Billy Bragg
Billy Bragg
Stephen William "Billy" Braggis an English singer, songwriter and left-wing activist. His music blends elements of folk music, punk rock and protest songs, with lyrics that mostly span political or romantic themes. His music is heavily centered on bringing about change and getting the younger generation involved in activist causes...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionFolk Singer
Date of Birth20 December 1957
powerful free-education important
At some point in your life you have to engage with the fact that you are part of a society. Yeah the individual is the most important facet in society but unless every individual is the recipient of free health care, free education decent affordable housing and a proper pension then only the rich and powerful will be individuals and the rest of us will be exploited by them.
privilege enjoyed
Freedom is merely privilege extended, unless enjoyed by one and all.
writing trying honestly
I try and write honestly about what I see around me now.
bobby calling welcome
Welcome to what we're calling 'I'll Be Your Bobby Tonight'.
true
They were the true inheritors of the mantle of The Clash.
amongst british-musician choose nature popular subject
It's not a very popular subject amongst my audience, who are by nature more internationalist, but I don't choose what to write about, I don't choose my subjects, they kind of choose me.
british-musician
My upbringing was very straightforward suburban working class upbringing.
british-musician line people rejected school secondary skilled sort technical work
Most of the people that I went to school with - I went to secondary school - we were educated to go and work in the line at Ford's, and if we were lucky, technical skilled labor. I sort of rejected that, and thought I wanted to do something else.
accepted content political
We read our own political content into The Clash, and they accepted it.
british-musician case modern people trying worthwhile
I'm trying to make a case for those people who don't have a sense of belonging that they should have, that there is something really worthwhile in having a sense of belonging, and recasting and looking at our modern history.
became british-musician coal involved knew mining people pop star villages
In that sense, I became politicized because the people in the coal mining villages who were involved in the struggle knew why they were there. But they couldn't understand why some pop star from London would want to be there.
audience bands believe british-musician change lesson naive quite taught thinks
That taught me one lesson which is that you're naive to believe that bands can change the world. Bands are very naive to think that just if their audience thinks that they can change the world, that they can. That was quite a lesson for my career, really.
To have accountability you must get out and vote!
capable carrying number song songwriter
A song is like a newspaper. It's capable of carrying a number of different messages. Some of them are advertisers, some of them are editorial, some of them are reportage, some of them are sport. So, as a songwriter you can use any of those.