A sultry house song used as the theme music for Tony Blair's 1997 campaign. It's back in the news after 27 years. Ahead of D:Ream's 2024 Glastonbury performance, the band talks on its significance.
The most ardent admirers of Rishi Sunak would agree that May 22, 2024, wasn't the happiest day of his life. The British prime minister declared that he was holding a general election, forcing voters to choose between his Conservative Party—also known as the Tory Party—and the opposition Labour Party when he stood outside 10 Downing Street, his official home in London. Unfortunately, Sunak didn't seem too confident when he made this remark since it was pouring rain at the time. Things Can Only Get Better by D:Ream, which the Labour party had exploited to swell to victory in the 1997 General Election under its charismatic leader, Tony Blair, was played during the speech to further depress him.
Voters would not have sought to recall that outcome, according to Sunak. In actuality, Labour had nothing to do with the song being played on this particular date, nor did it indicate that the party would win. However, Steve Bray, an anti-Tory activist, was at the end of Downing Street, playing Things Can Only Get Better over a portable public address system. With some delight, Bray tells the BBC, "I heard the rumor on the day that he was going to call an election, and I thought, what could be the most perfect melody to tease him? I was warning the Tories that their time was over and that things would only get better, not that I was genuinely supporting Labour. I like how it was able to reach a global audience with all those microphone feeds."
Things Can Only Get Better has become a memorable part of not one, but two British general elections thanks to this perfectly timed bit of mischief - just in time for D:Ream to perform it at the Glastonbury Festival tomorrow. Its astounding 30-year history, however, has many more notable accomplishments. The composer of A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon (2019) included an animated Sir Brian to perform the song at the conclusion. Brian Cox is a physics professor who hosts scientific programs on British television and radio, and he was the keyboard player for D:Ream during their early gigs. Even more weirdly, there was a dream scene in The Crown when a cathedral choir sings the "new national anthem" and Tony Blair is proclaimed king. According to D:Ream's vocalist Peter Cunnah, "it just gets weirder and weirder," the BBC reports. "When I heard it [during the election announcement], I put my head in my hands and said, 'Oh my God, not again...'"
The history of that well-known expression
The song was written in the year 1990. As the guitarist for the indie band Tie The Boy, Cunnah relocated from Northern Ireland to London. After the band split up, he started creating dance music while working a "really boring office job." Ragna Gift, the sister of Fine Young Cannibals vocalist Roland Gift, was one of his coworkers. "One day there was a bit of office argy-bargy going on," Cunnah recalls. Ragna consoled me, saying, 'Never worry, Pete, things will only get better,' while I was inconsolable. You always have your ear to the ground as a writer, and I instantly recognized the tune. I took my Sony Walkman into the bathroom and started recording."
Glastonbury 2024 Stream
The BBC is bringing Glastonbury to a worldwide audience for the first time. Fans can watch Dua Lip and Coldplay's 2024 Pyramid Stage gigs on bbc.com, giving them an unprecedented front-row access to the main artists.
Similar to several musical snippets that Cunnah recorded at that period, this particular one was forgotten until he began working with Al Mackenzie, D:Ream's other essential member. To the surprise of his partner, Cunnah delivered the line that would alter his life when they required a chorus for a house tune in the latter half of 1991. "I thought he'd just come up with it, so I was very impressed," Mackenzie says. He performed the song that evening while DJing at a club in Leicester Square, London. Cunnah recalls, "The place just exploded." "The response came right away."
It took some time for the song to become widely popular. D:Ream released Things Can Only Get Better as a single in January 1993 after crafting it into an explosive choral chant and an enticing gospel-disco anthem. However, the song petered out at number 23 in the UK charts. Cunnah claims that the trio garnered "an audience of young girls who started sending teddy bears to our office" during their tour as Take That, the largest boy band in Britain, as their opening act later that year. In 1994, the song spent four weeks at the top of the British singles chart when it was reissued.
Peter Cunnah: There I was, tumbling about on stage once again, doing a single song rather than a whole set, to applause that was coming from out of time.
D:Ream had finally become well-known after years of success in the club scene. It was ironic since Mackenzie had already left the group due to creative disagreements, and Cunnah was starting to feel that he was becoming too old to be a pop star. He had no idea that Tony Blair was in the midst of transforming the Labour Party into the vibrant and welcoming New Labour. Reducing the usage of The Red Flag, a classic socialist lament, during party congresses was one step in the process. However, what may take its place?
When pop culture is used by politicians
According to Dr Stuart McAnulla, an associate professor of politics at Leeds University, "Bill Clinton might have stolen the idea [of using a pop song] from him because he had used Fleetwood Mac's Don't Stop at rallies in 1992 and 1993." "What happens in American politics often comes over to the UK in some form." He claims that selecting Things Can Only Get Better was a wise decision. It's cheerful, catchy, and it peaked at number one for a few weeks, but not long enough for people to get tired of it. It's not a political song per se. Although it seemed like a chance for revitalization, there was nothing in it that the Conservatives could use as an excuse to raise taxes.
Pop tunes are now often heard at political gatherings. When the Tory prime leader, Theresa May, performed to Abba's Dancing Queen at a 2018 Conservative Party conference, some viewed it as a jab at the stiff dancing movements she had shown to African youngsters two months before on a trade visit. However, Cunnah was leery of being associated with Labour in the mid-1990s. He claims that Jazz Summers, his new manager, "was a very persuasive man," and before long, he consented to sing the song at party gatherings and rallies. For me, it was the strangest thing. After leaving the house music scene, there I was, almost retired, dancing on stage once again, doing a single song rather than a whole set, to an audience applauding unnecessarily because they had no sense of rhythm. I've always believed that a dance-off should be required to elect a government.
The upbeat, almost religious single by D:Ream turned out to be the ideal complement to the hope that Labour's supporters were feeling as the election drew near. According to McAnulla, "the Conservatives had been in power for eighteen years, and after they won in 1992, people believed the Labour Party was doomed." They didn't consider that things may be different until just before the 1997 election, and the song reflected that feeling."
After Labour won by a wide margin, the triumphant chorus seemed even more fitting. It was obvious what to call the humorous book that novelist and screenwriter John O'Farrell wrote on his 18-year fight for the party when it was in opposition.
It's up to the individuals whether they choose to utilize it as an anthem. I'm content for people to understand it and use it anyway they see fit. Alvin McKenzie
"I toyed with all sorts of working titles such as Hard Labour or Labour of Love," O'Farrell recalls. "But Things Can Only Get Better became the obvious choice, not just because of the association with the Labour landslide at the end of my story, but also because it felt like a funny comment on being a Labour activist during the dark days of [Conservative prime ministers] Thatcher and Major." In 1998, the memoir debuted as the number one bestseller. "But it did mean that every bloody book event I did afterwards started with someone in the front row asking, 'So, did things get better?'" That inquiry has a contentious response. Things Can Only Get Worse? was the title of O'Farrell's sequel.
The pleasure of the song's afterlife, Crunnah, also faded. The band broke up soon after the 1997 election, the Labour government's popularity gradually declined, and he began to face accusations of having "blood on [his] hands" after the UK and US invasion of Iraq. Nonetheless, McAnulla claims that Labour's rendition of the song "invested it with a greater status and a wider meaning than it would have otherwise had". After Cunnah and Mackenzie reorganized the organization in 2008, the general public began to see it less as a party-political rallying cry and more as an all-encompassing statement of defiance and optimism. Fans of the resurgent Sunderland AFC adopted it as a football cry in 2013, and in 2021 Sea of Change—an Irish women's choir comprised of supporters and survivors of cancer—sang it. Cunnah acknowledges that "people have found so many ironic uses for it, but there have also been so many unironic uses." Friends of mine who were undergoing chemotherapy and other treatments told me they found comfort in the song."
Given that, you can imagine Cunnah's disappointment when Bray used it as part of his Downing Street joke in May, redefining it as a political catchphrase once again. Currently working on our fifth studio album. We're making an effort to escape the political maze, but every time we believe we're about to break free, it pulls us back in." However, there aren't any negative emotions—or not many negative emotions, nonetheless. After mentioning on social media that the rain had ruined his amplifier, Bray's action helped the song reach number two on the UK iTunes chart. D:Ream then offered him £250 to help with the purchase of a new amplifier.
Cunnah and Mackenzie, on the other hand, have performed Things Can Only Get Better live ever since the group's 2008 reunion. According to Mackenzie, they'll be playing it "on steroids" at this year's Glastonbury, complete with a brass band and special guests.
Cunnah acknowledges that he has just recently come to grips with how the song has been "hijacked" and that, while they haven't asked, he wouldn't be happy with Labour playing it today. Mackenzie leans more toward philosophy. He said, "We simply try to stay away from all that stuff, but it's up to them whether they want to use it as an anthem. They are free to utilize it and interpret it whatever they see fit. All I want is for people to dance to it.
No comments:
Post a Comment