SONGS TO REMEMBER: The Divine Comedy – “Becoming More Like Alfie”
“PRODUCED BY DARREN ALLISON AND NEIL HANNON/ WRITTEN BY NEIL HANNON
GARRY MULHOLLAND
SETANTA/AUGUST 1996
Northern Ireland’s Neil Hannon provokes quite extreme reactions for one so almost famous. To a few of us, he’s an oasis of intellect, satire, musical subtlety and lyrical risk in a desert of dreary ‘indie’ rock inarticulacy and traditionalism. To most, however, he’s The Antichrist. Why? Because he’s cleverer than us and isn’t afraid to show off about it, imagining, quite reasonably, that a pop star’s job is to exaggerate their key characteristic for our entertainment. Sadly, he’s emerged into a British pop culture that truly despises intellectualism, especially when sensing that the brainbox is making a joke that we don’t quite get at our expense.
Admittedly, when Hannon started writing clever-clever ditties about National Express coaches and hay fever he was cruising for a critical bruising. But before that he wrote this. It’s a song from a concept album about male sexism and class conflict called Casanova, and it absolutely sums up Cool Britannia’s journey towards the relegitimizing of misogyny as ‘cool’. Trouble is that, with its jauntiness and references to New Lad icon Michael Caine’s most sexist character and lines about no meaning yes, it appeared to be a foppish celebration of crap blokeness, until you looked more closely. The key bit reminds me of Joe Jackson all those years ago, lamenting the fact pretty women go out with gorillas.
Hannon/Alfie/Every bloke tells us that, if he wants to get laid, he must resign himself to being one of those gorillas – ‘Y’know, the kind who will always end up with the girls’ – even though he’s smart enough to know better. Because women were going – and do go- along with this ‘bastards are more fun’ bollocks, creating a context in which the wider world’s woman hating can happily thrive. ‘Oh, come on!’ Hannon keeps yelling over the loungey trumpets and ’60s movie keyboards, daring you to disagree.
Garry Mulholland in “This Is Uncool – The 500 Greatest Singles since Punk and Disco”
SONGS SMITHS 