I Wish I Was a Punk Rocker (With Flowers In My Hair)
Sandi Thom’s disingenuous lament to her belated birth demonstrates that including downloads in the single charts has been yet another pitch in the downward spiral in quality of popular music.
The title, I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker (With Flowers In My Hair), heralds a catalogue of muddled analogy, and the lyrics deliver, with Thom’s chorus in the first thirty seconds celebrating the “’77 and ’69 revolution[s]” in the same breath. One might hope that Thom would have an insightful link between the hippy-led culmination of a decade of sexual liberation and the iconoclastic rise of anti-establishment independent music. Unfortunately, she doesn’t seem to have even bothered to consider it.
Quite beside the irksome anachronism of equating flower power with punk rock, the lyrics manage to irritate on a second level through their saccharine-coated simplistic vocabulary and rhyme schemes, peppered with lyrical triumphs such as “when the head of state didn’t play guitar / not everybody drove a car” more reminiscent of cringe-worthy primary school poetry than chart-topping songwriting.
The acoustic style is minimalist, with semi-spoken lyrics over light percussion providing a gentle folk feel to the track. The music video seems to supplement this small ensemble with a silent guitar, strummed in time with the tambourine, but seemingly emitting no sound of its own. That someone who claims to want to be a punk rocker have a sound so meek when compared to the aggressively noisy genre she supposedly idolises stinks of profiteering hypocrisy. The unintentional irony is only overblown by her lyrics’ twee celebration of bygone days, a stark contrast to punk’s purposely offensive rejection of its contemporary moral and social norms.
The hippies can be scarcely happier than the Sex Pistols, with the free-loving message of universal peace being unthinkingly conflated with that of crass anarchists in the next decade. To even try to draw parallels between these revolutions indicates a respect for and knowledge of neither.
What Thom’s fans may laud as an ironic blending of incongruous aesthetics is in fact a lyrically weak and ideologically confused piece of sell-out nostalgia. With words little more than a bullet-point inventory of sixties and seventies stereotypes and a tune scarcely worthy of being so named, I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker disappoints at every juncture. If, that is, you were expecting anything.
Sid Vicious must be rolling in his heroin-induced early grave. Perhaps Sandi Thom’s thus far unspectacular imitation of punk rockers will improve to the point where she follows him there.
JTA says (10:43 09/07/2006) ¶
Hm.
I still think you’ve missed the point here, at bit. I tried to explain it in the pub a couple of weeks back, but I was down a few Spitfire at the time, so I probably wasn’t that coherent.
First off, however, something you’re probably not aware of: ‘Punk Rocker’ isn’t Sandi Thom’s best song. Not by a long way; ‘Lonely Girl’ is pretty cool, in a slightly sad sort of way, and one called ‘What if I’m right?’ is (imo) really clever - I can’t tell if it’d appeal to you at all, maybe it needs a specific mindset - but it’s a lot more ‘musical,’ rather than just an overlay of lyrics on rhythm [which isn’t at all restricted to folk - Pulp, ‘Monday Morning’], and it’s sung from the perspective of a girl in a new relationship saying how great and perfect it’s all going to be… but not being quite sure if that’s real, or just what she wants to happen.
Why, then, put Punk Rocker into the public domain for people to hear over any of the others?
Frankly, I dunno, ask the music industry. But it’s probably got a broader appeal. I know it doesn’t appeal to you at all, but I think you’re taking it too literally.
‘Punk Rocker’ isn’t, in fact, a song about wanting to be an 80’s Punk Rocker with leather jackets and loudness and songs about nuclear wars and how cool they are; it’s a song about wanting something to rebel against.
Hence, ‘I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair;’ it’s not an “unintentional irony” at all; it’s saying ‘I want to be in this thrash metal culture and not act like people expect.’
That’s why it appeals to people, I reckon. It’s a song about how everything these days is about fitting in and being part of the crowd - heads of state appealing to the masses by being cool and playing guitars, music not mattering anymore because everyone cares more about what they’re seen to be listening to than wether or not they actually like it…
Thom hasn’t considered the clash between Hippie culture and 1980s anarchism because it isn’t relevant to what she’s singing about: the point of the song isn’t actually wanting to be a punk rocker, it’s about wanting something to rebel against, rather than the bland repetitiveness of the same Starbucks & Waterstones & Macdonalds on every bloody highstreet in the world.
Sure, it’s nostalgia. But it’s nostalgia for something lots of people feel nostalgia, which means it’s going to appeal to lots of people, thus encouraging them to get in there and listen to some of her other stuff.
I can see it’d piss you off if you go in with the assumption that she actually does want to be a punk rocker, but that’s because you’re trying to force the song to be about something it’s not; do that with almost anything and you’re just going to bust a joint in the process; can you imagine taking ‘Yesterday’ and saying “Ah, this is actually a song about how he wants to travel back in time because he had a really good time yesterday?” or making “When I’m Sixty-Four” a song about how scared people are of getting old?
I still think it’s not a bad song. It’s not her best, no. But I don’t think it deserves the faintly alarming level of hatred you direct at it - since when was being slightly soppy and nostalgic a musical crime anyway?
You’re never going to like it unless you like that type of music. I do like that type of music, so I like it. If you don’t like that type of music, that’s fine (although it does serverly limit the number of CDs I can offer you to listen to!) but don’t think that’s cause to hate the thing so much! Try and let up on the pre-conception that she’s somehow singing about how great it would be if she were in Punk Rock and hopefully you’ll be less inclined to burst a vein over it!
O - and as for the other point which you made in the pub, ‘She’s not even good looking, and she can’t sing! That’s doubly useless!’ … That’s a personal judgement call, that is. But I dinnae think I’d say no.
There we go. Much better at explaining things when I haven’t had a few. I’ll have to remember that…
Statto says (11:40 09/07/2006) ¶
…But since it’s the one this entry is out to review, I think I’m excused for not having sampled a broader range of her tunes!
Do you mean F.E.E.L.I.N.G.C.A.L.L.E.D.L.O.V.E.? Monday Morning is distinctly sung, and has a far more dense musical backdrop.
If you do, I still contend that Thom’s sound is too simple—F.E.E.L.I.N.G.C.A.L.L.E.D.L.O.V.E.’s long periods of angst-ridden rather than bland speech are backed by something more than just a tambourine, and there are three musically-frenetic choruses which are a powerful contrast to the interspersed quietness, as well as including a bit of singing.
What irks me is that any fool can talk to a rhythm—look at The Streets—and so I don’t feel that her musical style confers much talent upon her. Maybe she’s highly talented and her other songs are great, but this one certainly doesn’t show her abilities off.
Or, to take my perspective, sell-out nostalgia designed to be bland, widely-appealing and thus highly profitable. Perhaps she did have this noble motive and I’m jaded and cynical, but I suspect that given, as you have noted, that the music industry presumably had a say in releasing this particular one of her works, that my cynics’ outlook might be preferable.
I only dislike the soppy nostalgia because it does seem so calculatingly bland and universally-appealing.
Surely she can rebel against this monotony? It’s exactly what the punks did: they sought to overthrow the conventional, big rock bands and their grandiose style, and in the process assumed a generally anti-society stance.
Why release a song which, by your own admission, is intended to appeal to the widest possible audience, when surely this bland nostalgia for those days gone by is part of the homogenised, commercialised society she, in your paradigm, wishes to disown?
I think your critique of my critique is overly critical of that one point! I only spent one paragraph explaining how the musical styles differed, so if you think that’s missing the point, fair enough, but it really doesn’t form a keystone of my review.
My other criticisms are more concrete: the words are weak (which I really do think is a major failing given how poor they are—“when the head of state didn’t play guitar / not everybody drove a car”? Please. I’m glad to see she invested in a good rhyming dictionary), I still think that the sound is too minimalist and the lyrics are too spoken, and I still think with your interpretation on it, the song is ideologically confused.
Indeed, I’ve actually heard another new criticism since I wrote this: I forget which artist, but someone on the pop scene criticised Thom’s chosen method of distribution (a viral marketing scheme centred around a series of webcasts from her basement) given her supposed wish that “computers were still scary”. It also looks a bit suspicious to those of us cynical of the music industry that, only days after being ‘discovered’ by Sony doing these suspiciously-popular webcasts, she already had an immaculate album’s worth of songs prepared.
Don’t take it as an assault on all you hold dear musically!
I’d firstly take issue with the sentiment that liking a particular genre means that you should unthinkingly endorse its every artist, or their every song and, conversely, whilst I am unable to approach any of Thom’s other works with an entirely open mind, I like to think that, unless they too shared characteristics which I dislike with this song, I could appreciate them separately.
I think the other thing you underestimate in reading my opinions is how therapeutic it is to try to write an eloquent diatribe in the style of a music review. Having reviewed Elbow reasonably positively (largely by ignoring the album I actually sought to assess and talking about their previous works—if I am willing to condemn half of the tracks on their latest release as too bland, it demonstrates not only that I adhere to the advice of the last paragraph, but also that Thom hasn’t got a hope!), it’s definitely this review which I found the more interesting to write—you should try it sometime!
JTA says (18:48 10/07/2006) ¶
I’m still not convinced!
To be fair, the bit that derailed me wasn’t yours - the
bit doesn’t work as an argument because she isn’t wishing computers were still scary, but talking about a time when they were. [Meaning ‘were’ to the bulk of the populous, of course, not to the people who were racing them up and down labs…]
The other bit I’m not happy with per se is what seems to be an assumption that I only like her because I like similar stuff.
Er. That’s not quite right; I heard her on ToTP - no idea why I was watching it, mind - and thought “Hm, her voice sounds like Sandy Denny mixed with Dar Williams,” so I went and downloaded an album, and found I liked it.
The fact I liked it is probably because it is very Denny/Willams/Matt Nathanson, certainly, and that’s why I went and made the extra effort to get onto EasyNews, but I like it more in it’s own right than because it’s broadly folk-rock. [Which is fortunate, because some ‘broadly folk-rock’ stuff is rubbish, pure & simple].
If you’re just having a go by way of an entertaining review, then I don’t really have a problem with that, and if you don’t like her stuff, then you don’t.
On the other hand, I wouldn’t knock all of her stuff on the basis one song. And unless it was for cheery effect, I’d really not get as vitriolic about the woman as you seemed to be the other day and in the original post! To be fair, that was mostly what caused me to leap into the breach there!
Hey ho.
Not a brillantly eloquent comment, there, but I’ve got to dash off and sort some stuff for tomorrow!
Statto says (23:31 10/07/2006) ¶
So to further add to the confusion in this work, are you suggesting that the song’s message runs “I wish it were the sixties or seventies…here is a list of things, not all of which I am necessarily endorsing, which happened during the sixties and seventies”? Surely the implication is that, just as she wishes she were living back then, she wishes that life could be more like all these steamy-eyed recollections of a perfect past?
To reiterate once more: this is why I wrote a review of only that one song!!
I wouldn’t go as far as “cheery effect”, but it’s certainly not something I’d bother getting that worked up about ordinarily.
That said, rarely does mediocrity in music get me going as it did in this case. I do find this song genuinely aggravating to listen to for the reasons outlined above…it’s irritatingly empty.
I didn’t think it was an assumption! “I do like that type of music, so I like it” seems a fairly unequivocal statement of cause and effect.
The other problem is that I don’t see how that gels with your story of how you came to acquire her music…
So you were initially pleased because it sounded similar to artists you like, and subsequently enjoyed its continuing similarity?!
Forgive me for continuing to misinterpret you the second time!
Damien says (01:40 27/09/2006) ¶
hey all (or both)…
you two aren’t really arguing about this song, are you? yeh, go on - both try to win the argument for the sake of proving your intellectual superiority… but do it over the phone so that fools like me aren’t suckered into reading it.
Dave says (03:05 06/12/2006) ¶
The biggest problem i have with this song is that false pretence that the 60’s and 70’s
were some “golden age” when everyone was rebelling against the man and heavily involved in
politics while today we live in “an age that doesnt care”. The level of activism from those
decades is heavily exagerated by the media and popular culture. The “hippies” were a minority
out group centrallised in a few cities along west coast america. Everyone i know from that era
has said that hippies were like goths are today (social out casts looking to be different
and rebelling against something they didnt even understand). And on what basis do we now live in
“a world that doesnt care”? Anti Irar war protests were massive across the globe, sure the U.S
has a few red neck wankers who dont care about politics but that mean the whole ‘wolrd’ doesnt
care? Sorry ‘Sandi’ but i dont think so!
tess says (12:54 26/03/2007) ¶
Hi guys
I am currently doing an assignment at uni and we have to use i wish i was a punk rocker... song for inspiration in construction for design proposal of clothing. I have done heaps of research and the song is actully more in depth than some may think. for example
1969 First woodstock festival was held (hippie event and music)
1977 elvis presly died (king of rock and roll)
1969 Man walks on the moon (refering to space)
1977 first star wars movie ws released (space)
These are intersting. To me the song is about reflecting on what has happened and how the world was in those era. It makes us stop and think about how much is change. I also agree with JTA's views on the song.
Happy bloging Bye