Surely King Creosote is allowed to have his own opinion?
A generation or two ago, we delighted in hearing John Lennon sing Give Peace A Chance, because we all knew the Vietnam War was rancid. And who didn't support Jane Fonda when 'Hanoi Jane' was vilified by American Republicans. Over the years we've heard the liberal protest voice amplified by the likes of Dylan and Springsteen, the Dixie Chicks and Taylor Swift.
Read more on King Creosote
Those on the right have long wailed into the microphone too. James Cagney was a friend of Ronald Reagan who saw hippies as 'functionless creatures". Charlton Heston and John Wayne were also Good Old Boys who believed guns to be a force for good. And in more recent years the voice of conservatism has been carried loud and clear by Pink Floyd's Roger Waters, Tony Hadley, Lulu and Geri Halliwell.
Yet, in these days of polarised opinions and social media pile-ons, is it wise to be too vocal? Sir Elton John, in cautious voice, admits he's left leaning. 'If I was to say what I am, I'd be a Labour man. And in America I'd definitely be a Democrat; I'd never be a Republican. But I just want people to vote for things that are just, things that are important to people; the right to choose, the right to be who you are, and not let anybody else tell you who to be.'
PR guru Mark Borkowski supports the argument for artists putting their own message out there – if the cause is right. 'Once upon a time music was synonymous with political dissent. I knew of Peter Paul and Mary primarily through Ed 'Stewpot' Stewart and Puff the Magic Dragon: but for an entire coffee house generation these guys owed their cred as much to their political attitudes and moral and ethical outlook as to their music.'
He adds; 'Maybe the rock icons of this age are toothless tigers, a bunch of easy-living no-goods whose rage is all front, a force for nothing bar their own inflated incomes and egos. In which case, forget it, dismiss the Dylans, Seegers, Geldofs, Bonos and other humanitarian rock crusaders as unfortunate blips in musical history, and let's get on with selling the T-shirts.'
King Creosote referred to Neil Oliver as 'one of the best guys' (Image: free) Billy Bragg or Paul Weller will sing out their lefty stance from the rooftops. As will Alice Cooper on the right. However, while Bruce Springsteen may be America's blue-collar representative on stage, the Boss suggests caution when it comes to proselytizing. 'The more you do it, your two cents becomes one cent and then no cents whatsoever,' he maintains. 'So, I think your credibility and your impact lessens the more you do it. That's why I've been hesitant to overplay my hand in that area, and I generally come to service when I feel it's kind of necessary and it might help a little bit."
Is that what it's about? Measuring mood - and yet still being true to your convictions? Lulu didn't seem to measure the mood in Scotland when the former tenement baby revealed herself a Thatcherite. However, the singer from Dennistoun's record sales didn't nosedive as a result. And actor Vince Vaughn's career didn't suffer a nosebleed, in spite of becoming a Trumpeteer in recent years.
Yet, supporting a mainstream political party is one thing, but when you align yourself with extreme thought – a clear example being Mel Gibson's apology for anti-Semitic ranting during his arrest for drink-driving – or tie into conspiracy theories - then your career could be headed for the toilet. PR professional James Nickerson argues that if artists feel strongly about being political, they need to be aware of the potential fallout. 'Artists really have to be sure enough in their belief that if they lose some of their fan base, they will be okay with that.'
That doesn't seem to be the case with The Smiths former frontman Morrissey, who once wore a For Britain badge, (a right-wing political party Nigel Farage believed to be made up of 'Nazis and racists'), declared reggae to be 'the most racist music in the world' and defended Harvey Weinstein. The singer later admitted to fans in the US; "As you know, nobody will release my music anymore.'
John Wayne was a well-known right-winger (Image: free) So, it's fine to air views, if it's to demand civil rights, or demand the end to wars or battle the gun lobby. But when you cross the line, as actor Laurence Fox seems to have done when making statements such as 'The wokeists are fundamentally a racist bunch' then there's a real chance you can find yourself looking for a new line of work.
Yet, we don't want our artists' mouths to be taped up. I once interviewed the icon that is Smokey Robinson and Smokey didn't want to talk about early Motown days or offer thoughts on romancing Diana Ross. All he wanted to talk about for two long hours was Jesus and how God found him. And it was apparent that God hadn't given Robinson the gift of self-awareness.
But at least the interview ended with an understanding of the man. And doesn't that signal that even if we don't agree with the voices of the likes of King Creosote it's better to know what a performer actually thinks? What we've also got to consider is that most people who complain about an artist's expression of their views are just upset because they don't agree with their own.
So, let's hear the voices from the ends of the spectrum.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Spectator
33 minutes ago
- Spectator
Deluded Americans are descending on Ireland
The American girl was listing her reasons for moving to Ireland in protest at Donald Trump. 'I cannot stay in a country where Roe vs Wade has been overturned. Did you know abortion is restricted in a lot of states? Oh no, I cannot wait to live in Ireland.' We are becoming used to Americans staying at our B&B while they are house-hunting in Ireland during a fit of pique. We let it all go over our heads. But the question remains. Why are these migrating anti-Trumpers so daft? They are flouncing out of America to come to Ireland in a reverse ferret of how the journey across the Atlantic has been done for centuries. When they explain their reasoning, they couldn't bark up a wronger tree if they tried. Although I would say, in their defence, the way Ireland markets itself is very misleading, with all the rainbow Pride flags and Palestinian embassies. But liberal Americans don't seem to understand that this is the image, tailored for tourism and EU grants, I suspect. The practical reality is very different. As wonderful as the Emerald Isle is, they're going the wrong way across the Atlantic. 'From Galway to Graceland' is the song title. There is no song entitled 'From California to Carlow'. Or Cork. Or Kerry. No young person living in New York or Los Angeles has ever dreamed of leaving the lights, the shops, the theatres and the endless opportunities to get on a boat to Rosslare to begin working on a cattle farm and going down the chipper for their dinner. But a whole load of overprivileged Yanks are descending on Ireland in a huff, invoking their Irish ancestry and sitting in the rain declaring 'This will show Trump!' – while Trump is enjoying White House room service and sunning himself in Palm Beach. I call it the Rosie O'Donnell syndrome. The actress and comedian makes no sense when explaining why she has moved from New York and Hollywood to Dublin, allegedly because she doesn't 'feel safe' surrounded by people who voted for Trump. I often amuse myself during the long, dark West Cork summer evenings by imagining Ms O'Donnell trying to call out a plumber. 'I wonder if she's had a blocked loo yet, or an overflowing gutter,' I remark to the builder boyfriend. 'No bother!' says the BB, impersonating a plumber who is not going to turn up. Ms O'Donnell keeps insisting it's all fantastic. Maybe the locals are saying 'Top of the morning to you, Rosie!' to amuse themselves. But at some point she's going to have someone say the following to her, very impatiently: 'So do you want to go on the waiting list for a call-out for a quote for a new bathroom in six months' time or not?' When the two girls from California came to stay at our B&B, they burst through the kitchen doors as we were eating our dinner and launched into a gushing speech about how much they loved Ireland and felt at home in Ireland, having been here a day. Yeah, all right, I thought. We don't tend to get five-star reviews from people who've just landed that morning. We get five-star reviews from people who've been on the road a week or two, and who fall into our red-hot, full pressure showers with a gratitude that's bordering hysteria. These two were at the idealistic stage. It only took them two minutes to get on to Trump and a pro-choice rant which we could have done without, for we were eating a plate of linguine. One girl stood outside smoking and asked if we had any weed, while the other girl made herself comfortable on the kitchen sofa and started explaining what happens to women in southern US states where abortion is restricted. She could not live in that kind of country. She wanted to live in a society where there was completely unfettered freedom for women in the pro-choice arena. That's why they were in Ireland on a mission to investigate relocating here… The BB looked at me, pausing the forking of linguine into his mouth. 'Er,' I said. And I put my fork down. 'Are you sure we can't offer you some pasta?' No, they said, they had just had pizza. 'Ice cream?' I said. 'Go on. Have some ice cream.' They said that would be nice. So I got five flavours of ice cream out of the freezer and set them on the table with bowls and spoons and the girls sat down at the table. I said: 'You do know Ireland is Catholic, don't you?' They looked blank, then started gushing again. 'We just love it here! We feel right at home, don't we?' 'We do! The people are wonderful! So welcoming! We're going to be so happy here!' While one puffed on a vape and the other ate ice cream, they told us how much they despaired for their country. They said there was some hope for women's rights and liberal ideology, though, because of the nice Muslim Democratic candidate being lined up for mayor of New York. By now, the BB and I were sitting there with our mouths slightly ajar, saying nothing. What was spilling out of their brains made no more sense than if they'd told us they were going to put the raspberry ripple in the oven to keep it frozen. They finished slagging off America, then went to bed saying they had to be up at 7.30 a.m. to go to Blarney Castle. The next day they came down at noon and said they might give the Blarney Stone a miss. They were going just to get in the car and drive and see where the road took them. 'That sounds like an excellent plan,' I said, wondering if the road would be so good as to take them back to the airport.
Spectator
34 minutes ago
- Spectator
Motherland: how Farage is winning over women
On the campaign trail in the Midlands ahead of May's local elections, a journalist asked Nigel Farage: 'Do you have a woman problem?' The twice-married, twice-separated father of four laughed and said: 'God, yes. I've had 40 years of it.' His response was characteristic of Reform UK's leader – a determination not to take things too seriously and a tacit acknowledgement that every political cause he has espoused has been more popular with men than women. 'Around me there's always been a perception of a laddish culture,' he says. 'Ukip was the rugby club on tour.' In last year's general election, 58 per cent of Reform voters were men. Since May, when Reform seized 700 seats and ten councils, that has begun to change. It may now be Keir Starmer with the woman problem while Farage is leading a march of the mums. Polling from More in Common shows that, since the general election, Reform has gained 14 percentage points among women, while Labour has lost 12, but with every cohort over the age of 45 the swing is even bigger. It is most pronounced in the Generation X group, aged 45 to 60, where Reform tops the polls. They also lead among Boomer women, aged 61 to 75. Among the over-75s, where the Tories still win, more women support Reform than the Lib Dems, Labour and the Greens combined. Farage's party also wins the support of one in five women in the younger age groups, putting them second to Labour on 22 per cent among millennials aged 29 to 44 and on 19 per cent among the 18- to 28-year-olds of Generation Z (just four points behind Labour). Luke Tryl of More in Common says: 'Among all other age groups, women have been moving towards Reform more than any other party.' So what has been happening? These are not votes Reform has chased. There has been no policy announcement on childcare, designed to appeal to female voters. 'We haven't forced this,' says Farage. 'It's something which has evolved.' One explanation is that women in general are more likely than men to have a downbeat view of Britain's future, to worry that the country is broken. Only 17 per cent of Gen X women, one in six, think Britain is on the 'right track', compared with 23 per cent of Gen X men. Sixty-four per cent of Gen X women think the country is on the wrong track. Across all age groups, women are far more likely than men to report feeling sad, angry, lonely or stressed. Sixty-two per cent of Baby Boomer women say the world is getting more dangerous, compared with 48 per cent of the general population. 'Our conversations with Gen X women find them among the most disillusioned with the status quo,' says Tryl. 'Some are struggling to make ends meet at a time when they thought they would be winding down. 'Not living but surviving,' as one put it, and often dealing with double care challenges – looking after elderly relatives, but with adult kids still at home who can't get a foot on the housing ladder. As this group have become dis-appointed in Starmer's ability to bring about the 'change' they voted for, the appeal of Reform is starting to grow.' Another explanation is that Reform has begun to attract high-profile women to its ranks, which is helping to change the old perception that Farage leads a red-trousered gammon brigade. Andrea Jenkyns, the mayor of Lincolnshire, and Sarah Pochin, the MP for Runcorn, have been joined in recent weeks by the former Tories Laura Anne Jones, Reform's first member of the Welsh Senedd, and the London councillor and prosecutor Laila Cunningham, a mother of seven. Cunningham and Pochin flanked Farage at the launch of his party's summer campaign on crime. This week he was joined by Vanessa Frake, a former prison governor. Senior figures in the party believe that Cunningham would be a formidable candidate for mayor of London in May 2028. 'A moderate Muslim mother who can communicate very effectively and talks sense,' one says. 'She could win.' The issue on which Labour is most conspicuously losing support to Reform is migration, where the government's policy of housing asylum seekers in local communities has led to widespread protests. Farage began to notice the difference during the run-up to the Runcorn by-election in May. There, women voiced concerns about migrants in HMOs, Houses in Multiple Occupation. 'Runcorn was an awakening for me,' he says. 'We started getting women, not just mums, much older women too, saying, 'Have you heard what's happening in that street? There's 15 of them in there.' In Runcorn I began to get this sense that HMOs are worse than hotels because they're just plonked in communities. And it led to great fear.' Since then, women have led the protests across the country. In Epping, they protested outside the Bell hotel after a 14-year-old girl was allegedly assaulted by an Ethiopian asylum seeker. Another group of women and girls gathered outside the four-star Britannia International hotel in Canary Wharf, London, wearing pink clothing, held up England flags and chanted 'stop the boats'. The Epping protest was partly coordinated by Orla Minihane, a Reform candidate and mother of three. 'I know a few of these women. They're Reform members and they frighten the life out of me,' jokes Farage, channelling the Duke of Wellington's observation about his own troops. 'I think there is grave concern, particularly among mothers about their teenagers, whether they can let them out. This issue has changed the perception of how people view Reform.' Again the numbers back this up. Just 18 per cent of women now support temporary accommodation for asylum seekers in their local communities, down 36 per cent since 2003. Among men it is 22 per cent, down 30 per cent. Two thirds of Baby Boomer women and those over 75 say they think Britain cares more about immigrants than its citizens (compared with just half of the overall population). 'Support for housing asylum seekers locally in temporary accommodation has fallen most with women,' says Tryl. 'And our polling finds a great willingness to say protests against the hotels are appropriate.' New polling has found that voters back the Epping protests by 41 per cent to 32 per cent. More than seven out of ten voters say they expect rioting over asylum issues, a stunning normalisation of political violence. The proportion who think violent protests are accept-able has risen from 7.7 per cent to 12.2 per cent – the equivalent of two million adults since August last year, when More in Common last conducted the poll. The number of women who think violent protest is justified has doubled from 5 to 10 per cent; among men it has risen from 11 per cent to 15 per cent. Mothers are two points more likely to say that violence is justified than other women. Mothers of children under 16 are more likely to cite concerns about sexual violence as a reason for opposing asylum hotels. There is a global tradition of protests by women having great potency. Mothers of soldiers killed in Russia's war in Chechnya caused trouble for Vladimir Putin in the early 2000s. The Mothers of the Disappeared were key in eroding the authority of the Argentinian junta in the 1970s. But it also seems to be the case that women feel able to say things that men don't. It was striking that when the Lionesses won the Euros last month, Chloe Kelly, who scored the winning penalty, said: 'I'm so proud to be English.' Hannah Hampton, the England goalie, added: 'We've got that grit, that English blood in us.' Contrast that with the men's team, which has leapt on every woke bandwagon. Farage watched with glee: 'It was a Mo Farah moment, like where an interviewer talked about his culture and he said: 'Listen, mate, I'm British.' I loved it.' It is not all plain sailing for Farage. Tryl explains: 'There are a couple of significant Achilles heels when it comes to support among women – firstly they are most likely to cite Nigel Farage's closeness to Donald Trump as the top barrier to voting Reform. They are also nervous about Reform's stance on Ukraine, and sceptical of plans to make renewables more expensive.' But the march of the mums has the other parties worried. It explains why Kemi Badenoch rushed to make an attack video this week when Farage ducked a question about Vanessa Frake refusing to rule out trans women in women's jails, forcing him to clarify his position. 'Only Conservatives will protect women-only spaces,' Badenoch said. It explains why Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, is working on a new childcare offering for voters, expected to be unveiled in the autumn. In Downing Street, Starmer's team believes the only way to win back voters of all sexes is to 'lift the sense of doom and decline' by dealing with the country's deep structural problems. He has been heard to say: 'I will not just be another PM who left this for someone else to sort.' The Prime Minister has been at Chequers this week summoning aides for crunch discussions. Senior figures say Starmer has been warned he has just six months to turn things around or be 'timed out'. Speechwriter Alan Lockey and head of strategy Paul Ovenden are working on a party conference speech which will warn voters there has to be 'profound change to the way we do things', but also spell out a more optimistic vision of what Britain looks like if Labour gets it right. He will pitch the government as the friend of those who work hard and earn their money. Insiders say Starmer is 'furious' about the lack of progress on deregulation and building. Expect a new planning bill to combat that. The PM also wants the autumn Budget to be bold rather than simply plug gaps in the government's spending plans. He met Rachel Reeves last week. His argument against Reform will be that he is plotting a revolution for the quiet majority, while a vote for Farage means 'decline and grievance'. For his part, Farage says that while he is 'not going to pander to anyone', his new audience of women supporters 'will demand' policies of their own. But ultimately his pitch is that the main parties have failed. At Goodwood last Friday he was approached in the betting ring by punters. 'They're not supporting us because they want to stick two fingers up. They agree with our analysis that it's really bad, but they actually have great faith in us to sort it out.' If we get to 2029 and the public believes Farage is more likely to solve Britain's ills than Starmer or Badenoch, the other parties will have both a man and woman problem.
Spectator
34 minutes ago
- Spectator
A precocious protagonist: Vera, or Faith, by Gary Shteyngart, reviewed
It's impossible not to love Vera Bradford-Shmulkin, the whip-smart Jewish-Korean- American child narrator of Vera, or Faith, Gary Shteyngart's sixth novel, which is a masterclass in the author's sardonicism, set in a frighteningly realistic near future. School is awful and Vera's world is on the brink of imploding because 'Daddy and Anne Mom', her stepmother, aren't getting on, what with Igor's evening 'mar-tiny' habit and crumpling status as a 'leftist intellectual'. The wider American world is in similar turmoil, with an escalating campaign for the Five-Three amendment. This calls for 'exceptional Americans' who can trace their roots to before the Revolutionary War to get added voting weight, heightening tensions. Vera, whose half-brother Dylan would be an exceptional American, is desperate to trace 'Mom Mom', her mysterious birth mother, who she thinks has cancer. It's no wonder Vera's paediatrician and her psychologist think she suffers from intense anxiety, despite presenting as a very bright ten-year-old. Admittedly, this all makes for a precocious and pretentious protagonist, but Shteyngart knows that readers will relate to Vera because 'many of them were Vera', as he told one interviewer. Her 'Things I Still Need to Know Diary' is full of lists of words and phrases such as 'neoliberal frog-march of the damned'. The super-sharp child narrator is a trope beloved by authors who want to look at the world sideways. Miriam Toews uses it in her latest novel Fight Night, which sees nine-year-old Swiv try to track down her missing father, as did Henry James many decades ago in What Maisie Knew. Here, sticking to Vera's close third-person perspective emphasises the crazy geopolitics. The one flaw is that children are repetitive, and so are some of Vera's lines, such as how Igor gets her to check people's bookshelves to see if the spine has been cracked on an enormous book called The Power Broker. The action takes place over a couple of months, mainly in Manhattan, where Vera and Dylan attend a highly selective public school. Given the joy that comes from the girl's unique take on the world, it would be a shame to give too much away in such a slim novel; but Kaspie the AI-powered chess computer and Stella the talking car deserve special mention. Shteyngart apparently wrote the novel in 51 days, and pays homage throughout to Vladimir Nabokov's 1969 novel Ada, or Ardor. It makes an ideal entry point for anyone new to Shteyngart's world because it's all there, from the stand-in for the author himself to prophecies of where the world is headed. An enjoyable if somewhat alarming read.
