The Pop Corporation

There’s going to be a lot of words written about the death of Terry Hall, and many of them better researched and with closer ties to the man than this one. He was iconic, drily funny, frustrated, well-dressed and a host of other things that everyone knows. You don’t need telling these things now that he’s gone – you didn’t even need telling these things when he was still with us.

It was obvious. It was as plain as the nose on your face. Terry Hall was, and still is, one of the greatest to do it.

Obviously, it is incredibly sad when we lose someone who meant so much to so many. However you found yourself listen to his voice, there’s a good chance that it just resonated with you because, of all the things Terry Hall was, he was authentic. The truth always sounds different, doesn’t it?

And so, decades after The Specials burst onto the scene, one of the things that is so depressing about Hall’s death is just how bleakly familiar his surroundings would have felt in 2022. Those young, well-dressed men, kicking out against evil doings and desperate times, now older, seeing the same things dirtying up the hallway.

There’s overwhelming proof that music is able to break down barriers and, looking at the old footage of The Specials – Hall stood icily in the middle of all that mayhem – they must have felt like all that ailed them was going to combust into the ether. All that energy – surely, the baddies couldn’t fight against that?

The Specials looked at a Britain (and a world) divided. Out-of-touch wankers getting rich off the backs of the working class, distracting them race-baiting bullshit, pitting young white men against migrant workers, the dole now called universal credit, dodgy landlords, shit clubs, nepotism, venues being closed down, Tory cronyism, posh kids cosplaying as the working class, and a community desperate to look inside itself and try and understand the knot of emotion and mess that tried to paint everyone into their own corners, unable to reach each other.

Art from concrete hinterlands. Uncertainty. Defiant voices trying to be heard against a constant tidal wave of sewage. The Britain in the ’70s and ’80s, bleak and hopeless and worth kicking against. We know Terry Hall was there, saying the right things when many musicians felt that they couldn’t fart without upsetting their slim prospects. And now, 2023 is just about here already, and good lord, everything feels about as hopeless as it did back then, only this time, we’ve got the internet to distract us… and worry us half to death.

It’s idiotic to think that there aren’t dissenting voices right now. If you don’t know where they are, then you’ve become coddled and old. They’re out there. Ask your kids. Get your head out of your arse. We’re not here to talk about The Specials and Terry Hall like they don’t make them like they used to. But we can acknowledge just how depressingly familiar this current set of awful circumstances feels.

If anything, it just shows you of Terry Hall’s greatness. The truth just sounds different, doesn’t it?

RIP Terry x