Sparks Take On The world in The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte

In 2023, Sparks not only carried out a hugely successful world tour, encompassing dates in four continents, but took on the world in a different sense in their latest album, The Girl is Crying in her Latte, with an unprecedented number of songs commenting explicitly on the current state of the world. This is not, of course, a new topic for them: with the focus on the desires, frustrations and insecurities of human beings, born of acute observation of behaviour and manners, Sparks’ songs are implicit comments on modern society. When asked in an interview in 2009 (Newsletter 21.6) about whether they were optimistic or pessimistic, Ron opts for the latter, adding that they had ‘a basic antagonism towards ‘something’. We’re not sure what. Maybe the status quo’.  This pessimism is however clothed in the imaginative stories, humour and infectious melodies of their songs, such that they could never be categorized as ‘Grumpy Old Men’*, even if they have earned the right!

However, Ron and Russell have, for the most part, cultivated an image of being non-political in its strictest sense, avoiding overtly political statements both in their work and in interviews and their social media presence.  In recent years, though, there has been a glimpse of their feelings from occasional generalised expressions of exasperation and urgings to vote posted on their websites. Similarly, their comments on the world we live in have become more specific and graphic.

Some of the songs on TGICIHL build on ideas from earlier albums. There have been a few veiled allusions to political situations before: the 2006 song ‘Can I invade your country’ (Hello Young Lovers) which includes the American National Anthem, sung to a jaunty tune, followed by ‘and one more thing: Can I invade your country’, suggested a reference to the invasion of Iraq by the US led coalition at the start of the Iraq War (2003-11). The idea that everywhere is fair game for invasion (‘countries, planets, stars/ Galaxies so far’,) followed by the paradox: ‘Don’t let freedom fade/ Baby, let’s invade’, can be seen as a damning critique of Western military intervention, an issue still debated today, only partially hidden behind the more obvious idea of sexual conquest. 

More recently, in the wider sense of the word ‘political’, overt concerns about the state of the planet can be seen to be underpinning a number of songs, mirroring increasing public awareness of such issues. The 2017 eco-ballad on Hippopotamus, ‘Please Don’t Fuck Up My World’ co-opts the Coldwater Canyon Youth Choir to emphasise the need to tackle the damage being done to the planet for the sake of future generations. The shock effect of the F-bomb in the children’s chorus diffuses any potential sentimentality, and the sincerity of this appeal is underlined by not being cloaked in humour.   (Although ‘Never Turn Your Back On Mother Earth’ (Propaganda, 1974) has been seen to have a similar message, that song is actually referencing the power of Nature and its indifference to human affairs, of which as natives of earthquake-prone Los Angeles, Ron and Russell are well aware.) The hilarious ‘What The Hell Is It This Time’ (Hippopotamus) offers the point of view of God, frustrated with the constant demands of self-absorbed humanity about their ‘band-aid affairs’ when there are wars, famine, crime and ‘wholesome clean air’ to be addressed. Society’s materialism had, of course, already been critiqued in ‘Irreplaceable’ and ‘It’s a Knock Off’ (Balls, 2000). When A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip was released in 2020, ‘The Existential Threat’, which depicts an hysterical state of panic about unspecified dangers in a precarious world, was seen as unnervingly prescient in the light of the subsequent coronavirus pandemic. A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip in fact features other narrators unhappy with their existences, while the fury of ‘I-phone’, with its repeated injunction to ‘Put Your Fucking I-phone Down And Listen To Me’, offers a more specific and strongly worded irritation with an aspect of contemporary life, akin to the less graphic ‘Your Call Is Very Important To Us. Please Hold’ of 2002’s Lil’ Beethoven. (Does this song suggest that Sparks share the annoyance expressed by other artists at being watched through phones at their concerts?)

So, is The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte Sparks’ most political album to date?

It seems that Sparks have now felt the need to express more strongly and consistently their feelings about the frightening and sometimes unfathomable state of the world today. The title song itself exemplifies a kind of undefined universal angst, described elsewhere by Ron as ‘the melancholy of the times’, grounded in a privileged Western world. The narrator is unsure what ails a young woman in a coffee shop until the situation is repeated with ‘so many people’, and, after ‘trying to figure their game’, he concludes ‘guess this world is to blame’.  It was suggested to me that his initial reactions (‘bad’, ‘sad’, ‘wow’) had uncomfortable echoes of a former President’s communication style (thank you, Jo and Christian), and, indeed, one reviewer commented on a ‘lack of empathy’ in the narrator’s observations. It is certainly possible to interpret this song as a critique of the West’s failure to go beyond merely crying in our expensive latte while we sit in a warm coffee shop.

The twenty-two-hour old baby in ‘Nothing Is As Good as They Say It Is’, who takes one look at the world and is not impressed, takes up the theme suggested in ‘Unaware’ (Hippopotamus, 2017), which lists banal events that create headlines in a materialistic world and culminates in the warning (Wish I could warn her/ Don’t turn that corner/Stay unaware of it all’). The point of view shifts to the baby of 2023 who quickly recognises that life is ‘a bad surprise’, plagued with ‘ugliness, anxieties, phony tans’ and begs to opt out of ‘a place like this’, where ‘your standards must be so very low’.  Despite the humour of their desire to return to their pre-birth ‘former quarters’, we sense that this child, though a winner in the ‘Tryouts for the Human Race’ stakes, is probably doomed to end up as another person crying in their latte. Any sense of despair or cynicism is, however, mitigated in typically Sparksian manner by the implausible humour of the situation and the catchy, jaunty melody.

The same idea appears in the bonus song on the Japanese release (‘This is not the world I signed up for’) which, in its focus on lost pleasures of a carefree youth (walking on the beach, wild parties), suggests more a lament for the reality of adult life today, fraught with anxieties and responsibilities.  In ‘When You Leave’, and ‘It’s Sunny Today’, however, such activities are also seen to generate social anxieties and insecurities, and have lost that pleasurable meaning.

Another wannabe escapee from the world is none other than the Mona Lisa (‘The Mona Lisa’s Packing, Leaving Late Tonight’) who, unlike the rebellious statue in ‘Le Louvre’ (A Woofer in Tweeter’s Clothing, 1973), takes matters into her own hands. The choice of such a famous icon of Western civilization is a potent conceit to illustrate the discontents of the times. The repeated emphasis on ‘Nobody knew she was so disturbed (uptight)’ in the chorus, because her enigmatic smile hides her deep-seated angst, highlights the disconnect between individuals in modern society already suggested in the title song. To pick up on another theme in this album, her image has never been that easily defined (‘she seemed imperturbed’), but she can no longer mask her fear with that mysterious smile.  She opts out of the current atmosphere in a world that is ‘agitated and ill at ease’ in favour, perhaps, of an island in the sun, although there are dangers for her there too (the sun might ‘fade her priceless imagery’).

 A different kind of escape is described in ‘Take Me For A Ride’, in which a respectable middle-class couple escape from the tedium of their daily lives by creating a fantasy of lawlessness. The song evokes a movie-style car chase, a fugitive highjacking a woman in her Chevy Powerglide car, urging her to drive ever faster to escape capture. Despite clues that all is not what it might seem, the reveal is withheld until the last verse when we are told: ‘They repeat this ritual each Friday night at nine’, in which they ‘live a moment that makes them alive/Fighting off the boredom of both their daily lives’. Whether this fantasy is actualised, or remains in their imaginations is left uncertain.  Interestingly, the twinkling intro to this song was used at the start of the recent concerts, perhaps to indicate that the audience were about to be taken on an exhilarating journey.

‘A Love Story’ depicts a guy who believes that getting drugs for his girlfriend is ‘the perfect gift for a love that’s sublime’. Is he insecure or possessive? He fears losing his place in the queue and someone hitting on his girl in his absence. While boasting that the drugs prove the strength of his love and his ability to pay for them, he is at pains to distance himself from her habit, suggesting an uneasiness about his situation: ‘’Aint my thing, it's her thing’. Despite the minimal plot, this little scenario speaks volumes about the complexity of relationships in the modern world.

There are two songs on the new album which stand out for their clear political reference. ‘Veronica Lake’ tells the true story of the film star whose iconic ‘peek-a-boo’ hairstyle caused accidents on production lines during the Second World War and was deemed a threat to the war effort. Veronica Lake was asked to change her style for the country’s sake, and her ‘sacrifice’ of her defining image had dire consequences for her (‘she will kill her career all for the sake/ Of our winning the war’.)  There are multiple inferences in this song – apart from the power of celebrity, already highlighted in ‘That’s Not Nastassia’, (Whomp That Sucker’, 1981), and the need for a little fantasy in stressful times, we also see the fickleness of public opinion and the price of fame. In agreeing to demands in the national interest, Veronica Lake effectively became another ‘casualty of war’.  Such an historically based story is almost unprecedented in Sparks’ work and it is certainly ‘Educational’ (Balls, 2000)

The second song is ‘We Go Dancing’, a deceptively anodyne title for an astonishingly daring and explicit political subject. It depicts satirically the regimented view of life in North Korea, by casting Jim Jong Un as a DJ directing the ‘dancing’ of its brainwashed, automata-like citizens (’he rocks our world’), from the point of view of one of them.  Here discipline is a clearly defined moral and social imperative, following orders is paramount, deviation out of the question and injury ignored. The rejection of YouTube music highlights the outlawing of Western values (‘Kim Jong-un don’t like their vibe’), although the speaker evokes dancing comparisons (‘we don’t have a lot of moves, but our one move is tight’).  The song ends on the sound of marching feet – definitely not music that you can dance to. Although the analogy is humorous, this song, highly unusual for Sparks in its political specificity, is profoundly unsettling.

Finally, two songs that reflect on fundamental existential questions. In ‘Not That Well Defined’, the speaker lacks the subtlety to understand someone who appears to defy straightforward, accepted binary categorisation (‘Things are either black or they are white’). He is at a loss when faced with values that do not fit a clear definition (‘Can a person say that they exist/When so far they’ve managed to resist/Any definition, any key’). Perhaps this song reflects the entrenched views often found on social media, lacking awareness of ambiguity and relativity. The majestic anthem ‘It Doesn’t Have to be That Way’ which in its reference to music and creativity clearly reflects Sparks’ own experience and vision, acts as a kind of response to the concerns raised in the rest of the album. This song argues in favour of difference, rejecting the status quo (represented by the unspecified ‘They’), the limitations imposed by societal or artistic expectations, stereotyping, in fact any ‘well defined’ attitudes or demands. The lyrics endorse individuality and staying true to one’s own vision, as Ron and Russell have claimed to do throughout their career, even though this may come at a price. Their resigned but determined approach is fully evident in Ron’s words here (‘no chart bound song, I’ll pay for it, I’ll pay for it’) as is their rejection of the idea that art should reflect the artist’s life or strife: they do not subscribe to the washing of personal linen in public, a common feature of much contemporary confessional pop.

The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte intensifies the themes of tedium, regret, frustration, dissatisfaction and missed opportunities found in other Sparks’ songs, as in ‘Edith Piaf (Said It Better Than Me)’, Hippopotamus, and ‘Left Out In The Cold’, A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip). Even ‘It’s Sunny Today’, which seems laid back and relaxed suggests a state of unmotivated drifting and half-hearted decisions with its echoes of ‘Popularity’ (Sparks in Outer Space, 1983). However, these concerns are linked strongly with an overt and disconcerting critique of modern society, despite their wonderfully catchy tunes. It is an album that manages to be melancholy, thought-provoking and joyous all at the same time. That’s the wonder of Sparks.

 

*Grumpy Old Men – a UK TV show in which celebrities of a certain age aired their pet grumbles.

Penny Brown

December 2023