They were writing ineffably catchy guitar pop tunes while Chris Martin was still a twinkle in someone's iPod; the song is on www.napster.com. For the Tories, I'll ignore waggish suggestions of Cher's "Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves" (an accurate description of their policy framework, you must admit), and go for Iggy Pop's "I'm a Conservative". Iggy's description of "the crazy girls I screw" might offend the blue-rinse brigade, but this is a great, if sarcastic, rock song.
The best of the three is folk singer Phil Ochs's "Love Me I'm a Liberal" (as with "I'm a Conservative", available to buy from www.itunes.com). Again, there's a caveat - he's using the American definition of "liberal", rather than expressing affection for Menzies Campbell - but it's a wonderfully sardonic defence of liberalism in 1960s America, and inspiring with it.
By far the best 79p and 6.53 minutes you can spend is on Monty Python's "Election Night Special", drawn from a live performance at Drury Lane and also available on iTunes. For those who've never had the pleasure of hearing this particular sketch, the focus is the hilariously absurd battle between the Silly Party and the Sensible Party. It all seems blessedly sane compared to the real thing.
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