We’ll Live and Die in These Towns: How a song encapsulates a culture
In 2007, a relatively new indie band from the West Midlands city of Coventry, England, found themselves at the start of a promising career as they released a debut album that took them to the top of the UK charts in no time, writes Music News Blitz’s Charlie Gardner.
The band was called The Enemy, and We’ll Live and Die in These Towns was the album.
It soon made its way to infamy, with music magazines praising them and bringing them to the public eye and the band being further promoted in their support of countless UK music juggernauts, including Oasis, Kasabian and Stereophonics.
What’s the song? What does it mean?
The focal point of this article is the title track from their debut album. The song is one that speaks on the experience of living in working-class areas that seem to suspend the potential of any inhabitants.
Those of you interested in football might be aware of the Championship club Coventry City, and how the local band’s ballad of a song was played live before a football match against Sheffield United.
But aside from the band’s local origins, why has this song become so popular not just amongst football fans, but music fans around the world?
The song speaks in ways that encapsulate the British small-town mentality in a powerful way, talking about the smoky rooms of trashy local pubs and dangerous streets. That’s all in the first verse.
It mentions a sense of helplessness through the line “it never happens for people like us”, playing on the feeling that some places are just doomed to be the wastelands that people view them as.
With crime-filled, dull, unsuccessful lives comes the topic of depravity, something that goes hand in hand with any town anywhere where its people struggle for success and riches.
The track isn’t without its optimism, mind, as the lines about nothing happening in people’s lives are combatted by a line that says “nothing ever happens on its own”, dragging back a sense of pride and independence.
If these people are going to struggle, they’re not going to do it without a fight: yes, they are struggling for their lives, but they approach it with pride and ambition.
The song combats attitudes towards working-class areas with fondness. The Enemy are not denying any poor views on their hometown(s), but make it known that residents are nothing to be looked down upon.
The song takes that turn into pride through a chorus that is powerful and fills listeners with a sense of pride through a statement that, in context, would be quite disappointing.
The chorus is just a repetition of the song’s title, followed by a singular message of “don’t let it drag you down” that pairs desperation with power and a sense of optimism in an emotional fashion that just makes the song so moving in more ways than one.
It touches upon the lack of control you might feel as your life slips away from you in a town that can’t move forward, feeling like you’re losing every fleeting chance you get to move on. You need to move on to grow, but can’t bring yourself to.
The meaning here is clear and reflects the views of the band as they are torn between their distaste for the state of their town and their adoration and pride for where they grew up: do they stay, or do they leave?
That’s the point. That blind loyalty and tie to our hometown undeniably make us as people, and, no matter who you become or where you end up, you won’t forget that street you used to wait on for your school bus, the first pub you ever went to, the first corner shop you attended, et cetera - you get it, they make you.
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Why it works
The song is popular not just because it sounds good, or because they’re local to a town that plays football.
It’s popular because people around the country (and likely the world) find themselves relating to the topics the song brings up.
Maybe you’d prefer to live in a more affluent area, but you best believe that your background remains exactly that - a place that formed you and made you who you are.
The conflict in this song seriously can’t be understated, and that’s what makes it so great. The promise of a fresh start vs the weight of leaving everything behind.
It points everything out. Same old shops, people and lack of opportunities, things holding you back.
The track is fantastic and finds a way to encapsulate that conflicting British sense of malaise and pride all at once.
The lyrics and meaning don’t carry the song alone, as its cinematic instruments and sound bring you through the emotions as it goes on, only building up to an epic climax by the final verse.
Ultimately, the scratchy vocals exemplify just how emotional these conditions can be, and once you step back, it’s easy to just accept the lyrics for what they are:
You can be disappointed, ashamed, unfortunate, anything, but you can’t change or shake the place that made you, so just be proud of it.
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