- Genre: 'Punk/New Wave'
- Release Date: '9th January 2023'
Our Rating:
The Internet and the world at large seems to have been having an absolute meltdown over the announcement that Lydon is planning to represent Ireland at the Eurovision Song Contest this year. Hardly surprising, really, given Lyndon’s relentless spouting of utter bullocks of late, not least of all the right-wing favouring shit in support of Trump and Brexit that’s shot way beyond punk contrarianism and into shady and ultimately disappointing territory, whereby your heroes prove to be Time was when e thought the butter ads were a disgraceful low – which they were.
It’s hard to consider PiL and Lydon now without the context of recent events, and this is sad. Whereas I can personally pretty much take or leave The Sex Pistols – yes, they broke cultural ground, but musically, most punk was pedestrian pub rock with sneering lyrics and the amps cranked up – but with Public Image, Lydon really broke new musical ground and created something unique.
So setting aside the debate, what about the actual song? Well, it’s ok. It’s no ‘Public Image’ or ‘Albatross’. It’s accessible, poppy, and as a love song to his wife ‘of nearly 5 decades, Nora, who is living with Alzheimer’s’, and being ‘as close as John will ever come to bearing his soul’, it’s solid, and it’s genuinely touching. It sounds more like Interpol than vintage PiL, but that’s not the worst thing ever, and the fact it’s not overtly Eurovision seems beside the point.
