There has always been a need for artists like Blind Uncle Harry (not that there are many artists like Blind Uncle Harry), but I think it is fair to say that the United States of America has never needed him more than it does right now.
As always, he cuts to the chase. The problem with Making America Great Again, he says, is that not only was it never really that great, but the current political landscape only aims to make it great for the chosen few. It’s not about left and right, a person’s skin color, the believers and the faithless…it’s about the haves and have-nots, and the policies that are widening the chasm between the two.
His style has always had something of the ’60s folk boom, something of the protest singer, something of the Guthries about it, blending the spirit of Woody and the subversive humour of Arlo, and here that was never more evident.
It’s a gloriously satirical and antagonistic piece of music, precisely what the world needs more of right now, a song that will either see him as the leading light, or at least chief troubadour, of a glorious revolution, or, given the way the country is going, sharing a crowded cell in a Venezuelan jail with Bruce Springsteen and Taylor Swift! It could go either way.
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[…] small, conservative town in rural middle England, but that is nothing compared to the scenario that Blind Uncle Harry describes on his latest single, “Kimberly […]