My faith in rock music has been temporarily restored. According to the manager of The 1975, the execrable essay/song that his band recorded with diminutive doom-monger Greta Thunberg had previously been rejected by other bands. By ‘bigger artists than The 1975’, he says. He means this as a criticism. Like, ‘How dare these artists turn down the opportunity to work with Greta??’. But I think it’s brilliant. Saying No to Greta and her establishment-backed moaning about the man-made cataclysm that will shortly devour humanity yada yada is the most rock’n’roll thing you can do right now.
The 1975/Greta hook-up really is the most dreadful dirge. Over ambient piano music Greta intones about the end of the world. Natch. It is the usual mix of ageism and fearmongering we’ve come to expect from certain quarters of the eco-movement. ‘Older generations have failed’, says Greta, doing wonders for intergenerational relations. Apparently ‘we are facing a disaster of unspoken sufferings for enormous amounts of people’.
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