We Are All Bourgeois Now There's something wrong somewhere here So through unclean streets I made my way With holes in my shoes And my children asleep at my feet I paid my way In every town on the way The people looked grey The buildings looked healthy But one day I met a man With money to spare He said he would tell me how it is "The State," he began "Has been propping up people too long For far too long We all got lazy and couldn't be bothered To make our way through the world But we are all bourgeois now Once there was class war But not any longer Because baby we are all bourgeois now So go out and make your way in the world We're free to choose We're all free to choose We're all free to choose We're free to choose In booming Britain we all work together To raise ourselves in the world Each of us knows someone Who has done well for themselves So well for themselves" "Thank you" I said as I left "I'll be on my way I see how it is" We are all bourgeois now And somehow I'll raise myself in the world I'm free to choose We're all free to choose We're all free to choose I'm free to choose We're all bourgeois now We're all bourgeois now We're bourgeois now notes: Malcolm: This is perhaps the song of ours I prefer, especially from the point of view of the recording. I think the rest of the group all like it too. It's about a woman who wanders around Thatcher's Britain with no money and two or three children, trying to understand what the hell is going on. She meets a Thatcherite spokesman who tells her that there's no such thing as class anymore, only free consumers. Possibly my favorite McCarthy track, and not simply because the Manic Street Preachers decided to cover it and include it as a bonus track on their 2001 album Know Your Enemy. Lyrics aside, I find the music alone very impressive, as well as unique. Perhaps we can say that this song is sort of a summary of all of Malcolm's lyrical quirks. We have two characters, two Britons, one unsure of him or herself, and the other confident in his pessimistic and Darwinian view of life, as in a song like All Your Questions Answered. The speaker is inevitably resigned to his fate, resigned to "how it is," just as in The Way of the World and St Francis Amongst the Mortals. If Malcolm's lyrics are on a whole a sort of journey through Thatcher's England, then that is exactly what we have in this song. "So through unclean streets / I made my way." Class is supposedly a taboo in the US, where everyone is said to view themselves as part of an ineffable middle class. In that sense, the message in this song is one of this illusion of the absence of any real class boundaries. Another interpretation is that we really are all bourgeoisie now, that we have all become "lazy" in a lifestyle of leisure and have forgotten where we came from. Yet it obviously isn't quite as easy as this for the speaker here, "holes in their shoes" and "children asleep at their feet." Even the ending isn't so bright. "Somehow I'll raise myself in the world." The song starts out with a recognition that something is wrong, but in the end, just as in All Your Questions Answered, just as in New Left Review #2, just as in so many of Malcolm's lyrics, the status quo is accepted with no real action taken. In the end, however, the implied message of choice shines through. "We're all free to choose"... We did this to ourselves, we still do it to ourselves, but we can undo it as well. Or so one can hope. "Holes in my shoes" recalls I Worked Myself Up From Nothing, while Something Wrong Somewhere is in fact the title of another McCarthy song. found on: Should the Bible Be Banned, That's All Very Well, But...
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