By Suzi
The playlist begins with Peter Gabriel, full of confidence and determined to hit the Big Time. Everything about him is going to be bigger, apparently. But Action Pact’s George Cheex (Alison Charles) sounds out a warning and a reproach.
So what's the price fortune and fame?
Friendship going down the drain
What becomes of those you meet
Stepping stones beneath your feet
One of the People she mentions could be the protagonist in Billy Bragg’s To Have And Have Not. When he leaves school next year, he won’t have many prospects; his qualifications will mean little if he’s not from the right sort of background.
Tracy Chapman’s friend has a Fast Car – maybe they could escape together to a better future? Reading between the lines, it doesn’t seem very likely. However, the Jeffersons are happily Moving On Up, to a deluxe apartment on the East Side. As they’re characters in a TV show, this may not actually reflect reality.. The original theme tune is sung by Ja’Net Dubois.
Mr Class and Quality? Gentle Giant add a question mark but lets him speak for himself, rather revealingly, while Marvin Gaye’s Trouble Man admits that he didn’t become successful by playing by the rules.
Here's your reward for working so hard
Gone are the lavatories in the back yard
Gone all the days when you dreamed of that car
The Kinks take a clear-eyed though not unsympathetic view of the man who has achieved his ambitions and now can sit by the fire in his modest home, which is possibly named Shangri-La. He’s not as secure as he might like to think.
In Stones in the Road, Mary Chapin Carpenter recalls her schooldays and how her teacher taught them about starving children in far-off places. She remembers seeing Kennedy’s funeral train pass through the town, and how the TV was full of reports of burning cities. Now that she and her grown up classmates have ‘climbed the ladder’ …
The starving children have been replaced
By souls out on the street
We give a dollar when we pass
And hope our eyes don't meet
Ry Cooder’s beautiful Across the Borderline tells of desperate people crossing the borderline from Mexico, in search of a better life, while Mighty Mo Rodgers sings of The Death of the Middle Class. This may seem over-dramatic, until he mentions globalisation and how wealth is being concentrated more and more in the hands of the super-rich.
The protagonist of Mischief Brew’s The Lowly Carpenter thinks that he could have done more with his life, but feels powerless to change things. A thought of rebellion seems to cross his mind at one point, but he dismisses it. He has to get on with his work, feeding ‘the beast with insatiable hunger’.
We may be the mortar that cradles the brick
But i am just one grain of sand
Rage Against The Machine have no such inhibitions in calling out injustice and the ways that the state controls the narrative and keeps people in their place. Wake Up! they cry.
The Ambition A-List Playlist:
1. Peter Gabriel - Big Time
2. Action Pact! - People
3. Billy Bragg - To Have and Have Not
4. Tracy Chapman - Fast Car
5. Ja’Net Dubois - The Jefferson’s Theme Tune
6. Gentle Giant - Mr Class and Quality?
7. Marvin Gaye - Trouble Man
8. The Kinks - Shangri-La
9. Mary Chapin Carpenter - Stones in the Road
10. Ry Cooder - Across the Borderline
11, Mighty Mo Rodgers - The Death of the Middle Class
12. Mischief Brew - The Lowly Carpenter
13. Rage Against the Machine - Wake Up!
The Believe In A Better Life B-List Playlist:
1. The I.D (with Jeff St John) - Big Time Operator
2. Elton John - In Neon
3. The Rolling Stones - Play With Fire
4. June Christie - Something Cool
5. The The - Heartland
6. Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine - Falling On A Bruise
7. Smokey Robinson and the Miracles - Just My Soul Responding
8. Sly and the Family Stone - Underdog
9. Future of the Left - The Hope That House Built
10. The O’Jays - Rich Get Richer
11. Yazz - The Only Way Is Up
12. Madeleine Peyroux - The Kind You Can’t Afford
Guru’s Wildcard Pick:
Jake Thackray - Kirkstall Road Girl
These playlists were inspired by readers' song nominations from last week's topic: Great expectations: songs about social mobility. The next topic will launch on Thursday at 1pm UK time.
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