Billy Bragg is one of those artists that seems to polarise opinion, you either love him or hate him. He is probably the most overtly political singer in my top ten, although it's a close run thing. He is not the most melodic singer to have ever recorded, not is he the most subtle of writers. And although I do love a lot of his political songs, it's one of his most sensitive works about love, or more accurately, unrequited love, that makes it into my top ten.
I was not a confidant teenager when it came to girls, so "The Saturday Boy" really struck a chord, pun intended, when I first heard it in my early twenties. Put aside all your preconceptions, your polarised views of his politics, and (as the Bard of Barking himself says in this
recent live rendition), go back and connect with your adolescent memories.
This is poetry, whatever way you look at it.
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