Song of the Day 7/17: Billy Bragg, “Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards”

Billy Bragg wrote this upbeat sing-along, a “wait ’til next year!” anthem for progressives, after Margaret Thatcher’s Tories swept the 1987 general elections. He called it “my way of owning up to the ambiguities of being a political pop star while stating clearly that I still believed in Sam Cooke’s promise that a change was gonna come.” It appeared the next year as an advance single for his “Workers Playtime” album, reaching No. 52 on the UK chart.

His walk-off line — “the revolution is just a t-shirt away” — transfers pretty easily to our times. The modern shirt would read “This is bad. Somebody should do something.”