antipopper

Some of you might remember that last year I dedicated Starship’s “We Built This City” to those struggling in Miami against the Free Trade Area of the Americas summit: “It’s just another Sunday, in a tired old street / Police have got the choke hold — oh, and we just lost the beat”. I noted that the song was originally written for John Farnham, which took some of you towards a radical reappreciation of Farnham’s 1985 MOR pop-rock hit “You’re The Voice“.

Those same peeps know that the Australian Electoral Commission is using “You’re The Voice” to advertise today’s Federal Election. Riding the wave of its recent rehabilitation an Australian Idol group finalist singalong (i.e. a performative proxy for Christian fundamentalist rapture), the song is played as a vacuous anthem for civic-minded smugness and integration… right?

But now I must join in solidarity with you ironic-radical fans, and indulge your perverse urge to read the song against the grain, to declare that it can’t be reduced to electoralist duty and parliamentary fetishism. Perhaps it’s because “You’re The Voice” is so vague: “We have the chance to turn the pages over,” “How long can we look at each other / Down the barrel of a gun?”. Unlike the Beastie Boys’ recent clumsy “political” turn, the very vagueness that can lend “You’re The Voice” to tacky civic platitudes can also project it into a radical netherworld of possibility. Every time I see the AEC TV commercial and hear “We’re not gonna sit in silence / We’re not gonna live with fear,” I hear the song overflow its context. Into insurrection.