Song of the Day 10/20: Fine Young Cannibals, “Social Security”

Republicans think old people have too much money and rich people don’t have enough, so they’ve promised to cut Social Security if/when they get back into power. Bitter white people will vote for them anyway.

Fine Young Cannibals released this song as the B-side to “Good Thing,” the second No. 1 single from their 1989 album “The Raw and the Cooked,” but it first appeared two years earlier in the Barry Levinson film “Tin Men,” a sort of semi-sequel to “Diner” (the diner itself was the main connection). Levinson had heard the first album by the band, formed by Andy Cox and David Steele after the breakup of the (English) Beat, and thought its retro-soul vibe would fit his period comedy, set in September 1963.

The band, a purely studio entity, was trying to move away from that sound, but Steele and lead singer Roland Gift wrote four songs that appeared in the film. The other three, including “Good Thing,” resurfaced on the chart-topping LP that emerged two years later, after they recorded a later batch of songs that included the smash single “She Drives Me Crazy.” “Social Security,” which fit the film because Barbara Hershey’s character worked at the Social Security office, wasn’t released anywhere but that B-side until 2020’s expanded edition of “The Raw and the Cooked.”

Levinson didn’t just like the band’s sound — he liked their look so much he spliced them into “Tin Men” as a band playing in a bar scene. This isn’t shot-for-shot what’s in the film, but it’s close enough. BTW, that’s the ubiquitous Jools Holland on piano.