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| Where the dogs run: British pop's unsentimental view of the high street | Where the dogs run: British pop's unsentimental view of the high street |
| (4 months later) | |
| What is a high street? As children, it was the place our parents took us when they needed to shop, where maybe there was the hope of a trip to the toy shop or a drink in a cafe. As adolescents, it was the place we would mooch around on Saturday afternoons, flitting between the handful of shops that might interest us, killing hours over a Coke in McDonald’s. As an adult, my local high street is a place not just to shop but where I know people – the barber, the cafe owner, the fella in the hardware store, the pub landlord, the drunk guy who is always hustling for a quid to buy more lottery tickets. It’s a place of local characters as much as it is two parallel rows of buildings. | What is a high street? As children, it was the place our parents took us when they needed to shop, where maybe there was the hope of a trip to the toy shop or a drink in a cafe. As adolescents, it was the place we would mooch around on Saturday afternoons, flitting between the handful of shops that might interest us, killing hours over a Coke in McDonald’s. As an adult, my local high street is a place not just to shop but where I know people – the barber, the cafe owner, the fella in the hardware store, the pub landlord, the drunk guy who is always hustling for a quid to buy more lottery tickets. It’s a place of local characters as much as it is two parallel rows of buildings. |
| The high street is woven into the fabric of the lives of everyone living in a town or suburb, which is why the concept of “the high street” has its own place in the news. Just the past few days have brought us stories such as “50,000 jobs lost or threatened on high street this year”; “How to mend Britain’s broken high street”; “Costa owner blames falling sales on high street decline”, and that’s before we even get to the travails of John Lewis. The high street is a cipher for everyday life. | The high street is woven into the fabric of the lives of everyone living in a town or suburb, which is why the concept of “the high street” has its own place in the news. Just the past few days have brought us stories such as “50,000 jobs lost or threatened on high street this year”; “How to mend Britain’s broken high street”; “Costa owner blames falling sales on high street decline”, and that’s before we even get to the travails of John Lewis. The high street is a cipher for everyday life. |
| Despite that, and despite British pop’s celebration of the mundane and the parochial, the high street has never been a central location for pop. | Despite that, and despite British pop’s celebration of the mundane and the parochial, the high street has never been a central location for pop. |
| There is High Street by Blood Orange, which isn’t really about the high street – despite its references to Ilford Lane, a high street in north-east London – until the end, when Skepta raps about the everyday sights: “Single mom struggling with the pushchair / She had a bad mouth but she had good hair / Stole a phone in the shop getting looked at / Barbershop, hairline’s getting pushed back / Guys looking at me like they wanna fight me / Just another day on the high street.” | There is High Street by Blood Orange, which isn’t really about the high street – despite its references to Ilford Lane, a high street in north-east London – until the end, when Skepta raps about the everyday sights: “Single mom struggling with the pushchair / She had a bad mouth but she had good hair / Stole a phone in the shop getting looked at / Barbershop, hairline’s getting pushed back / Guys looking at me like they wanna fight me / Just another day on the high street.” |
| The reference to the barber links it to one of the greatest pieces of English pop parochialism, Penny Lane by the Beatles, where there’s “a barber showing photographs / Of every head he’s had the pleasure to know”. Paul McCartney’s is an idealised high street, where no one is looking at him like they want to fight him. | The reference to the barber links it to one of the greatest pieces of English pop parochialism, Penny Lane by the Beatles, where there’s “a barber showing photographs / Of every head he’s had the pleasure to know”. Paul McCartney’s is an idealised high street, where no one is looking at him like they want to fight him. |
| In Shopping, the B-side to the final single by the Jam, Beat Surrender, Paul Weller wasn’t bothered about the high street as any kind of metaphor for a life either contented or disappointed. He was, as the on-the-nose title suggests, out shopping: “As I flit from window to window / I’m trying to pick out a friendly bargain.” It’s an odd little song, and it’s not hard to work out why it was a B-side rather than even an album deep cut. | In Shopping, the B-side to the final single by the Jam, Beat Surrender, Paul Weller wasn’t bothered about the high street as any kind of metaphor for a life either contented or disappointed. He was, as the on-the-nose title suggests, out shopping: “As I flit from window to window / I’m trying to pick out a friendly bargain.” It’s an odd little song, and it’s not hard to work out why it was a B-side rather than even an album deep cut. |
| In pop, the high street usually serves as either a token of the everyday, or a locator for songs about the wider metaphorical horror of the suburbs. Ignoring the fact that lots of people live in suburbs because they like them, the idea of the outer districts of cities as wastelands has long preoccupied British songwriters. In Suburbia, Pet Shop Boys are “lost in the high street, where the dogs run … in this suburban hell”. | In pop, the high street usually serves as either a token of the everyday, or a locator for songs about the wider metaphorical horror of the suburbs. Ignoring the fact that lots of people live in suburbs because they like them, the idea of the outer districts of cities as wastelands has long preoccupied British songwriters. In Suburbia, Pet Shop Boys are “lost in the high street, where the dogs run … in this suburban hell”. |
| That idea of the suburbs as somewhere to escape from permeates British pop, with the writers willing themselves into lives surrounded by People Like Them, rather than salarymen with narrow horizons, frustrated housewives (the two go hand in hand in much British pop) or the violent thugs of songs such as Everything But the Girl’s Hatfield 1980. | That idea of the suburbs as somewhere to escape from permeates British pop, with the writers willing themselves into lives surrounded by People Like Them, rather than salarymen with narrow horizons, frustrated housewives (the two go hand in hand in much British pop) or the violent thugs of songs such as Everything But the Girl’s Hatfield 1980. |
| Hop across the Atlantic, though, and it’s often a different story. Where Britons have high streets, Americans have main streets, and it’s often a rather less depressing place. “Down on Mainstreet” is where Bob Seger goes to watch “this long, lovely dancer in a little club downtown”, and where Blood, Sweat and Tears see Lucy, who “looks like a Wow!” when she’s “walkin’ down Main Street, lookin’ down”. It’s where people go cruising in Carole King’s Main Street Saturday Night. | Hop across the Atlantic, though, and it’s often a different story. Where Britons have high streets, Americans have main streets, and it’s often a rather less depressing place. “Down on Mainstreet” is where Bob Seger goes to watch “this long, lovely dancer in a little club downtown”, and where Blood, Sweat and Tears see Lucy, who “looks like a Wow!” when she’s “walkin’ down Main Street, lookin’ down”. It’s where people go cruising in Carole King’s Main Street Saturday Night. |
| But US writers saw their main streets ripped apart by the flight to out-of-town malls, similar to how British high streets are now being hit by internet shopping, Brexit and economic uncertainty. In 1984, in My Hometown, Bruce Springsteen noted “Now Main Street’s whitewashed windows and vacant stores / Seems like there ain’t nobody wants to come down here no more.” In Nobody Home, Amy Grant sang of “Main Street USA boarded up and dry / Knowin’ what once was here just makes me want to cry”. | But US writers saw their main streets ripped apart by the flight to out-of-town malls, similar to how British high streets are now being hit by internet shopping, Brexit and economic uncertainty. In 1984, in My Hometown, Bruce Springsteen noted “Now Main Street’s whitewashed windows and vacant stores / Seems like there ain’t nobody wants to come down here no more.” In Nobody Home, Amy Grant sang of “Main Street USA boarded up and dry / Knowin’ what once was here just makes me want to cry”. |
| Those lyrics speak of an empathy for and love of Main Street that isn’t as present in British songs. When British high streets are boarded up in song, as in the Clash’s Groovy Times, it’s a symptom of how we live in a terrible dystopia. The obvious explanation for the differing tones lies in geography: the US is a nation of small towns, or at least a nation whose art, from Norman Rockwell to Thornton Wilder to Harper Lee to Springsteen, has paid attention to the lives of those small towns and the communities that live in them. When your nearest big city may be hundreds of miles away, it concentrates the mind on looking for positives as well as negatives. | Those lyrics speak of an empathy for and love of Main Street that isn’t as present in British songs. When British high streets are boarded up in song, as in the Clash’s Groovy Times, it’s a symptom of how we live in a terrible dystopia. The obvious explanation for the differing tones lies in geography: the US is a nation of small towns, or at least a nation whose art, from Norman Rockwell to Thornton Wilder to Harper Lee to Springsteen, has paid attention to the lives of those small towns and the communities that live in them. When your nearest big city may be hundreds of miles away, it concentrates the mind on looking for positives as well as negatives. |
| To British ears, that can signify a sentimental streak that isn’t there when British writers remember growing up in Huddersfield or Crawley or Oswestry, or wherever. But it makes for a less wearying perspective than the endless procession of British songwriters disparaging the (usually) comfortable lives they led before the city called, and bemoaning the narrow minds of the millions who choose not to live in the city. | To British ears, that can signify a sentimental streak that isn’t there when British writers remember growing up in Huddersfield or Crawley or Oswestry, or wherever. But it makes for a less wearying perspective than the endless procession of British songwriters disparaging the (usually) comfortable lives they led before the city called, and bemoaning the narrow minds of the millions who choose not to live in the city. |
| If you want a British pop song that captures both sides of the high street – the American promenade and our own rather more desolate view of it – try Vicky Verky by Squeeze. Chris Difford’s couple “really trooped the colours / When walking with each other / And all her mates would giggle / As ladylike she’d wiggle / All along the high street / They’d splash out on an ice cream.” Except he’d got the money by robbing people, and ends up in borstal. | If you want a British pop song that captures both sides of the high street – the American promenade and our own rather more desolate view of it – try Vicky Verky by Squeeze. Chris Difford’s couple “really trooped the colours / When walking with each other / And all her mates would giggle / As ladylike she’d wiggle / All along the high street / They’d splash out on an ice cream.” Except he’d got the money by robbing people, and ends up in borstal. |
| Vicky Verky doesn’t end on a bleak note, though: back together, the pair go camping and to the coast, where she tells him: “I think I want that chance back / To be perhaps the one / Who will forever love you.” Of course, they couldn’t rekindle their love on the high street: the shops were probably all boarded up by then. | Vicky Verky doesn’t end on a bleak note, though: back together, the pair go camping and to the coast, where she tells him: “I think I want that chance back / To be perhaps the one / Who will forever love you.” Of course, they couldn’t rekindle their love on the high street: the shops were probably all boarded up by then. |
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