A deft lyricist with a warm and compassionate voice,
51-year-old Billy Bragg has never been one to duck the inevitability of
romance or the importance of protest.
“I’m trying to provide people with different perspectives on things,
but not just one particular thing,” he says by phone. “The people that
I worry about are the people who don’t listen to it at all because of
the politics. The people who dismiss me because of my politics, I find
that really frustrating. It’s one of those things where the alternative
is to turn down the politics and I really can’t do that.”
Being pigeonholed as a left-wing singer-songwriter, a reincarnated
Phil Ochs, isn’t easy for Bragg, but like the work of Ochs, once you
scratch the surface, beauty emerges. “It’s what I’m known for,” Bragg
says. “It’s what goes before me, so if you don’t want to listen to
politics, you’re not going to get far enough to hear ‘Greetings to the
New Brunette’ or anything like that.”
Bragg’s latest album, Mr. Love & Justice, is on the
Epitaph subsidiary ANTI-. Many of the album’s songs emerged after the
writing of Bragg’s first book, The Progressive Patriot, which he
describes as a “polemic argument.” Delivering the manuscript was a huge
relief for Bragg, and the subject of the songs that he wrote in the
wake of that was clear. “When I first looked at the first clutch of
songs, first half-dozen songs I wrote, they were nearly all love
songs,” he says. “I had to accept that because that’s what needed to
come out.”
The album is aptly named: Bragg’s songs bear the double-edged sword
of protest and romance. Depending on what kind of mood you’re in when
listening, a track called “I Keep The Faith” could be a radical call to
arms or an affirmation of love between two people.
When it comes to songs about love or politics, it isn’t an either-or
situation for Bragg. “Most people’s relationships are shaped by
economics—they prescribe the relationship you can have. There’s a
line I have in a song, ‘Valentine’s Day is Over’: ‘Brutality and the
economy are related, now I understand.’ I have always recognized that.”
This article appears in Nov 12-18, 2009.