Comment: Beethoven or Brexit? Published on: 6 February 2020 Writing for The Conversation, Dr Adam Behr discusses what the charts reveal about the UK. Ode to Joy or 17 Million F*** Offs? The people chose Beethoven. iku4 via Shutterstock , Two songs were vying for the top spot in the UK鈥檚 music charts last month. Beethoven鈥檚 Ode to Joy, also the EU鈥檚 鈥淎nthem for Europe鈥�, and , (warning - contains strong language) by pro-Brexit comedian, writer and commentator Dominic Frisby. The competition between these two pieces signified a much starker divide than a merely musical one. The melodic passage of the final movement of Beethoven鈥檚 9th Symphony 鈥� originally the setting for a vocal rendition of Friedrich Schiller鈥檚 poem Ode to Joy 鈥� had been adopted as the European anthem by the Council of Europe in 1972 and in 1985 by the European Community. Pro-Europeans in the UK launched a campaign to get the song into the charts, settling on a recording by . O friends, no more these sounds! Let us sing more cheerful songs, more full of joy! Joy, bright spark of divinity, Daughter of Elysium, Fire-inspired we tread Thy sanctuary. Thy magic power re-unites All that custom has divided, All men become brothers Under the sway of thy gentle wings. Meanwhile, Frisby鈥檚 song listed some of the more prominent Remain campaigners and told them all where they could go: It was the greatest democratic turnout in British history, I do not scoff And when the time came to speak the British said f*** off. F*** off. Lyrically and tonally, the two pieces could hardly be further apart, Ode to Joy deriving from a widely acknowledged masterpiece of music in the in contrast to Frisby鈥檚 ukulele-driven ditty that, by his own account, was written 鈥溾��. Ode to Joy pipped 17 Million F*** Offs to the top of the singles download charts, and of singles overall, with Frisby鈥檚 song narrowly missing the Top 40. But the charts aren鈥檛 a fixed marker of musical style 鈥� and the music itself here was arguably a secondary consideration to the expression of a political point. Protest music Expressing political views through music isn鈥檛 new, of course, and neither is this the first time the charts have been used for that purpose 鈥� although the competition between two such bluntly divergent tunes (politically and aesthetically) 鈥� and by opposing political campaigns 鈥� does represent further evolution in the coalescing of popular cultural and political practice. It has its roots in popular music鈥檚 debates about authenticity and was given extra impetus by frustration at The X Factor鈥檚 domination of the top spot at Christmas in the mid-2000s. to supplant the TV competition winner Alexandra Burke鈥檚 cover of Leonard Cohen鈥檚 Hallelujah with Jeff Buckley鈥檚 version of the same song, a similar 2009 campaign to get Rage Against the Machine鈥檚 Killing in the Name Of 鈥� a sweary, angry, rock song 鈥� to the top of the in place of X Factor鈥檚 Joe McElderry was a key success for online protest purchases. The ideological objections of rock fans about what they deemed to be inferior pop are nearly as old as the music charts themselves. But they are both commercial forms, so these challenges were made easier by changes in the chart process. Once downloads started to and social media became ever more pervasive, these technological and market developments put a new tool into the hands of campaigners. It also vastly widened the choice of songs available to them, since they were no longer restricted to what was available in the shops. Ding dong This technique shifted from pop鈥檚 politics to party politics in 2013 when the death of Margaret Thatcher pushed into the limelight a hitherto obscure Facebook page geared towards getting the song Ding Dong the Witch is Dead, from The Wizard of Oz, into the charts to mark the occasion. The combination of social media campaigning and the easy, instantaneous purchase of music from 1939, drove the song up the charts. It within a week of Thatcher鈥檚 death. This caused problems for the BBC over how to respond in its chart rundown. The national broadcaster had to live up to its charter obligation to maintain 鈥溾�� in the face of a song ostensibly celebrating the death of a major public figure. But at the same time it faced objections to it acting as a censor. The difficulty, as academic researcher on music and censorship has , is that there were no generally accepted standards in a nation so divided on the death of Thatcher and around a song whose actual content had nothing to do with the matter in hand. The BBC fudged the issue in 2013 and played a snippet of the song in the middle of an explanatory news piece. Anger and impartiality In 2017, broadcasters took a more explicit line when a chart-oriented campaign pulled matters even further into the political realm in the middle of the general election campaign. Activist band Captain Ska re-mixed their 2015 broadside at David Cameron to feature the then Conservative prime minister Theresa May 鈥� using excerpts from her speeches and media appearances and weaving them into a chorus calling her a 鈥淟iar, Liar鈥�. The BBC and others refrained from playing it, on the grounds that to do so would set out by the statutory regulator, Ofcom. Again, changes to the chart process in 2014 had helped the musical campaign, with streams now counting towards chart position, albeit that many more streams than downloads are required to make an impact. And once more, accusations of censorship were levied against broadcasters, along with concerns that they were failing in their duty to represent public opinion. If public opinion in the UK is divided about anything, it鈥檚 Brexit. The recent battle for chart supremacy, with rival campaigns, reflects that and is the latest step in what is becoming a part of the furniture in our musical and political culture. Read more: Frisby鈥檚 portrayal of himself as 鈥渁n ordinary bloke who wrote a tune with his mate one day, up against a European colossus鈥� may be disingenuous 鈥� he鈥檚 an established media performers and published author who, at one point, was for the Brexit party. But this latest salvo in an ongoing culture war highlights the normalisation of the charts as a political tool, just how at odds with itself Britain has become. , Lecturer in Popular and Contemporary Music, This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the . 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