The Blur, the Line and the Thickest of Onions

There’s a lot to admonish at the minute, and we don’t get any other platform than song so it would really be a shame to waste it.

When we listen to music we do it because it makes us feel and think, pause and engage: the line “and sometimes even music cannot substitute for tears” is about as good as it gets to capturing the perfect summation of it all. I’ll always remember with bleak ecstasy how a song I’d never previously thought about too much made me burst into tears, on a train, on the way home from receiving the news that my Grandma had just died – and the power of the emotion was rippling.

So, it is with great sadness that every other song either purrs with a bland fecundity or proffers an image of society that I don’t want to recognise – and the chief irritant in a sea of misogynist bile was plain for all to see.

That’s what this song is a reaction against: the incoherent lack of effort to connect with a lyric. The type of laziness which at the same time suggests that all is ok in society – we can recline, we can produce meaningless music, debase women, promote violence all because we’ve cracked it. Parliaments are full with democratic agendas, with all ethnicities, genders, sexualities and regions well represented, business is not an entirely brigand based masculine affair, whilst mass media is of course populated by positive role models for young women, typical gender roles aren’t constantly reinforced and the workplace is not a sexist wasteland of ignorant design.

Yeah, nothing to say at all.

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The Blur, the Line and the Thickest of Onions

Feel good for a minute then implode
As the lack of an aphorism sticks in your throat with ire
Depose your vernacular, argot
Why have pride in a lyric when all the other songs go –

It’s a question of rust
It’s a question of trust
It’s a question of everything you’ve ever been told.

Minimum culture, minimal wage
I’m an onion peel my layers back
Minimum silence, minimal change
I’m an honest man, depths my tears lack
And if there’s love, let me know
Because I want you to come and put the beauty back

Blurred vision and the hobble of thick prose
Why empower misogyny while violence towards women grows?

But this filth stands on a quicker sand
Next to cold hard fear and the deeds of man
The abuse of body image as a form of control
And the typical portrayal of the feminine role
I have never been more appalled.

Pick me up with rhythms and waveform
That can symbolise a culture lost
Sing about the future like you mean to
I’m never going to count costs
Question the agenda of an industry
That only can objectify
You write about a non-existent blurred line
But not about abortion rights