Dirty Linen

This is an excerpt from the print edition of Dirty Linen #138 (October/November 2008).
The full article is in the magazine, available on newsstands, by subscription, and at the Dirty Linen webstore.

Billy Bragg, photo by Tony Mott

Billy Bragg

Open to Anything

by Jeffery R. Lindholm

The very English tunesmith Billy Bragg is a man of dualities, quite apart from his delightfully alliterative "two-B" name. He is folksinger enough that Woody Guthrie's daughter Nora picked Bragg, out of all the many possible candidates, to write, sing, and record the music to complete some of the 2,500 unfinished lyrics her father left behind at his death. Yet, he's also a former punk rocker who brandishes an electric Fender Telecaster onstage rather than the chiming tones of a Martin acoustic and who displays a good bit of biting sarcasm in his lyrics.

He's also a singer/songwriter, which to many people, implies someone who's "sensitive" and "dreamy." Bragg can fit that persona -- he's written some hauntingly beautiful and insightful love songs, that's for sure, including "I Keep Faith," the first song on his new album. But he's also got a decidedly political side, recording Socialist anthems like "The Internationale" and emblazoning an early album cover with the slogan "Capitalism Is Killing Music." Perhaps the best illustration of this yin-yang balance came in the lyrics of Bragg's early opus, "New England," in which he sang:

I don't want to change the world
I'm not looking for a new England,
I'm just looking for another girl.

So now, as he enters the fourth decade of his career, Bragg delivers an album with a title that adds another two-sided coin for his audience to flip -- "Mr. Love & Justice." Again, that duality. Are the concepts in opposition, or they can work together -- in perfect harmony, perhaps?

Still, why "Mr. Love" and why "Mr. Justice"?

"I tried to look for a title that reflected my own persona, and I think for a lot of people, they have a bit of a two-dimensional image of me, as just a political singer/songwriter," said Bragg. "I've always labored under that label. I don't have any complaint about it; it's not something that I fight against, but it does frustrate me to be dismissed as a political singer/songwriter.

"I don't like being labeled, 'Oh, that Billy Bragg, he's all politics'; that really tees me off. So when I get the opportunity to pull out my love songs as well, I try to do that. As I had a song on the album called 'Mr. Love and Justice,' I thought it might be nice to use the title to reflect who I am."

So although many would proclaim that the time is ripe for an album chock full of scathing political commentary from Bragg, the disc features a mix. Even so, the "love songs" venture far into the politics of romance, such as "I Almost Killed You" and the title track. And in a more political vein, "Sing Their Souls Back Home" deals with the losses and ramifications of the Iraq War, while "O Freedom" relates the story a man who is arrested without being charged, then spirited out of the country, another victim of "rendition" facing torture overseas.

[cover #138]