"Killing In The Name" rages against all the machines [February 21, 1993]
Plus: Take That, Michael Jackson, and Saint Etienne
Greetings, Time Travellers! š
Itās February 21, 1993 again
š¶ Number One song in the UK Top 40 is still āNo Limitā by 2 Unlimited, but this week weāre discussingā¦
This weekās Number 27: āKilling In The NameāāRage Against The Machine
A few years back, an irate Rage Against The Machine fan decided that he was sick of the bandās left-wing politics. He sent a tweet to Rage guitarist Tom Morello, saying that music was his safe haven and that he just wanted to enjoy the tunes āwithout all the political B.S.ā
Tom Morello replied:
āConservatives discovering their favourite artists are leftiesā is usually one of the most entertaining events on social media. Every now and then, Fox News will an run outraged features about how Bruce Springsteenās āBorn In The USAā is not actually a celebration of Reganite aspiration, but a very anti-American protest song. This prompts a flurry of pearl-clutching on the right and piss-taking on the left. Everybody has a good time.
Rage Against The Machine have gone through this process more than once. Right-wing frat bros who grew up moshing to āBullet In The Headā are horrifiedāsimply horrifiedāto discover that their beloved Rage are not an awesome party band, but are in fact literal communists. Even worse than that, they are woke.
And so these bros go online. They complain about woke politics. Tom Morello slams them. Twitter makes jokes and memes, and we all feel a bit superior because we understand the lyrics.
I wonder though.
Personally, Iāve never been a huge RATM fan. Respect āem, but theyāre not for me. However, like most men of my age and disposition, I have never been able to resist a āKilling In The Nameā moshpit.
Everybody gets in the moshpit for āKilling In The Nameā, because everyone wants to be there for the climax, for the moment where the beat drops and you leap into the air and scream with all your might:
āFuck you I wonāt do what you tell meā
In those moments, was I politically conscious? Was anyone in the moshpit? Were we listening to āKilling In The Nameā the right way? Or are we just enjoying the music without all the political B.S?
Fuck you I wonāt do what you tell me
Just to be clear, there is no separating Rage Against The Machine from their politics. Politics is their whole thing.
The band themselves come from impressive left-wing backgrounds. Zack de la Rochaās father was a pioneering Chicano artist and activist who fought hard for indigenous rights. Tom Morelloās dad literally stood up to colonialism, having taken up arms in the Mau Mau uprising, which was an attempt to eject the British from Kenya.
Rageās debut album is bursting with political invectiveāeven the sleeve notes include Thank Youās for Huey P. Newton and Bobby Sands. The sleeve also includes lyrics for the most of the tracks, although the original pressing omitted the lyrics for the second song. The reason for this is that it barely has any lyrics, just a few repeated lines, a lot of āfuck youās, and a single āmotherfuckerā.
(Fun fact: āKilling In The Nameā contains fewer unique words than 2 Unlimitedās āNo Limitā.)
However, while these lyrics are sparse, thereās no ambiguity. The song was written in the wake of the Rodney King trial, and the message here is: cops are racist, and it is our duty resist them.
Rage were not remotely the first people to make this statement. Hip-hop had given us controversial classics like Ice Tās āCop Killerā and NWAās āFuck Tha Policeā, while punk bands wrote so many anti-cop songs that it was almost a clichĆ©. Texas punk band The Dicks have a track called āAnti-Klanā with the line, āI see that you're a policeman / I know you're in the Ku Klux Klanā, which is basically the same thing as āSome of those who were enforcers / Were the same that burnt crossesā.
RATM are about as political as it gets. The only difference is that the 90s alternative scene elevated them to the status of rock gods. Rage Against The Machine appeared in November 1992; by summer of 1993, they were playing Lollapalloozaās main stage, absolutely destroying the pit with āKilling In The Nameā.
The band were now big-time, but they never compromised their politics or softened themselves for the mainstream.
Unfortunately, the mainstream didnāt care.
Fuck you I wonāt do what you tell me
āKilling In The Nameā has shown up in some bizarre places over the past 30 years.
Quite recently, a bunch of Canadian radio DJs decided to have an Airheads-style protest against their station rebranding. They seized control of the booth and played āKilling In The Nameā on a loop for 10 hours. Occasionally, they would stop and ask the audience to phone in with requests, on the condition that you requested āKilling In The Nameā.
In 2009, a viral Facebook campaign set out to challenge The X Factorās stranglehold on the Christmas Number One spot. After much shenanigans, āKilling In The Nameā ended up as the festive chart-topper, while poor wee Joe McElderry had to settle for second place.
Less amusingly, āKilling In The Nameā was one of the songs used to torture prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. Soldiers pumped loud rock music into the cell, which kept the inmates in a sleep-deprived state.
Some nasty folk have also adopted the song. Tom Morello issued a public slap-down to Ukip in 2012 after they played it to introduce Nigel Farage. Not only did Nigel ignore the rebuke, he later started a podcast called Farage Against The Machine.
Trumpās people also liked the song, of course. In 2020, there was a viral video of gammons in MAGA hats and Blue Lives Matter t-shirts, all of them singing this song while trying to stop the election count.
Tom Morello once again tweeted to say that these people are morons. Defending this song seems to be his new full-time job.
Fuck you I wonāt do what you tell me
āKilling In The Nameā has a fundamental problemāitās too simple.
āFuck you, I wonāt do what you tell meā is a great lyric, but it applies to almost any situation. You can scream it as you fight colonialism or stand up to racist cops. You can also scream it at your mum when she asks you to tidy your room.
It taps into a universal feeling, the sense that thereās an authority trying to crush you and hold you down. And this is sometimes a real feelingāoppression does exist! But human beings also have a magical ability to feel oppressed, even when weāre not oppressed.
Trump, Farage, and the other populists have tapped into this emotion, and convinced lots of people that theyāre being stomped to death by authoritarians. They urge their crowds to rage against the machine, with āthe machineā being anyone who makes them feel uncomfortable.
āKilling In The Nameā makes perfect sense to this audience, because it is a song about resisting authority and they believe that the most powerful authority are woke left-wingers. When Tom Morello gets upset, itās evidence of the sad truthāRage Against The Machine have been infected with the woke mind virus.
In their minds, they understand the lyrics of āKilling In The Nameā better than you, me, or the band themselves. And if you try to argue, theyāll say:
āFuck you I wonāt do what you tell meā
Ultimately, the song is a victim of its own success. It works because itās so simple, but its simplicity means that anyone can interpret it as they see fit. No matter how much Tom Morello tweets, heāll never be able to convince people that thereās a correct way to listen to this song.
Ah well. At least he knows how Springsteen felt in the 80s.
Elsewhere in the charts
Number 2 (=): āWhy Canāt I Wake Up With YouāāTake That
So close! Take That get to Number 2 with this slow jam, but they couldnāt dislodge the 2 Unlimited from the top spot. Weāll have to wait until āPrayā before they get their first chart topper.
Number 6 (New Entry): āGive Into MeāāMichael Jackson
A very good track with some nice guitar licks. However, that title doesnāt sit very well these days.
Number 26 (ā from 19): āGround LevelāāStereo MCs
Stereo MCs were perhaps starting to look like one-trick ponies at this point, with a single thatās kind of like āConnectedā and kind of like āStep It Upā.
āGround Levelā is actually very good in fairness, with some nice acid jazz tones. But the act is starting to wear a little thin now.
Number 31 (New Entry): āReminisceāāMary J. Blige
I am incapable of saying the name Mary J Blige in anything other than Bill Haderās voice, which is a sickness and I am deeply ashamed.
Anyway, this is MJBās first UK hit and it is a cracker. As we discuss 1993, weāll probably keep returning to the theme of how so many British divas were pushed into doing very bland, mainstream ballads. This is exactly the thing they should have been doing: fun, sexy, smart, and inventive.
Number 35 (New Entry): āWalkāāPantera
A true story from my life:
Recently, I was driving with my niece and we were taking turns picking songs on Spotify. She picked some Gen Z TikTok thing and said, āwe might need to turn this down. It could be too loud for you.ā
You should have seen my jaw clench. As soon as her song finishedāwhich wasnāt even that loud by the wayāI cranked the volume to 100 and yelled, āHey Siri, play Walk by Pantera.ā
Spent the rest of the day lying down with a terrible headache. My ears still hurt a bit. Old age is a terrible thing.
Album of the Week
So ToughāSaint Etienne
Saint Etienne make more sense as a band once youāve read Bob Stanleyās books about music.
Stanely is an ex-NME hack, but heās recently published two massive volumes on music history, Yeah Yeah Yeah and Letās Do It, which document the entire story of pop from the 1890s to the present day. He is someone who loves music as a concept and sees every record as a tile in a much bigger mosaic.
And thatās kind of what a Saint Etienne record feels like. Youāre constantly bouncing around between genres, rushing from the 80s drum loops of āLeafhoundā to the heartwrenching piano ballad that is āHobart Pavingā:
Saint Etienneās debut, Foxbase Alpha, felt like a science experiment for this precise reason. So Tough is a lot more grounded, mainly due to the presence of Sarah Cracknell, who is now a permanent band member. Her sweet cooing gives a weight to songs like āAvenueā, that might otherwise float into space:
So Tough is ostensibly a concept album about going for a stroll in London, with regular samples from London-centric movies like Billy Liar. In hindsight, that gives the record an overwhelmingly Britpop feel, especially on the albumās most straightforward single, āYouāre In A Bad Wayā.
Is this the first true Britpop album then? Or one of the genreās foundational texts? Whoās to say, but there are definitely the seeds of something here.
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Your Rage piece will be all the rage in 30 years when everyone realizes you are Nostradamus. But seriously, excellent examination of how the right will always co-opt the left-leaning artistās songs no matter if they are subtle or obvious. Or something like that. Speaking of that, I am so grateful that Take That has no memorical connection in my brain. I am guessing they didnāt have the same success in the states as in the UK. Why canāt the Trumpian right wingers co-opt their songs?
True story from my life:
My senior year, we all pile in the car to go see RATM...open for House of Pain. It's like something out of a bad movie. A couple of my friends shaved their heads like Everlast, and we do a last minute detour to pick up a buddy walking out of his job because A: this show, and B: the manager thought a pre-shift sing-along would be a good idea.
At any rate, RATM opens, and proceed to tear the roof off. To be fair, even then De la Rocha got a bit of shit for going on a long-winded rant about Leonard Peltier. I think that was down more to people wanting to keep rocking out than anything else.
A rumor also swept the crowd that Cypress Hill was in the house and might play at some point. There was enough weed wafting through the air for this to all make sense. Dunno if they were there or not, but they never took the stage.
It all wound up being a textbook case of the opener upstaging the headliner. House of Pain put on a solid show but the drop in energy between sets was pretty significant.
P.S. 100 is the only acceptable volume for "Walk."