Noughties By Nature #55: Johnny Boy - You Are The Generation That Bought More Shoes And You Get What You Deserve

It started with a drumbeat. No, scratch that. It started with The Drumbeat. In the almost fifty years since Be My Baby first forced Brian Wilson to pull his car over and rethink his entire career, The Drumbeat has reared its head more times than it's worth counting; but, bearing in mind Just Like Honey's soporific come-on, and the happy-go-lucky cutesyism it introduced on Eighties Fan, it's rarely been employed as truly to its original intent - as downright fucking ecstatically - as on Johnny Boy's 2004 tongue-twistingly-titled James Dean Bradfield-produced non-hit You Are The Generation That Bought More Shoes And You Get What You Deserve.

It's the most sugar-coated anti-capitalist rant since Stereolab's Ping Pong, but what makes the song shine is its sheer relentless euphoria; where other acts bemoaned the state of the nation over pseudo-electronic beats or crusty acoustic guitars, the mysterious Johnny Boy are not only celebrating the uselessness of their ideology, but their right to have that ideology in the first place. Let's not forget that the song's first line is "I just can't help believing." Festive glockenspiels twinkle in the background, fireworks (no doubt aimed at the stock exchange) shoot across the speakers, a party in another room screams "YEAH YEAH!" and "OOH BABY" like their throats won't go sore - it sounds like the world's about to end. Then again, maybe that's what we deserve...
Alex Wisgard

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[Album: Johnny Boy]