Are You Shitting Us?: The Brits Go Crazy Over “America”

Brian Raftery | December 14, 2006 10:58 am

To make fun of the U.K.’s oft-inexplicable music obsessions is just too easy; after all, this is a region that still embraces the Fun Lovin’ Criminals. And normally we wouldn’t give two farts and a crumpet about Razorlight, a Strokes rip-off for people who think even the Strokes aren’t ripping off the Strokes anymore. But as the Brits continue to hack out their year-end lists, one single keeps popping up: Razorlight’s “America.” It topped the British charts, the U.K. iTunes store, and Q magazine’s reader-voted singles poll–and in the NME, no less a bad-song authority than Brandon Flowers said he wished he’d written it. For those of you who’ve already traded your copy of the most recent ‘Light-rock epic to secondspin.com, here’s a listen:

Razorlight – America [MP3, link expired]

Really? This is the anthem of the year from country that gave us “Common People” and “Live Forever”? We get some of the appeal–if we were 15 and drunk at our first Reading Festival, we’d prolly croon along at the chorus–but this is like seventh-rate Britpop with eighth-grade lyrics: “I light a cigarette/’Cause I can’t get no sleep/There’s nothing on the TV, nothing on the radio/That means that much to me.” Blimeny gee. We need to get Cocker back at the top of the charts there so he can break some kneecaps–in a very droll, stylish way, of course.

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