Hello everybody on HIVE, and especially the Music Community. My name is Jasper and I'm writing to you from Cape Town in South Africa!
This is my 54th week in a row contributing to "Three Tune Tuesday", an initiative started by @ablaze. It is week 119 overall!
My new pattern for how I will be contributing to TTT is to take the Hive Open Mic challenge Theme of the Week and give suggestions on how I would tackle it!
For those of you who are not familiar, the Hive Open Mic is a weekly challenge on the Hive Open Mic community for anybody who loves to sing. You don’t even need to play an instrument, a backing track or a cappella is also fine as far as I can tell!
Different artists are given the chance to choose a “Theme of the Week” that the posts should be based on. Often it can be difficult for people to think about easy songs that might fit that theme… so let me see if I can be of any assistance to the people who still might not know what to try by the time Tuesday comes around!
All right! Let’s get cracking!
Here is the post inviting everyone to participate in this week’s Hive Open Mic (Week 178): @hiveopenmic/hive-open-mic-178-worldwide-live-music-event
As you can see, it was the turn of @benii to pick a theme, and this week the theme is “People”!
That is such a very open-ended theme! In my head I immediately had to try and confine it and make it more specific so that I could even focus… what my mind landed on to help with this was the phrase “A song of the People”…
Now it sounds more like I should be picking songs that talk about the fate/plight of the common man in the system that the Politicians and Elite keep us trapped in… in a kind of a protest song. There are still so many of these kinds of songs, but at least I can focus now!
The first one I would like to suggest is “Working Class Hero” by John Lennon, and also quite famously covered by Green Day! I love to sing this song! It has a very simple two-chord structure, but in the singing of it, you have to be powerful in the higher second line, and spit out your anger and contempt in the final line of the verse… so, it is easy but gives you loads of opportunity to express yourself and make it your own. Here is the original:
One of my favourite artists to cover is Tracy Chapman, as she writes songs that are perfect for a solo performance with an acoustic guitar. Many of her songs like “Talking ‘Bout a Revolution” and “Across the Lines” would have been a good fit for the theme, but I’m going to pick her song “Subcity” with it’s scathing line of “Give Mr. President my honest regards… for disregarding me…” as that fits in perfectly with the sentiments of “Working Class Hero” and especially my final pick! Here is the original version of “Subcity”:
Finally, I’m going to suggest the song I will try and cover myself later this week for the Hive Open Mic. It has gone incredibly viral on YouTube over the last couple of weeks and has made Oliver Anthony into an over-night star.
The USA is incredibly polarised politically at the moment, and at first the song “Rich Men North of Richmond” (Washington D.C with its politicians and elite is what’s just north of Richmond) seemed to unite both the left and the right into agreeing that the song was authentic and heartfelt, and really summarised the feelings of the working class people in the USA… that times are incredibly hard, the dollar is not keeping up with rising prices, and that taxes are too high… and that it’s the fault of the Elite and the Politicians.
Of course, the media and the Politicians can’t handle that, so they have focused on one or two controversial lines, as well as the fact that right-wing personalities like Matt Walsh, Ben Shapiro and Stephen Crowder were praising the song, and have decided to label Oliver Anthony and his overnight success as a “Right-Wing Plant”!
Oliver Anthony himself claims to be quite central politically, neither too left nor too right. He seems confused that people are trying to say his song is far-right…
I think that the controversial lines should spark debate, and this is why I think the left-wing were embracing the song too (until the media is now telling them not to!). Here’s how I would tackle it:
“Your dollar ain’t shit and it’s taxed to no end!”
Well a right-wing person would argue that taxes should be decreased in general and that people should try look after themselves more. The left-wing would argue that the song is clearly from the point of view of the struggling working class, and that rich people should pay more tax so that poor people can pay less…
“Lord, we got folks in the street, ain’t got nothing to eat, and the obese milking welfare… Well God if you’re 5 foot 3 and you’re three hundred pounds, taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds…”
Well, probably the line that the left-wing people have jumped on as the more controversial one! Right-wing people would argue that you do get people who abuse welfare (or the dole in the UK) and that it should be much harder to stay on welfare if you are capable of working an honest job. Left-wing people might argue that in poor parts of the USA, fast food is the cheapest and most available food and that it can be very difficult for poor people to eat healthy food, and that perhaps something needs to be done for welfare to assist people in eating healthier and combatting USA’s obesity problems…
So personally, I think the song could be an anthem for the “people” on both sides of the fence, and I think what is scaring the Politicians and the Elite, is that the song may unite the ordinary people on both sides of the political divide to realise that they get shafted by Politicians on both sides no matter who you vote for!
With that – here is the original! I’d be interested to know your thoughts:
So that's week 119 done and dusted! I hope that gave some people some ideas on how to tackle the Hive Open Mic Challenge this week? Perhaps I’ve even inspired one or two new people to give it a try? Please let me know!