Before her first and last conference speech as Prime Minister, Liz Truss’s team briefed that she would be taking the stage to a “90s classic”. In fact the episode was a classic of a different sort - a prime example of a conservative’s appropriation of musicians and songs, in turn causing an immediate artistic backlash. Team Truss had stumbled into the politics and practice of walk on-walk off music.
This time, it was M People’s “Moving On Up”. In response, Mike Pickering of M People said, “I don't want my song being a soundtrack to lies.”
It ought to have taken less than five minutes of research to realise Truss’s song-choice would blow up. Singer Heather Small wearing a ‘Stop Rwanda’ t-shirt as recently as this August, for example; the fact that her son is a Labour councillor; or just the lyrics: “you've done me wrong, your time is up.” The dissonance between Truss’s purpose for the song and its actual content was large and obvious. The line – “moving on out” - proved to be a portent of the humiliatingly short time Liz Truss spent in office.
Choosing the right song can be about much more than galvanising the atmosphere in the hall. Done correctly, it helps a campaign team think creatively and in a lateral way about their message and how they want their candidate’s ideas to be conveyed.
For example, in Jeremy Corbyn’s 2015 leadership campaign the walk-off track - also used for his first conference speech as leader - was the Chairmen Of The Board’s 1972 song “Working On A Building Of Love”. Options were turned over meticulously, eliminating songs that might contain even one small lyrical element that could lead to a negative process story. Just about every line of “Working On A Building Of Love” was perfect for what the Corbyn campaign was trying to say about itself, about Labour, and about society as a whole. It is also superior soul music. The Chairmen blended the endeavour of labour with the dream of love and the spirit of unity. “Build it in the name of everyone.”
In many cases the right’s difficulties are not limited to the suitability of the lyrics, but with relations with the artist too. With Truss, it was both.
For conservatives the choice of the soundtrack to a speech reflects their treatment of culture as a commodity to be bought and disposed of, with no deeper purpose. They have the license to play the song and do not care, full stop. This is why they keep doing it, regardless of the aesthetic contradictions plain to others.
In interviews, David Cameron was a serial offender. After Cameron’s claim that "the ‘Eton Rifles’ is my favourite song. I was one, in the corps,” its writer Paul Weller reacted with understandable fury to the farcical misrepresentation of The Jam song. “Which part of it doesn’t he (Cameron) get? It wasn’t intended as a f***ing jolly drinking song for the cadet corps.” By the time of his 2018 tour, Weller had taken to dedicating the song to another old-Etonian “that prick, Jacob Rees-Mogg.” In 2010 Johnny Marr told David Cameron not to like The Smiths, tweeting “I forbid you to like it.” Music writer Simon Price has called Boris Johnson’s efforts to invoke The Clash “Tory punkwashing.”
Conservatives misusing musicians’ work is not unique to the British Tories. American Presidential candidates can’t help themselves. Reaganism involved the construction of an apparatus of ideas and symbols to tell a story about America, including mobilising the unwilling to its cause. “America’s future,” Reagan said in his 1984 re-election campaign, “rests in the message of hope in the songs of a man so many young Americans admire—New Jersey’s own, Bruce Springsteen.” Springsteen responded onstage by performing “Johnny 99”, a song in which the subject is an unemployed man driven to violence as his powerlessness closes in on him. “I don’t think he’s been listening to this one,” said Springsteen of Reagan.
North American artists whose music has been directly appropriated by Republicans have repeatedly had the same experience as M People, who could not stop Truss walking out to their song. Numerous artists have complained about their music being played at conservative political events. Artistic disempowerment is repeated over and over again. Neil Young unsuccessfully filed a lawsuit against Donald Trump to stop him using his music at MAGA rallies.
One of Young’s songs purloined by Trump was “Rockin’ in the Free World,” a bleak picture of the human consequences of laissez faire capitalism. Its use might have seemed to be either rank stupidity or provocation.
But more than that, conservatives do it because they can. Their appropriation is purely functional and wholly artless.
So, should you be choosing a speech song, consider the following…
One, read all the lyrics, not just the chorus, and look for the pitfalls. Two, have people on your campaign team who know about and actually love music. Three, understand that musicians care about their work and want it treated with respect. Four, regard it as a planned part of your staging and messaging, not a last-minute gimmick. And five, don’t work for a Tory.