Birmingham: It's Not Shit

Gonna write a classic, gonna write it in an attic

Over at The Hearing Aid (a well recommended local music blog) we find a link to a band called The Will To Rally (who I think I heard a bit of last week at the Rainbow, but I was well gone by then). They have a song there called ‘I Heart Birmingham’ in which I can’t rightly tell whether they’re being sarcastic in the chorus or the verses.

This song reminded me about something I’ve long been musing, does Brum need some kind of anthem? I think it’d be smashing.

I think it would be great to have a song that we all loved and could sing, that helped us feel all warm and together inside – these don’t just come out of nowhere tho’, people have to write them. There is a danger, if they’re badly written for them to become laughable – just like this Stoke-on-Trent ‘theme tune’. That said it is possible for songs to cross the divide from fairly trite to meaningful for a body of people – as Flower of Scotland (only from 1967) has.

Obviously this is the sort of thing that can’t come from a council, or any community groups – but Birmingham does have its fair share of great songwriters. If only Stephen Duffy could be nudged into it – I guess he isn’t working with Robbie Williams any more (new Lilac Time album out this week yays!) – or well, who do you think? Laurence from Felt? I’d even be prepared to help out with the lyrics.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 14th, 2007 at 9:54 pm by Jon Bounds and is filed under music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.