My Top 2000 Songs #1147: Help Save The Youth Of America

In 1986, after two albums of stripped-down solo albums of contemporary British folk/protest music, Billy Bragg put together a full band and released the wonderful, fully-realized Talking With The Taxman About Poetry. He continued to bounce back and forth between pointed political polemics and earnest love songs, only this time with fleshed-out pop & rock songs. The one that hit me hardest was "Help Save The Youth Of America," a righteous (yet wholly justified) jab at Reagan-era American blindness about the nation's place in the world. (Some things never change...)

Pairing a rousing Bo Diddley beat (hey, that's twice this week!) with thoughtful, incisive lyrics, Bragg took apart American "exceptionalism" block by block. "When the lights go out in the rest of the world, what do our cousins say? They're playing in the sun and having fun, fun, fun, till daddy takes the gun away." Damn straight.

I remember late congresswoman Pat Schroeder giving a graduation speech to my college class in 1988, and she unexpectedly quoted this song. Most of the audience sat there clueless--we're not talking about a big mainstream hit here--but the handful of us from the college station, where we spun this quite a bit, were delighted.

Live on Letterman:

Covered by Lowest Of The Low:

Punked up by Rat City Riot: