Welcome to Polls Apart, the Clash barometer of the best and worst facets in music.
At ten, the antithesis of cool – the worst perpetrators of musical crimes. At one, the most influential and heroic saviours. Let count down commence! This month: CARS
10. Feeder – ‘Buck Rogers’
With Proust nervously thumbing his copy of In Search Of Lost Time and ruminating at the apparent ease with which Feeder overshadowed an entire life’s output through just one song, the rest of us are free to revel in the delicate word play and complex prose of Buck Rogers. “He’s got a brand new car / Looks like a Jaguar / It’s got leather seats / And a CD player”. Now, were you to overhear the above as a conversation on the Tube you would at best conclude that all those involved were the type of people who preferred You’ve Been Framed when Lisa Riley was in charge. In other words; of reduced mental faculties. Transposed to a pop song it succeeds in becoming even more banal and must surely rank as one of the shittest openings ever to have been captured in a recording studio. As to why the owner of the aforementioned Jaguar has found themselves ensnared in this ectopic smear of a song is unclear, but suffice to say that were this anywhere near their CD player pedestrians would later recall a look of unbridled horror on the driver’s face as he careered purposefully into Wetherspoons’ front window – killing not just himself, but a slew of Stella-soaked afternoon drunks. Happy now, Feeder? Happy now?!
9. Madness – ‘Driving In My Car’
Ever wondered what a cockney One Man Band would sound like as he ricocheted fatally down a spiral staircase? Then ponder no more, for Madness have sated your sordid East End snuff perversions. Setting the precedent for Feeder by including an inexcusable Jaguar rhyming couplet, Madness’ ‘Driving In My Car’ is an RTA of hoots and revs that sits somewhere between Coldcut’s ‘Timber’ and the theme tune from Stoppit And Tidyup. Digested read; a God-awful cacophony. Now that Suggs et al find themselves feted throughout the land as cheeky urban poets, it can be easy to overlook just how gash some of their output truly was – with ‘Driving In My Car’ the kind of simplistic ditty which wouldn’t look out of place on a particularly low-rent CBeebies show. “Last week it went round the clock / I also had a little knock / I dented somebody’s fender / He learnt not to park on a bender”. Suggs’ tenure as host of Channel 5’s Night Fever suddenly seems more of a career highlight than we previously thought…
8. Sir Mix-A-Lot – ‘Mr. Hooptie’
Oooh, hip-hop doesn’t half like its cars. What better way is there to combine an overpowering lack of taste and a sudden injection of cash than by jizzing your dollar all over some painted metal on wheels? Look how ruddy ace I am! I can make a machine move by pressing me foot down… Whoop de fucking wooh. At least Sir Mix-A-Lot (of ‘Baby Got Back’ fame) had the good grace to pen a song that acknowledged the decrepit chassis from which the majority of fans would be blaring this misogynistic toss. Unimaginative, shallow and obsessed with material gain, Sir Mix-A-Lot could well have been offering up a portmanteau device wherein the shonky nature of the composition was a damning commentary on the ostentatious excesses of those who attempt to purchase style through a compound alloy covered combustion engine. Oh no, my mistake. It’s just shit.
7. John Travolta – ‘Grease Lightning’
Next time a boy racer undertakes you in a spoiler-festooned Corsa with Cascada spilling from every orifice, keep calm and take solace in the fact they’ll soon be removed from the gene pool via an articulated lorry on the A5. Darwinism in action innit? Trouble is, the type of cunts who get a hard-on from driving recklessly are repeatedly mythologised within popular culture; portrayed as rebellious daredevils rather than the mucky-nailed retards they actually are. A case in point is the greasy haired remedial student Danny Zuko (played by John Travolta) from Grease whose one and only selling point appears to be his ability to drive at speed whilst being jeered on by a pack of leather jacketed imbeciles. Distilled into three minutes of stage school hysterics, ‘Grease Lightning’ is a chorus line just waiting to be mown down in a multi car pile-up.
6. Billy Ocean – ‘Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car’
Vacuous and convinced of its self worth, Billy Ocean’s 1988 hit ‘Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car’ shares many of its core characteristics with the reigning gut-lord of car fetishism Jeremy Clarkson. Fatuous to the point of parody, Clarkson preaches his crass and frankly unsettling take on modern Britain to those members of the populace who think Joanna Lumley should be the next Prime Minister and global warming is a Guardian-sponsored conspiracy engineered purely to spoil their petrol-headed fun. Sod Kyoto; let’s see how fast we can drive across Central London in a modified ice cream van with the corpses of future generations dragging behind our belching exhaust. FUCKING BRILLIANT! As for laughing boy Ocean, this song has all the charm of a silver Ford Focus escorting past Big Brother housemates to a Closer photo shoot. In other words; bollock all.
5. David Hasselhoff – ‘Jump In My Car’
Should we ever require an enforced termination policy to thin out our swelling populace, then a detailed census which highlights all the twats cluttering up Britain would be a sterling idea. But how should we best go about identifying said knob-jockeys, thereby ensuring the continued well-being of our social structure? Piece of piss mate! Just gather up each and every wanker who has a personalised number plate and voila; the death squads have their list… CUN75. David Hasselhoff would unquestionably find himself dodging the flamethrowers, given that he is exactly the type of cock-knocker who couldn’t resist spelling out his sheer twattery courtesy of some overpriced symbols from the DVLA. Having established his predilection for auto-erotica whilst playing Michael Knight, Hasselhoff once again sat prostrate atop the Pontiac transmission-tunnel in the video for ‘Jump In My Car’ (originally recorded by the Ted Mulry Gang in 1976) – a song which is so utterly shit it’s good, before you come to your senses and realise that actually no; it’s fucking dreadful. But a bit addictive. Argh! Either way, when The Hoff sings, “Jump in my car / I wanna take you home / I’m a trustworthy guy / Oh, little girl I wouldn’t tell you no lie…” you’ll be straight on the laptop Googling for the NSPCC action line.
4. Bruce Springsteen – ‘Born To Run’
Peacocking. Without doubt one of the primary factors in persuading otherwise sentient human beings to invest great swathes of their income on a horseless carriage. ‘The birds are well impressed with my alloys blud, I was parked up at Nandos last week pimping it proper skills…’ And just as the oiks stinking out your local Halfords perceive a causal link that connects lust > girls > cars > chlamydia, so songwriters have understood the romantic associations of the open road. Whether it be Morrissey craving to end it all beneath a Routemaster, Chuck Berry’s baby beside him at the wheel, or The Beatles proffering their beau a razz round the block, the message is essentially the same; Karl Benz didn’t just invent a means of transportation, he invented a relationship conduit. Of all modern American artists (a nation whose very axis spins upon the piston), Bruce Springsteen has seen just what potential the freedom afforded by automobiles grants the young – particularly those in love and suffocated by the rents. Addressing the subject of his desire Wendy, Brucie paints himself as a hot-rod tyke just itching to offer a life on the road awash with lust, excitement and carefree attitude. It’s enough to make me want a Hudson Hornet. And I don’t even know what one is. What have I become?!
3. Gary Numan – ‘Cars’
Cars provide sanctuary. What goes on in your motor is a private affair – cut off from the outside world by a womb of steel. Unless you’re Stan Collymore. In that case, a drizzly Somerfield car park on Wednesday night can be transformed into a bijou version of the Palladium – with your personality-shorn Audi the star attraction! However, Gary Numan understood the significance automobiles play as social refuge (“Here in my car / I feel safest of all / I can lock all my doors”), recording the track after he narrowly escaped a road rage incident in Central London. But that’s probably because he’s a shit driver. Doesn’t bother with indicators. Or mirrors for that matter. Like an electro version of Maureen from Driving School. Ripping around the capital with a blatant disregard for our sacred Highway Code, whistling along to Heart FM and mowing down toddlers. The birch is too good for the likes of you, Numan.
2. Kraftwerk – ‘Autobahn’
Whilst most entries in this list concern themselves with the car itself, Kraftwerk looked instead to document the asphalt ribbons that tartan our landscape and define how we access to the world around us. Obsessed with automation and the mechanical, Kraftwerk’s twenty-two minute opus captures both the wonder and monotony of motorway travel; an experience that allows you to traverse the country in a way previous generations could only dream of, but at the cost of Ginsters, tail-backs and motion sickness… A gilded shudder of electronica whose influence is still being felt today, ‘Autobahn’ by Kraftwerk is rightly lauded for its role in mapping out the bleeps of modern music and making the M6 on a dank Tuesday evening seem almost magical. Almost.
1. Prince – ‘Little Red Corvette’
If ever an artist / song combo bellowed caps-lock EUPHEMISM it’s surely Prince and his ‘Little Red Corvette’. The mucky tart. Essentially a prolonged discussion of some slapper’s hot pocket, Prince predictably draws a tacit comparison between the sleek curves of the eponymous sports car and his one night stand. Awash in synths and propped up by a fizzy drum machine, ‘Little Red Corvette’ would have been barely more than a risqué Two Ronnies sketch had the Purple One not been at the very height of his game; ensuring the lewd and crude subject matter instead came across as salacious and intriguing. From the vantage point of 2009 it can be somewhat baffling as to why Prince was capable of setting taps to drip on sight, but taking him at face value entirely misses the point. Prince was about the whole package; something founded in his cocksure attitude and fermented through a gold run of exemplary releases that punctuated the Eighties. Prosaically he was a short fella with deep-seated insecurities, but strap on a guitar and he morphed into a writhing cum dispenser – shirking his own ridiculousness to live the dream. And this is why he’s at number one, for not only does his song highlight the fetishism inherent in many people’s love of cars, but also the means by which an inanimate object can instil its owner with a hitherto unknown confidence.
Words by Adam Park
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