Nothing like stirring up a bit of class resentment on a Friday afternoon, eh? Tom Clarke, dimwit frontman with The Enemy, has claimed that ‘working class roots’ mean better songs.
With the Coventry outfit’s debut album We’ll Live And Die in These Towns looking likely to reach number one this weekend, a pleased-with-himself Clarke has taken the opportunity to talk some shit about his class warrior credentials.
He said: “Bands like Arctic Monkeys are great, especially their first album, but their songs are all about the weekend. Ours are more about the working man. I think having working-class roots does mean better songs as they are songs the majority can relate to.”
He continued: “If you live in a castle, you’re going to write about living in a castle and who wants to hear a fucking song about a castle?”
I would fucking love to hear a song about a castle.
Clarke added in an interview with The Sun that the band would remain Coventry ‘til they die: “As much as we sing about the downsides of the place, we still love it, we would never leave. It's us. We belong there."
You can pretty much guess where I’m leaning on this one; what are your thoughts on the subject? Are posh people bad at writing songs? DiScuss...
rich people don't write shit songs
shit musicians write shit songs.
"I would fucking love to hear a song about a castle."
Tru dat.
The Enemy are a wretched band. Their opinions count for nothing. In fact, I may now go out of my way to listen to the most opulent, upper-class music i can find. If the lead singer doesn't have a double barrelled surname I'm not interested.
Things like this piss me right off
My parents are both Irish immigrants. My dad is a painter and decorator and has grinded every day of his life - not because it's cool, or because it gives himself a sense of higher morality, he did it because for his generation it was the highest he could achieve and provide for his family.
All my life he encouraged my siblings and I to better ourseleves, and we've all gone to very good unis through hard work. His message to us all along was "Being working class is shit. Don't make the mistakes I've made. Take your oppotunities in the way society is going". And we did.
I have the upmost respect for my dad, more than any person on Earth.
I don not have any respect for this shit hosue band, who use shit house politics they dont understand to jusitfy the fact that they're selling out to lager louts saying shit like this. They don't have a fucking clue what it means to be working class.
Swap Irish for Liverpudlian...
and that's pretty much my experience and what my parents have always encouraged me to believe and to strive for.
The Enemy's inverse snobbery really grates. They seemingly don't understand that a culturally dead drinking and shagging culture might have its moments but really isn't the be all and end all of life.
Working-class songs appealing to the majority
All well and good, but the UK (according to a socio-economic census I can't quote because I saw it in a seminar at work recently) is now more middle-class than anything else.
the term you're looking for
is 'bourgoisement'
basically, everyone can afford the luxuries in life (i.e. telly, mobile, computer) so there are very few poor and typically 'working class people' left.
and the Enemy are stupid cunts if they think poor people write better songs. What a sack of shite.
I'm off to go to my Bullingdon Club luncheon
“If you live in a castle, you’re going to write about living in a castle and who wants to hear a fuc
Is there a point lost in there somewhere? What?
oh for some of the critical theory of the Frankfurt School to be applied...
...to their ramblings.
Surely he's implying that people DO want to hear
songs about people living in small houses/flats/council houses/any place that's yknow, a bit poor.
I'm still none the wiser.
it might be just me
but after you've worked a ridiculously long shift in a crap job for crap pay... you don't really want to listen to some twat with a funny nose and a recording contract telling you how crap it is.
bland music does not soothe a minimum wage pay packet, it just reminds you that other people get paid more for producing middle of the road rubbish and making 'controversial' comments.
^^^
amazing. that made me LOL hard.
It's all subjective anyway.
I'm sick of all this class-war stuff in music.
Also, this guy thinks that you measure a song's greatness by how many people can relate to it? Dear oh dear.
But..l..
arctic monkeys are several times better than they ever could hope to be.... & im not Monkeys biggest fan.
"We belong there"
Please stay there.
perhaps
by staying in Coventry they hope to avoid being sent to Coventry?
...
*dies*
Not many people on here will understand that comment
we're not all cockneys you know. Anyway isn't anywhere north of Watford a different country? ;-)
i think
he secretly wants to live in castle!
is this the new
oasis vs blur?
Yet another reason
to absolutely despise this horrible excuse for a band.
Will someone please tell that little rat faced cunt of a singer that no one gives a fuck how "working class" he is
He's from Kenilworth
which is hardly the most working class place on earth. It's all a front, at least two of them are from very middle class warwickshire towns.
I'm sure
Kenilworth has a castle
Maybe he wasn't allowed in?
Kenilworth Castle
is a ruin so perhaps he's just disappointed knowing that no matter how many units he shifts he can't live there.
I too would love to hear a song about a castle.
Any out there?
Kenilworth Castle
is a ruin so perhaps he's just disappointed knowing that no matter how many units he shifts he can't live there.
I too would love to hear a song about a castle.
Any out there?
um...
um, a quick scan of my i-tunes brings up tunes by bomb the bass and clap your hands say yeah, as well as "castle in the sky" from les mis. none of which are really about castles in the literal sense. surely we must be able to do better than this...
a whole album...
dusk at cubist castle by olivia tremor control
hahah!
Kenilworth! I didn't know they were from Kenilworth, I lived a few miles from there and it is far from the gritty working class slum that they are trying to pretend they are from. Fuck, even Coventry isn't that bad, apart from it's shitawful road network....but then i really doubt they've written a song about that. I'd love to hear a song about how shit the coventry ring road is!
i hate this band, and I hate this fake working class bullshit.
pathetic attempt
to make the kind of people who like Oasis like this band. i've not heard anything by the Enemy, now I will try not to.
Sigh.
FUN FACT:
Tom from the Enemy takes beer bottles full of water onstage with him, to create the illusion that he is a beer swilling every-man!
also, he has the same nose as Frank Sidebottom.
:DDDD
that is all.
But look!
They're eating in a greasy spoon! I fucking hate this prolier-than-thou attitude....
their songs are all about the weekend
That's because fuck all happens in Coventry at weekends. Apart from football and fights.
They probably just sit in their local (maybe made out of prefab concrete) and moan about how shit life is like most other people in the city.
That's why most people with sense leave the city.
Knob
Jockey.
God I HATE The Enemy.
Do you live in Coventry?
That's a pretty myopic viewpoint. Coventry has plenty of great things going on (Final Fantasy this coming Tuesday anyone?). It's a shame the Enemy aren't one of them.
Also, even though it doesn't matter, i think theyre mistaking their working class roots for being stupid.
...
Could we have less of your fellow townspeople writing into national newspapers ever couple of weeks demanding that Wembley be moved to Coventry because "it's in the middle of the country"?
It's a very specious argument. Thanks.
i did...
... still go back for the football.
Why do shit bands
always have to turn it into a class thing?
If you have 'class' (PROPER class) you get on with it and let what you're doing speak for itself.
Is the singer the ugliest man in music?
I say YES!
Hooray.
More so?
Than Richard Ashcroft?
...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6896739.stm
tom from the enemy is 18
at worst he has had a full time job for 2 years.
however, i suspect he finished school when he was 16, fucked about in college or on the dole for a year, then the enemy got signed.
what the fuck does he know about the working class grind?
EVERYTHING
...
Stupid and shit. What a winning combination. No wonder Warners snapped them up.
you bastards
this musics for the poor! not you rich kids!
Yeah
The poor of hearing!
BOOM BOOM
baaaaahahahahaha
....aaaaahahahahahahahahaahhhaha
ROFL
*coughs up lungs*
fucking smoking
but yeah, this guy is a grade A prick.
probably the only thing he excels in, seeing as though music ain't one of em.
Hmm...
See, that's just stupid.
I'm proud of being working class because I'm proud of who I am... But I think The Enemy are shit. They don't talk about what working class people know. They just write shit songs.
I'd also like to echo the "rich people don't write shit songs, shit musicians write shit songs" bit.
That's about right :-P
WOW.
some pretty harsh view there. What I would desperately like to say is that I was brought up to believe we are all equal. Even the jews. But being a man of wealth and class I resent the fact he thinks we can't write proper tracks. My dad didn't work a hard day in his life and thankfully neither will I. That doesn't make me any better of the working classes but it does give me less to sing about, unless peole really want to hear songs of my castle and my maids and my indoor swimming pool.. I dunno..
Surely I'm not the only person who thinks
That they've named themselves The Enemy in an attempt to align themselves with the NME?
The lad must have..
..had a harsh paper round as a young 'un.
Is it just me
Or is he suggesting the Arctic Monkeys aren't working class?
Not that it matters like, I'm from one of the biggest shitholes in County Durham and I'd rather eat my own socks than listen to the Enemy.
hmmm
I like listening to 'Spanish Castle Magic' By The Jimi Hendrix Experience. I must be a traitor to my roots. For shame.
'Ours are more about the working man.'
i do dislike phrases like this. like the average working man is some kind of noble, communist ideal. the average working man wants to have more money than he currently does.
i live in the elephant and castle. does anyone want to hear a song about the elephant and castle?
Well, let's hope that everyone who considers themselves to be anything other than working class.....
boycotts their utterly shite debut and all of the self proclaimed working class hero types just nick it off Limewire.
Cunts.
not so much
but i'd love to hear a song about an elephant and a castle.
Surely you must be pretty rich
to afford instruments and practice spaces and other stuff involved in being in a band...
I don't like The Enemy, they don't seem to understand their haircuts.
Someone once accused me
of hating anything remotely working class (with regard to music). This reminds me of him. He's a fucking knob. Fucking fucking fuck. This sort of thing pisses me off so much. If that's the way you think about music, you really shouldn't be allowed to work in the music industry.
its in-built pr
next!
he clearly hasn't heard
'me and my serf' by richy machatethepoor. a fine example of castle pop.
i certain preferred that to his 'ironic' cover
of 'Living In A Box'
This has driven me to need to expend some anger
I'm going to go and beat up one of my servants.
This lad
looks like Paul Weller but made out of rubber, and sounds like a cardboard cutout of a twat.
Half the"working class" jobs he talks of are now the preserve of students and middle class who dont care.
He wants drowning in a vat of marshmallows.
And he's stolen my first name
Lets all chase him with a scythe so I can take it back
fried breakfasts???
in a caff!
they are well working class mate.
they...
only look about 10 years fucking old, what would they know about working?
maybe they should try that before putting a big working class hero label on themselves
silly silly band
cunt
s
I've heard good music from Coventry, or at least a Cov label from Tough Love Records
Never heard the enemy though, I suppose that's because I don't much listen to the radio and leave Smash Hits 2007, sorry, I mean the NME, on the shelf as it would be mean to deprive the 10 years olds of their pleasure.
I've never seen one of their videos
but I bet there are red-bricked houses featured aren't there?
Arctic Monkeys
are to blame for bands singing about boring and mundane things.
Like Noel Gallagher once said about the influence they'll have
""It's gonna be c**ts with guitars going: 'And me mum works down the f**king chip shop, she met a geezer' and all that.
"Great pop music is not about real life, it's about how great life can be.
Real life's shit".
And here we have The Enemy. Bag of crap. This recent championing of working class has become old already.
Give us a new Radiohead!
After reading that article
I am now really tempted to write a song about castles. Lets do it!
Genius
Smash Hits 2007 = NME
Let's all form bands who write exclusively about large stately homes, sumptious garden parties and c
Now we just need a name so that the NME can leap on the bandwagon and start hyping this new 'scene'........
Suggestions so far:
1). Castlecore
2). Moat-Town
Over to you.........
'and carzy debauched days..
pheasant shooting on Uncle Peregrine's Scottish estate with the 7th Earl of Mornington.
'crazy'
My typing game is wack.
I'm off for a Penguin cake bar.
What are they like them?
Just a rectangular chocolate spongey cake with the Penguin logo whacked onto it?
The Mars ones are fecking orgasmic.
They've put some effort in
and managed to create something which broadly approximates to the chcocolate biscuit version.
There's a layer of chocolate cream just underneath the chocolate at the top.
Full marks also for the fantastic artwork!
How did
these fucknuckles get to #1?
The public......
...the bloody public.
zzzzz
Boring band.
What a naive
thing to say about if you live in a castle you write about it. Class doesn't make you the man you are, life does.
People like him are bad and keep the divide there.
It's because of people like him I don't like saying I was put through private school.
Generic twats.
Well
i dont fully disagree with this statement as many of my favourite bands/artists come from predominatly working class backgrounds such as the Fall, billy Childish, John Cooper Clarke but.......... from the other end of the spectrum with out music coming from the middle or upper class we wouldnt have bands like the Libertines, the view klaxons etc....!!! Which wouldnt be too bad actually..... lets all bundle down a coal mine and start a new musical revolution!!!!!
Fuck
The Arctic Monkeys, fuck the Enemy, Fuck Amy Winehouse, Fuck Just Jack, Fuck Razorlight, Fuck All the Emo's, Fuck all you new indie kids and fuck all your opinions...
Listen to the No Sleep Police. It will make you all happier.