Malvina Reynolds

 You may recognise the work of this 60s folk scene singer-songwriter on the recent O2 advert in which her song "Little Boxes" was featured as the soundtrack. That particular song was one of the earliest and most famous anthems of 60s counter-culture. Its a shame that somehow the O2 advert manages to sap it of all its non-conformist zeal and turn it into something cute and inoffensive. The version used on the O2 advert is in fact an insipid cover version of the original in which O2 "rewrote the lyrics for the last part of the song, to refer to the positivity and possibilities that we can create through changing things". As the Guardian website put it "[This] is a bit like Panasonic tacking a verse about the wonders of HD on to the end of The Revolution Will Not Be Televised."

The original lyrics of "Little Boxes" are perhaps a little too confrontational, too right-on, to be called "cool" by today's standards (in which sadly it appears to me aloofness is celebrated and directness shunned) "Little Boxes" is nonetheless worth a proper listen.

In a strange way the song reminds me a little of Laurie Anderson's "O Superman" in that they both present what these women see as horrid truths of the world with a kind of faux indifference in the lyrics which are bolstered by the strangely optimistic sound of the music.



I began to wonder whether this kind of topical, deeply political songwriting could exist in music today without just preaching to the converted. Hip-hop, folk music and punk are all excellent means of expression for the politically and socially minded but I feel that though the messages in these songs are often well delivered and thought-out these paths are too well-worn and people are beginning to pay less and less attention to them. The messages themselves are beginning to sound less and less fresh as well. One genre which is perhaps not taken as seriously in socio-political terms is House music yet this genre is full of the kind of "come together" rhetoric usually associated with 60s counter-culture; its just not taken as seriously. Perhaps its time we re-examined some of House music's messages and reinvigorated it with some of our own. That way the seeds of change could be sown quietly in the background while people continue to shake their booties!