Customer Reviews

Must I Paint You a Picture: Essential Billy Bragg

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I have every Billy Bragg album except this one, and the rare stuff on the third disc is tempting me to correct that oversight. Record companies take note - that's how a Greatest Hits album is supposed to work!

For those unfamiliar with Billy Bragg, his music may be best summarized as "acoustic punk", but he has experimented with numerous styles over the course of his twenty year career. This three CD set collects them all, in a rough chronological order. Disc one begins in Thatcherite Britain: you can picture Billy sitting in a smoke-filled pub belting out coarse folk tunes and love songs with tender quirky lyrics; we then follow him outside into the middle of the poll tax riots, with socialist anthems and rich ballads that tell stories of heartache and broken dreams. Disc two starts at a time in Bragg's career I'd rather forget, the Britpop period, but thankfully the salvation of the later 1990s soon follows. Here he returns to familiar themes - disillusionment with the state of the world, left wing Utopianism, and, of course, love - but the music is more sophisticated and polished. There's even a few Woody Guthrie covers thrown in for fun (and to remind us of his politics). Disc three is made up of remixes and rarities I've only ever heard live or bootleg, which is why I'm going to break down and buy the album!

Regardless of your politics, it's hard not to be moved by songs like "Levi Stubbs' Tears" or "The Space Race Is Over", or to reminisce about relationships gone sour over tracks like "The Price I Pay". Billy Bragg is truly a prolific artist, with a poet's soul and a bleeding heart, and this collection of his work is, as the title says, ESSENTIAL.

Bragg's tune, "No Power Without Accountability" sums up his political perspective absolutely accurately, and in this collection, his career is summed up just perfectly. This is a writer who puts his head and his heart on the line. Art as politics blazes through his skewering of the western world. While his neo-socialist underpinnings seem at times dated ("Great Leap Forward"), you need to keep in mind that it was no accident that he should turn to Woody Guthrie and in partnership with WILCO essay some of America's heartland-poet's unfinished songs in so compelling a manner. Like Ireland's Andy Irvine, Bragg has taken to the road for the common man. Fatcats of either white or blue collar are pilloried, their efforts at exploiting those who have entrusted them with power are stripped of the rhetoric designed to feed people what they want and laid open as lies meant to enrich the prevaricators. For all the vitriol, there is an incredibly human voice that touches the heart as well as fires the mind.
Besides all that, Bragg can write a damn fetching tune. For all the rhetoric, he can turn around and write something as emotionally honest as "Somedays I See The Point," one of the greatest songs ever written. His early resetting of "Just Walk Away Renee" is shear (you'll get it) genius. There is a lot to consider here and it is all worth the investment of your time. WILCO, The Blokes, his solo stuff: all are delivered with a sense of commitment. The third disc presents some rarities, including a cut from a radio show in Philadelphia that misrepresents its xenophilic title by content. Nonetheless, Bragg is just brilliant with his "Rhyme or Reason." It's irrelevant whether you embrace his politics. What counts is you have before you the works of a man who has considered thoughtfully the human condition and has found cause to say that the least of us should never be trampled upon. His is a noble soul. Fripp says, "With commitment, everything changes." Bragg clearly lives that commitment.

All "best ofs" should be this good. Top-notch material in chronological order, with a better flow than any of his proper albums. There simply are no bad songs here. Some won't like his voice, some find him too sentimental - I give him points for sincerity and doing exactly what he wants for over 20 years. Intelligent pop music? Yes, it's possible. A great collection.

Based upon the fact that I only knew two songs ("New England" and "To Have and Have Not"), buying these CD's was a huge gamble. Not only did I find out upon purchasing it that I like Billy Bragg, but I discovered I LOVE Billy Bragg. This collection is not only a comprehensive and fairly complete sampling of his work, it is also a set of three albums, astounding unto themselves.
The first disc is more bare-bones than the other two (and my favorite) featuring Bragg's characteristically clever songwriting and sparse musical accompaniment. This is of course, not without exception, most notable the fuller sounding "Great Leap Forwards", among several others.
The second disc is a slight departure from the aforementioned sound, without deviating completely from Bragg's traditional style. More instruments, more production. My personal favorite from this one is "Way Over Yonder In the Minor Key", which features backing vocals from a woman who sounds uncannily like Natalie Merchant to me...however, I could easily be mistaken.
The third disc is the shortest, however, nonetheless amazing as well.
I constantly find myself reaching for this cd, and the only disappointment I have is that Billy Bragg is such an underrated artist here in America.

Listening to Billy Bragg is a very English thing to do. Perhaps British, but definitely English. His Essex consonants, largely unreconstructed by the passing years, his wonderfully vernacular use of the language (he even mentions Marmite, food of the gods, on "England, Half English"), songs about God-bothering footballers, unrequited boyhood lust at the school disco, and best of all, his withering political polemics laced with laugh out loud humour ("trapped in a hairstyle he no longer believes in").

Politics is what most people associate Billy with, and for sure he did his share in the eighties ("I was doing about 300 gigs a year and only got paid for half of them - why should I be nostalgic for the eighties?") and still cares now. He still backs fair unions against bad bosses, supports hospices and fair trade campaigns, and believes that a better world is actually possible - only some kind of idiot thinks that is a bad thing, surely.

But let's not forget that Billy has written some great songs about love and life as real people live it. "St Swithins" day is one of the most beautiful songs I have ever heard, aching in its sense of loss and grimy ordinariness. "Tank Park Salute" is a gorgeous and brave song about Billy's relationship with his father. There are many more in his canon. Like Dylan, like Guthrie, Bragg is not a "protest" singer to the exclusion of all else.

Perhaps "New England", written early in his career, still sums up a lot of what Billy is about. It's a cracking tune, with a great chorus, which cheerfully pokes gentle English fun at his own political interests ("I'm not looking for a new England, I'm just looking for another girl") whilst being ostensibly a break-up song, and still manages to deliver one of the funniest lines in rock music - "I saw two shooting stars last night / I wished on them, but they were only satellites / Is it wrong to wish on space hardware?".

A great English songwriter, who is increasingly a great contributor to modern debates on the nature of Englishness and the future of our nation. A national treasure in fact.

Long may he reign.

And another thing: in concert he is very good and very, very funny. He has an apparently bottomless fund of great stories and witty one-liners, fuelled by his ever present cup of tea, and even manages to make political discourses a laugh.

I love Billy Bragg's lefty politics, his rough, un-taught voice and his tremendous guitar playing, but most I just love his courage. He's a good, at times clever song writer - "Walk Away Renee" was a nice surprise, and you just should have him in your catalog.

Now there's a way for people unfmailiar with Billy get an overview of his music from above. I've loved his lyrical abilities and evocative music that fuses both a folkie sensibility and a gritty modern edge for a long time. Very few other present day bands can do this well. Outgrabe is one of the most successful, and they've clearly been influenced by Billy, the grand old man of this genre. I wish Billy all the luck in the world, and I'm sure this CD will draw new fans into his musical space.

I bought this CD on the fact that it was value for money. Depending on your retailer you can get a bonus third 10 track disc. So overall you have 50 tracks and over 200 minutes of music. WOW! If all music CDs were like that...I'd buy triple the new releases CDs I buy now. The first disc is the more instantly gratifiable (quiet ambient, sonic, subliminal, primeval and surreal). The second disc needs more spins to appreciate, but still as good. The production values of this CD is first class...high quaility sound: guitars, piano and all sort of modern distortions. Overall I am impressed by this 3CD set. Now I am a fan of Billy Bragg.

Billy Bragg thinks he's a modern day Woody Guthrie, championing the poor working class. Unfortunately he is not.Not only is he a hypocrite by writing for the right wing press when it suits him, but i find his 'right on' attitude rather nauseating. This is a man that supports a certain Mr Blair and is proud to do so. Therefore i fine his music rather patronising to people that (unlike him) are really struggling. Mr Bragg wouldn't know real suffering if it crawled up and bit him. At least Steve Earle walks it like he talks it! Beware of songwriters who claim to be working class they invariably aren't!