QTheMusic.com

It's not been a good week for politics and popular culture. Ok, as unlikely bedfellows it's rarely a good week for politics and popular culture and what with art cuts and social networks it's not been the worst week either, but what with it being party conference season pop music has been taking its annual beating from philistines with portfolios again.

Today (4 October) we had reports of Home Secretary Teresa May leaving the stage at the Conservative Party Conference to Primal Scream. And not just any Primal Scream. Though unlikely to ever get Bobby G and co's support, you could understand the minister wanting to use some nice and euphoric such as Come Together (a message to her coalition partners perhaps?), but no, Mrs May wants to get her "rocks off, honey" apparently, at least that's what her 'theme tune', Rocks implies. It's not the first time the Tories have been in trouble for accidentally playing music by left-leaning bands at their conferences. Massive Attack complained in 2000 after their Man Next Door was used to usher then leader William Hague off the stage. Cue complaints and apologies.

I suspect Gillespie and co will probably have one in the post... or on Twitter (we're down with the kids, honest!)

Still we should have expected some kind of gaff at the conference after Prime Minister David Cameron appeared more out of touch than the average hermit as he shared a sofa with PJ Harvey on the Andrew Marr Show earlier this week. In fairness he was probably already wary after Harvey's performance of Let England Shake made his predecessor Gordon Brown look like something of a turkey on the same programme in the build up to last year's General Election, as her song's anti-war sentiments clashes hideously with Labour's record in office.

However even taking that on board, Cameron looked desperately like a man who wanted to shut his eyes and read verbatim the briefing he was given about PJ Harvey by the vaguely trendy looking "youngster" who works in his office. Clumsily dodging the singer's point about arts cuts, he told the singer that his wife had downloaded the "we've listened to it twice and we're keen". Er thanks Dad...

Let's not pick on just the Tories though. The other lot don't exactly get it right either. We all remember Gordon Brown's Arctic Monkeys-gate when he claimed to listen to then newcomers from Sheffield before backtracking into a confused explanation that somehow included Coldplay and James Blunt and something about Alex Turner and co being "loud". In fact the only thing you could conclude was, "No Gordon Brown does not listen to popular music".

Better still was Ed Miliband who thought he'd show off his youth credentials when he was elected as the new Labour leader in 2010. Vampire Weekend's A-Punk was his walk on track, while he left the stage to the slightly dubious message of Use Somebody by Kings Of Leon. What about the future of Britain? What about the fact he was giving his speech in Manchester, a city that not only boasts a rich musical heritage, but at the time was heralding exciting new talents like Everything Everything? Nah, don't worry about the British stuff, we'll just pick the two American indie bands from the latest Now compilation... such was the criticism from the music world, Miliband was forced to let it be known he doesn't pick his own tunes. Own goal, indeed.

And let's not talk about the Lib Dems, it's far too upsetting as Nick Clegg who has made it know he regularly "cries to music" (presumably he has it on shuffle so he's ready to pally up to fans of any genre). Yep we're all moved by music Deputy Prime Minister, that's kind of the point.

Of course we can all laugh at politician's musical blunders, but really they shouldn't be getting this wrong. Music is a major part of a lot of people's lives, yet few mainstream politicians seems to be able to hold conversation on the issue without looking like out of touch weirdoes reading from focus group approved, crib sheets.

After moats and mistresses, music should be the one place where we can find some common ground with our ruling classes - everyone has different tastes, different opinions, there are no right or wrong answers, no chance of been caught out or having an answer thrown back in their faces down the line - this is the one place where you can tell us what you really like (or if you don't like music at all, fine) and we won't think lesser of you. Let's face whatever embarrassing tastes you've got, we the public have got worse (we prove it every year with X-Factor).

Yet despite this 'free pass' from the electorate every year we're talking about parties terrible, favour-currying soundtracks at conferences, while something as simple as "What bands do you like?" leaves most MPs looking as out of touch as ever.
Paul Stokes

5:01 PM | 04/10/2011