A quick post-election playlist for you…

Common People by Pulp is from Different Class, the best political album of the 90s. This is the live version from Glastonbury in 1995 – a gig I was lucky enough to be at, and still remember with awe fifteen years later.

Hard Times Of Old England Retold by The Imagined Village is a rewrite by Billy Bragg of the old folk song. With verses complaining about the banks, Tesco and post office closures, it only needs something about potholes and it’d be a Focus leaflet set to music.

No Matter Who You Vote For, The Government Always Gets In by The Bonzo Dog Band has been proven true again this week…

Power In The Darkness by The Tom Robinson Band is a good demonstration of the Liberal and Conservative ideas of freedom:
“Freedom to choose to do with your body/Freedom to believe what you like/Freedom for brothers to love one another/Freedom for black and white/Freedom from elitism, male domination/Freedom for the mother and wife/Freedom from Big Brother’s interrogation/Freedom to live your own life” versus
“Freedom from the Reds and the blacks and the criminals/Prostitutes, pansies and punks/Football hooligans, juvenile delinquents, lesbians and left-wing scum/Freedom from the niggers and the pakis and the unions/Freedom from the gypsies and the jews/Freedom from the long-haired layabouts and students, freedom from the likes of you”

Cunts Are Still Running The World by Jarvis Cocker. Yes, they are.

Taxes, Taxes by Hank Penny is also self-explanatory…

The Disappointed by XTC could almost be written about the Lib Dems at the moment – in this case ‘the ones who broke their hearts’ are the voters who deserted in the last hours.

The Trader by The Beach Boys is a song about the evils of imperialist capitalist exploitation, by a band who are thought of as the ultimate conservative whitebread Americans but at the time had two black South African members and a Puerto Rican keyboardist.

Things Are Changing (For The Better) by Diana Ross And The Supremes would be nice if it were true, wouldn’t it? This is instrumentally a Phil Spector production of a Brian Wilson song, but with the Supremes’ vocals replacing those of Darlene Love and the Blossoms (whose version isn’t on Spotify).

This Land Is Your Land by Woody Guthrie is here because Spotify doesn’t have any versions of The Land, the Liberal Democrat party song, and this has a very similar message.- “There was a big high wall there, that tried to stop me/The side was painted, said ‘private property’/But on the back side, it didn’t say nothin’/This land was made for you and me”.

And Tramp The Dirt Down by Elvis Costello is far, far kinder about Thatcher than I would be…