Sandi Thom, Punks, Hippies And Interpretations

Now, Sandi Thom’s ‘I Wish I was A Punk Rocker (With Flowers In My Hair)’, (bottom of this post), gets a lot of flak, for being an annoyingly earnest song, for being so widely praised/consumed and for supposedly misunderstanding and appropriating the cultural movement of punk. But is there a little more to it?

Consider what she is saying, she brings together two images in the chorus and focus of the song, a punk and a hippie (‘flowers in my hair’). Now, just about everyone seems to go “lol, she is saying hippies and punks are the same, what a stupid bitch, lol”, but if you think about it, there are similarities in the ideological aspects of being a hippie and a punk. Hippies were about having a good time and getting high, it’s true, but there was other stuff in there too, like the ideas of creating a better society, whether that is through communes where everyone is connected and a part of a community, or through trying to stop atrocities inflicted upon other peoples as in the Vietnam War protests, and the anti nuclear and free press movements. Those are the things that are relevant here, because punk shares some of these ideas. There were big sides to punk that closely related to Anarchism and the empowerment of the people, to trying to create a better or different society than the one that existed, the anti racism gigs, and the creation of a new community for people who felt alienated and shunned by the mainstream. Of course, as with the hippies, there were other parts to punk, which don’t match up, the nihilism, the destructive spirit (which directly opposes hippie’s spiritual ideas of rebirth and creation), and the neo-Nazi, xenophobic aspects. But there is an awful lot of common ground to be found. It’s the facets that encourage and foster empowerment that might be found in Sandi Thom’s song. And, I ask you, what is more fucking punk rock than wanting to be who you are, and if that entails wearing flowers in your hair even though you are in the masculine realm of punk, then that’s what you do, fuck what anyone else thinks about it, you are expressing yourself. Another thing to note would be the existence of the Velvet Underground and The Stooges around the song’s stated time period of ‘69’, both forefathers of punk or even the first punk bands to exist, so Thom might be making reference to punk’s initial existence. Apart from all this murky ideological and historical supposings, the track has a really interesting form, the bashing percussion beating all the way through the song, the a-capella singing, and various other things, certainly not a typical pop song in that regard, let alone a chart-topping one.

But. She might well be misunderstanding and stupidly appropriating all these ideas, they might even be entirely coincidental. Lines like ‘ignorance could still be bliss’ do not inspire confidence, clearly she is yearning for a simpler time, perhaps it is the hippie aspect, where the Man was wrong, and you have to stand up to Him. Whereas the punk era had a lot more ambiguous personal struggles, and the Man was still there, sure, but the punks realized that they too were made with the same mould as the Man. Worshipping naivety isn’t a fulfilling scene. The references to ‘anarchism’, you feel, may be less about the social-political idea of tearing everything down and starting again, and more about name-checking the Sex Pistol’s song without any other deeper meaning. Plus she is signed to RCA, so she must be a corporate shill, despite her supposedly DIY beginnings. The song also trades in the awful cultural trend of nostalgia worshipping, when the ‘media couldn’t buy your soul’, ‘not everyone drove a car’, ‘kids were wearing hand-me-downs’, and etcetera. Maybe go watch Ashes To Ashes, laugh at Rickrolling, prattle on about Madonna, and watch 80s movies with your rose-tinted glasses, instead of blaring stupidity at us.

So, maybe there is, and maybe there isn’t more to this song, how conclusive!