America – Paddy Protests

I always get caught on the hop by these things. The morning the leak that was to become “Crimson/Red” was released, I was off out to see people. And this morning, when we had an utterly unexpected and wonderful YouTube upload of a new live video of Paddy singing a new song, “America”, I was at 40,000 feet over Turkey and blissfully unaware of it. I caught wind of it on the shuttle from Heathrow Terminal 5 B Gates having seen Bjorn of the “Paddy McAloon and Prefab Sprout” Facebook group post about a song I’d never heard of. And then at the baggage claim I finally found the Youtube link and was just as flabbergasted and delighted as everyone else.

Not a leak this time, but uploaded by Keith Armstrong, Paddy’s manager.  And in its gentle and subtle way, you couldn’t really get a stronger expression of disgust for Trump’s imbecilic and divisive border policy. Presumably on that basis it is a very recent song Paddy wanted to get out there while it was still topical and while he was still angry. Does it point to a new paradigm for Paddy? Doubt it. But you never know. I’d love to be able to buy a copy of this.

At present there isn’t much information about the circumstances, but I’ll do a bit of digging, Moribund the Burgermeister style. In the meantime, it’s doing my jetlag no end of good. Very direct, it manages to remain subtle and with a beautiful chord progression.  Here’s the youtube link.


 

10 thoughts

  1. Its great to see Paddy playing guitar so upfront and personal. There are some classic Prefab Sprout chords in here–nice to see how he does them! In addition to the B half diminished, there is C# chord after the D major 7 which would not have been out of place on SWOON. That C# chord is like a C#minor7-11-#5? (C# F# B E A) So amazing!

  2. Truly wonderful protest song by our beloved genious Paddy McAloon. Nice to see a video too. Can’t wait for a single or album release

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