Day 58 (May 16): Public Enemy - Harder Than You Think

Public Enemy – How You Sell Soul To A Soulless People Who Sold ...It's a shame when a song gets boxed in as an advertising thing. It kind of squeezes the life out of them; artistic achievement reduced to corporate ones and zeroes, the actual meaning of the song dissolving into a catchy jingle. On the other hand...

Look, there he goes, defending capitalism again. Well, hold on one second. Sometimes, songs being jinglefied for popular consumption on TV is good and interesting, actually. Sometimes it recommends music to an audience who would absolutely not think of otherwise consuming it. Sometimes it's just curiously weird.

Such is today's song of the day, "Harder Than You Think" from Public Enemy's 2007 mouthful How Do You Sell a Soul to a Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul?. For reasons I'm actually very happy keeping a fun mystery, this song is now best known in Britain as the main jingle for the coverage of the 2012 Paralympics. None of the actual lyrics were ever used, so audiences could happily be fooled into thinking it was by Take That, and not an American rap group from the 80s.

Honestly, you love to see weird cultural mashups like that, where art is just a tiny bit misunderstood in harmless ways. It's like how Fleetwood Mac's Divorce Tunes became the sound of Formula One coverage. I mean, there were some missed opportunities there. By cutting out all the words, they missed out the best part of the song, which is when they explain how many states Chuck E is public enemy no. #1 in, and it's just a long list of US states. I don't know why they cut that bit out. Fools.


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