The Better Oblivion Community Center song inspired by Donald Trump
It should be pretty obvious who the inspiration behind Better Oblivion Community Center’s 2019 song ‘Dylan Thomas’ is. That would be the famous Welsh poet of the same name. Specifically, Conor Oberst and Phoebe Bridgers use Thomas as a reference point thanks to his death in 1953 being a convenient comparison to feelings of extreme sickness and anxiety.
Thomas didn’t actually die of a seizure on the barroom floor, as Oberst and Bridgers sing on the track. Instead, Thomas’ death was likely due to a number of illnesses including bronchitis, pneumonia, emphysema and asthma. His dedication to drinking likely exacerbated these ailments, with Dylan’s proclamation of “I’ve had 18 straight whiskeys. I believe that’s the record” becoming notorious thanks to his death just a short time later.
Still, Thomas is just a stand-in for the worst-case scenario. The actual inspirations behind ‘Dylan Thomas’ are a pair of figures that are more contemporary than the Welsh poet. The pair recalled an episode of the Gimlet Media podcast Reply All that featured a discussion on comedian Roseanne Barr and her support of conspiracy theories around then-president Donald Trump.
“They were talking about when Roseanne was tweeting all of those conspiracy theory things,” Bridgers told NME about the track, “And how they think there’s a whole conspiracy around Trump playing four-dimensional chess and just fronting that he’s stupid – but actually he’s like a maniacal super-genius.”
“That’s my favourite theory,” she added. “There are right-wing people who support him who literally think that his idiocy is like a crazy plan that he has always had to play dumb, and then be doing all of these genius things behind the scenes.”
That makes lines like “The truth is anybody’s guess / These talking heads are saying / The king is only playing a game of four-dimensional chess” read a little bit more clearly. Chances are that calling the track ‘Roseanne Barr’ would have been a little too on the nose, so it was over to Dylan Thomas for the titular reference instead.
Check out ‘Dylan Thomas’ down below.
