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Cruel Britannia

from Love Island by Louis Brennan

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    Limited Edition 12" lacquer cut LP with printed lyrics on black vinyl. A must have for aficionados of obscure pressings and future bargain bin enthusiasts, no doubt will change hands on discogs for ludicrous sums once I kick the bucket.

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    Like a small record for your car stereo, if your car was made more than ten years ago

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lyrics

Cruel Britannia

Oh Cruel Britannia
The sow that eats it’s own
Draining every reservoir
For a sword caught in a stone

Oh cruel Britannia
I thought this was my home
When you cut me, did I not bleed?
Was it not enough blood to satisfy your need?

But the people have spoken
The country is broken
The politicians have lost all respect
And you can’t wave the flag
‘cause some liberal rag
Says you’ve got to be politically correct

And the factories shut
Now my hours have been cut
At the warehouse outside of town
And I can’t put a roof over my children’s’ heads
Unless my skin is brown

Oh Cruel Britannia
A mirror turned opaque
A cataracted vision
Of some past you can’t escape

Oh cruel Britannia
Listen, we all make mistakes
Was it pride or vanity?
Made you drop your anchor
In the open sea

But it’s not you Paddy
It’s that other lot
They’ll work for next to nothing
‘til they take all our jobs
They don’t speak the language
Like me and you
They’re living like animals
Five to a room

Scrounging every penny
Just to send it back home
Then you wonder why the shops
On the high street close
But nobody cares
Nobody wants to know
When you take a man’s dignity
What happens to his soul?

Oh cruel Britannia
Exception to the rule
Peasants toil in the shallow soil
For lukewarm beer and gruel

Oh cruel Britannia
Sure didn’t you learn it all at school?
Built the railways
Freed the slaves
An island nation
Who ruled the waves

But those people had nothing
Before we came
We gave them education
Planted sugarcane
Now they’re all messed up
But that’s just tough
They shouldn’t come over here
Looking for somebody to blame

Oh it was better back then
We were the salt of the earth
No unelected bureaucrats
Determining our worth
A man worked hard to provide for his own
Now they ripped out the heart
Of the place I call home

Oh cruel Britannia

credits

from Love Island, released October 28, 2022

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Louis Brennan London, UK

London-based Dubliner Louis Brennan is a singer-songwriter in the folk tradition. His folk however aren’t the field hands and travelling minstrels of yore but the repressed middle managers and ennui-ridden urbanites of late-stage capitalism. They populate tales of bad sex, drunk commutes and interpersonal claustrophobia delivered in Brennan’s cracked baritone, at times embarrassingly intimate ... more

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