the Guardian的
一則blog介紹過去十年布萊爾執政時期，搖滾樂界出現過的幾首反布萊爾歌曲。
大致的歷史背景在「聲音與憤怒」一書中有一章專門討論。不過，書中沒有討論到的一個重點是布萊爾支持美國攻打伊拉克讓他在後期遭受嚴厲批評。
If Tony Blair is quietly aggrieved that he won't get to equal Margaret Thatcher's tenure in Number 10, then he might take comfort in the fact that he trails the Iron Lady in another respect. No songwriter has yet pictured him on the guillotine, planned a party for the day he dies, nor promised to tramp down the dirt on his grave. And while Bush may have inspired more musical scorn than any president in history, Blair remains a difficult figure to demonise. The guitar-strumming PM's musical legacy is therefore a slim one, but here are 10 songs with which to remember him: one for each year in office. And that's roughly 10 more than John Major managed to inspire.
Pulp - Cocaine Socialism (1998)
Even before the honeymoon was over, Jarvis Cocker was casting a withering eye over Cool Britannia and New Labour's attempts to co-opt the Britpop aristocracy. Croons the creepy apparatchik: "Well you sing about common people/And the mis-shapes and the misfits/So can you bring them to my party?" Comes the answer: er, no.
Chumbawamba - Tony Blair (1999)
Up-ending a bucket of water over the deputy prime minister the previous year was not the agit-pop veterans' most Swiftian moment. Amends were made by this retro tale of puppy love with a double-crossing dreamboat. "Tony, now you date/All the girls that you used to hate/So I don't believe a single word you say."
Radiohead - You and Whose Army? (2001)
The end of Blair's first term was aptly marked by this enervated protest song from a band seemingly paralysed by disappointment and impotent frustration. Thom Yorke taunts "Come on, come on," but in a voice which suggests he is preparing for a long nap rather than a punch-up. Five years later, Yorke mounted a more articulate and moving indictment of Blair's regime with his solo song Harrowdown Hill, about the lonely demise of David Kelly.
Pet Shop Boys - I Get Along (2002)
Having contributed to Labour's war chest in 1997, Neil Tennant wrote about Blair more in sorrow than in anger. Here, the sacking of Peter Mandelson over the Hinduja affair in 2001 is framed as an improbably moving break-up song, with a wounded prime minister telling his old friend why he has to go. "I've been trying not to cry/When I'm in the public eye/Stuck here with the shame/And taking my share of the blame/While making sudden plans that don't include you." Last year's I'm With Stupid adapted the idea, with Tony making excuses for his reviled lover George, but this is so much better.
George Michael - Shoot the Dog (2002)
With its wrecking-ball satire, cack-handed pilfering of the Human League's Love Action, and the unlikely image of Michael getting stoned and watching the World Cup with Cherie, Shoot the Dog was never a good record but it was a brave one. Less than a year after 9/11, there was tabloid punchbag George Michael mocking Blair's apparent obedience to Bush and the neocon project, with an irreverent animated video to boot. "It was a major opportunity to kick me in the teeth," he later reflected. "I was hugely depressed by the lack of support from any quarter, especially fellow musicians."
Dizzee Rascal feat. God's Gift - Hold Your Mouf (2003)
The most talked-about line on Dizzee Rascal's Mercury-winning debut was contained in this shocking snapshot of east London gun culture: "I'm a problem for Anthony Blair." Since then, hoodie hysteria and mounting gang violence have proved him right. (For another UK rapper's take on Blair, try Braintax's rickety but impassioned Syriana Style.)
Elbow - Snowball (2005)
A highlight of the otherwise underwhelming charity album, Help: A Day In The Life, Snowball drips with disgust. "Oh and laughable the crying shame/Oh the mark I made against your name," sighs repentant Labour voter Guy Garvey before imagining Blair haunted by "a hundred thousand punctured souls". Harsh stuff, except when placed next to...
Muse - Take a Bow (2006)
... this apocalyptic space-rock j'accuse, which promises a fiery doom for the architects of the Iraq war. On the same album, Assassin urges: "The time has come to shoot your leaders down." A good time to retire, then.
Larrikin Love - Downing Street Kindling (2006)
The Lidl Libertines vow to set fire to the door of number 10. "And when Tony rushes out complaining of a draft I'll let him warm his feet." After Muse, not terribly scary.
Manic Street Preachers - Send Away the Tigers (2007)
Having demonstrated his empathy for political pariahs on The Love of Richard Nixon, Nicky Wire ties together the misguided "liberation" of zoo animals in Baghdad with the decline of two Tonys: Hancock and Blair. According to Wire, it's about "that idea of being haunted by a wrong decision. With Hancock it was sacking his writers. And, if it weren't for the Iraq war, for all his faults, in historical terms, Tony Blair would be seen as a great prime minister. Now his life is utterly ruined." It's the only song here that the man himself, in his more soul-searching moments, might agree with.
