The complete collection of Billy Bragg’s favourite music
The first time I heard a Billy Bragg song was in a windowless room on the fourth day of my third year of high school.
The drama department was putting on a rendition of Bertolt Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera, and my role was with the gaggle of prostitutes who opened the show with a rendition of Bragg’s ‘A New England’. The song was most likely chosen redundantly for the lyric “girls I loved in school are already pushing prams”, and thankfully, the heavy atmosphere of disillusionment and realistic societal change stayed with me long after the awful production was finished.
This song was a key to the rest of Bragg’s discography, which merges grassroots political activism with a meandering romanticism, as he interrogates an international idea of social justice, alongside a penchant for confessional, personal romantic musings.
As a 15-year-old with crimped hair and an outfit made by my mum, his worldview came quickly into focus, but there’s an easier way to get into Bragg’s musical, and meditative, worlds than embarrassing yourself in front of all your teenage peers. He has often championed other artists and called out key influences, and if you look at the bottom of this article, you’ll find the complete list of his favourite songs and albums, as unpredictable and free-wheeling as a grocery list by a stoner, so let me mention some highlights here.
On the album front, Bragg has often mentioned Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water, telling Quietus of the classic, “This is where my politics came from in some way, the singer-songwriters and Motown. Because Paul Simon clearly was making some comments on the way America was.” Sure enough, we can hear echoes of his realist barbs in the lyric from ‘America’: “I’m empty and aching, and I don’t know why, counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike”.
Bragg’s nod to Motown can also be found in some of his other favourite choices, the expansive album Motown Chartbusters Vol 5 and Marvin Gaye’s tune, ‘Abraham, Martin & John’, the heartfelt soul ballad released under the Tamla Motown label.
To Line of Best Fit, he also gestured towards his love for country music because, in his words, “It’s storytelling”, and following that thread, “it’s people’s music. And Willie Nelson is one of the great storytellers.” Bragg’s favourite Nelson song is ‘Funny How Time Slips Away’, which is a minimal piano ballad that brings the singer’s expressive vocals to the forefront, about which he added, “It’s a good reminder that less is more, which I’m a great believer in”.
This ‘less is more’ approach to songwriting and storytelling completely defines Bragg’s latest release, ‘City of Heroes’, in support of anti-ICE protestors in Minneapolis amid the killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good at the hands of ICE officers earlier this year. The track is simply his voice and his guitar, as you hear him repeat, “I got in their face/ In this city of heroes, we learn the lessons of history”, insisting through his own sound, which carries the influence of musical history.
Billy Bragg’s favourite songs and albums:
- Simon & Garfunkel – Bridge Over Troubled Water
- Various Artists – Motown Chartbusters Vol 5
- The Jam – Setting Sons
- Colm Mac Con Iomaire – The Hare’s Corner
- Gregory Alan Isakov – The Weatherman
- The Wailers – Burnin’
- David Bowie – Aladdin Sane
- Tim Hardin – 2
- The Modern Lovers – The Modern Lovers
- Woody Guthrie – Library Of Congress Recordings
- Dick Gaughan – A Handful Of Earth
- Neko Case – Fox Confessor Brings The Flood
- The Unthanks – Here’s The Tender Coming
- Ry Cooder – Pull Up Some Dust And Sit Down
- Simon and Garfunkel – ‘The Boxer’
- Marvin Gaye – ‘Abraham, Martin & John’
- The Jam – ‘That’s Entertainment’
- The Who – ‘Baba O’Riley’
- Chuck Berry – ‘Roll Over Beethoven’
- The Skatalites – ‘Musical Communion’
- Little Feat – ‘Willin”
- Willie Nelson – ‘Funny How Time Slips Away’
- Lambchop – ‘In Care of 8675309’
