"Black Boys on Mopeds": A Mother's Protest
Good protest songs have no truck with moderation; arguably, like protest movements themselves, they draw their power, and hit closer to home truth, by articulating an extreme. So in "Masters of War," Dylan doesn't say, "Stop making weapons," but instead sings, "Even Jesus would never forgive what you do," and concludes with the fantasy of stomping on the graves of arms manufacturers. In an echo of that image, Elvis Costello's "Tramp the Dirt Down" articulates his hope that he will "live long enough to savor" the death of Margaret Thatcher. (Mission accomplished.)
Sinead O'Connor's "Black Boys on Mopeds" has a similar overstatement at its heart, and it gives the song its uniquely personal tone. But it's not the politics of the song that are extreme; the chorus laments the deaths of young Black men at the hands of English police, basing its title on the case of Nicholas Bramble, chased into a fatal crash by police who assumed he'd stolen the moped he was riding on, and taking some of its moral fervor from the case of Colin Roach, shot at point blank range in the entryway of a Hackney police station. These are racist outrages in a lineage with lynchings, Emmett Till, Hattie Carroll—case studies in the way Black lives have historically not mattered to the white power structure which seem freshly timely about every 28 minutes and remain eminently worthy of resistance.
It's the frame that O'Connor puts around this central outrage, though, that makes all the difference. This is the protest song of a mother, as the second verse makes clear, with its harrowing image of a "young mother down at Smithfield, 5 a.m. / Looking for food for her kids." (The opening invocation of Thatcher also subtly plays the mother-to-mother card.) O'Connor hasn't just zoomed out to take in a whole landscape of social inequality, she has also zeroed in on a relationship at the center of that picture. I have always been stopped short by the last line of the song's gently mournful chorus:
Musically, the song is blessedly straightforward, with much of the power of the chorus coming from a lightly bruising appoggiatura (she repeatedly hits a C# note over a B chord, and returns to that note with an insistence that bespeaks loyalty). The high point I always listen for is her exquisite folk trill on "I" in "Remember what I told you." (Slight digression here to admit that I'm not sure who the "you" is in this section of the lyric, and the lines about being persecuted for speaking her mind take the song into areas of political implication beyond my consideration here. What does "if they hated me they will hate you" or the obscure, vaguely biblical "if you were of the world, they would love you" refer to? All I can say is that I would bet that the "you" in these sections is not the son she wants to take away from England.) I would only add that the song's final "oo" chorus is as essential to its effect as any lyric—this is the sound of a mother embracing and soothing her young. Sharon van Etten's justly acclaimed cover is worth a look and listen...
Sinead O'Connor's "Black Boys on Mopeds" has a similar overstatement at its heart, and it gives the song its uniquely personal tone. But it's not the politics of the song that are extreme; the chorus laments the deaths of young Black men at the hands of English police, basing its title on the case of Nicholas Bramble, chased into a fatal crash by police who assumed he'd stolen the moped he was riding on, and taking some of its moral fervor from the case of Colin Roach, shot at point blank range in the entryway of a Hackney police station. These are racist outrages in a lineage with lynchings, Emmett Till, Hattie Carroll—case studies in the way Black lives have historically not mattered to the white power structure which seem freshly timely about every 28 minutes and remain eminently worthy of resistance.
It's the frame that O'Connor puts around this central outrage, though, that makes all the difference. This is the protest song of a mother, as the second verse makes clear, with its harrowing image of a "young mother down at Smithfield, 5 a.m. / Looking for food for her kids." (The opening invocation of Thatcher also subtly plays the mother-to-mother card.) O'Connor hasn't just zoomed out to take in a whole landscape of social inequality, she has also zeroed in on a relationship at the center of that picture. I have always been stopped short by the last line of the song's gently mournful chorus:
England's not the mythical landWait wait wait—you want to shield your child, not just from grief, but even from awareness that there is such a thing? This puts me in mind, a bit, of the willfully perverse mother's resolutions of Liz Phair's "Whip-Smart" ("I'm gonna lock my son up in a tower" etc.). But the point here is not to quibble with O'Connor's parenting; it is to recognize that she's giving voice to a primal protective drive, unleashed by righteous rage at the world's indifference to the lives of Black boys and hungry children. Put another way: It is not her reaction that's extreme, but the world's crushing injustice. And perhaps what our ever-breaking world needs now is not just love but a bit more of that fierce, life-giving, life-saving mother's love.
Of Madame George and roses
It's the home of police
Who shoot black boys on mopeds
And I love my boy
and that's why I'm leaving
I don't want him to be aware that there's
Any such thing as grieving
Musically, the song is blessedly straightforward, with much of the power of the chorus coming from a lightly bruising appoggiatura (she repeatedly hits a C# note over a B chord, and returns to that note with an insistence that bespeaks loyalty). The high point I always listen for is her exquisite folk trill on "I" in "Remember what I told you." (Slight digression here to admit that I'm not sure who the "you" is in this section of the lyric, and the lines about being persecuted for speaking her mind take the song into areas of political implication beyond my consideration here. What does "if they hated me they will hate you" or the obscure, vaguely biblical "if you were of the world, they would love you" refer to? All I can say is that I would bet that the "you" in these sections is not the son she wants to take away from England.) I would only add that the song's final "oo" chorus is as essential to its effect as any lyric—this is the sound of a mother embracing and soothing her young. Sharon van Etten's justly acclaimed cover is worth a look and listen...
...as is Shea Rose's interpretive dance rendition.
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