“Very inconsistent”: the 1973 album Genesis never really liked
There’s a knack to incorporating political messages into art that most either understand or don’t. Suppose it’s like baking: you can have all your ingredients laid out, but some just seem to have the magic touch when it comes to making the result actually taste good. There’s no rhyme or reason, it just is.
Perhaps that’s why 1973 was a strange year for Genesis, who felt that the best thing to do was to prove they still held the recipe for Englishness.
The album arrived at a moment when questions surrounding national identity were becoming increasingly prominent in British culture. Artists across multiple disciplines were examining what modern Britain looked like and whether traditional ideas of Englishness still had a place in an increasingly globalised world.
Feeling nostalgic for old English traditions was pretty common in music during this particular period. It makes sense, considering how much people worried they would effectively “sell out” and give in to the kind of American influence that threatened to take over anything that ever defined being English. This was a major talking point, especially as, not five years earlier, The Kinks staked their claim on the conversation with Village Green Preservation Society.
Unlike many of their contemporaries, Genesis approached these themes through the lens of progressive rock, combining social observation with elaborate musical arrangements and surreal storytelling. Rather than offering direct political commentary, they preferred to explore cultural anxieties through symbolism and character-driven narratives.
For Genesis, however, it wasn’t so much about failing control over cultural familiarity, even though this was a pretty big part of it, too. In their world, it was also about what this meant for genres like folk, and why America’s grasp on English culture felt like it also meant the decline of sounds that defined it, too. Things were changing for whatever reason, and while there was a lot to be said about those in British politics, America was seen as this big, bad thing that started the whole thing in the first place.
And so, 1973’s Selling England by the Pound was their version of Ray Davies’ disillusionment. A contribution that observed all the political weirdness and said, “England is losing its identity”, but uttered with a noncommittal smile that mostly glossed over how they really felt about the situation.
It wasn’t as much a way of deciphering what had changed but a desire to dissolve in a heap of why’s. Or rather, the line in ‘Dancing with the Moonlit Knight’ that says, “Can you tell me where my country lies?” but instead, what you’re really looking for is the band’s real feelings.
However, as much fun as it is to go into all of its possible meanings about a time and a place that did or didn’t exist, it’s even more interesting to think about why Genesis themselves didn’t particularly warm up to the record in the way you might expect. For something so intimately revelling, you’d think they would be proud, but instead, it left them mostly feeling a sense of deflation at what could have been a good record.
“As a band, we never liked that one that much,” Mike Rutherford admitted to Steve Newton in 1984. “It had a lot of highs and a lot of lows.”
While he confessed they liked ‘Cinema Show’, ‘Firth of Fifth’, and ‘Epping Forest’, they felt that the rest was filled with “low moments” and it was “very inconsistent”. In his mind, it paled in comparison to The Lamb and Trick of the Tail, which weren’t just creatively more accomplished but actually a challenge.
Still, many people keep coming back to Selling England, and not just because of how much it stands out musically or proves their position as prog rock masters. Maybe the reason people keep returning to it is that it still holds weight, probably more so than it ever did before. As hooked into history as it may seem, it feels like it was made for now. Or rather, any and all time: medicine for all the souls lost to the waves of change, desperately clutching to find something that validated their need to belong somewhere familiar.
Whether Genesis viewed Selling England by the Pound as an uneven effort ultimately matters little to its legacy. For many fans, it remains one of the defining progressive rock albums of the 1970s, balancing technical ambition with themes that feel remarkably timeless. Its exploration of identity, belonging and cultural change continues to find new audiences, ensuring its relevance extends far beyond the era that inspired it.
