The Boys are Rocking Out

Thin Lizzy - The Boys Are Back In Town



Well this is better. After the antiseptic waftiness and pinched niceness of More Than a Feeling, the dirty boogie of The Boys Are Back In Town feels like a whole lot of warm vulgarity. This is music for dudes wearing moustaches and leather pants unashamedly and nonironically. This is music that is meant to be played as loudly as possible and accompanied by devil-horn hand signs. This song has swagger.

Despite this, I've never really listened to Thin Lizzy. When it comes to old school rock 'n roll, or proto-metal, or whatever people call music like this, Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath were the bands that I liked most. Which is not to say that I don't know this song. It's impossible not to if you have ears, or at least, appendages capable of sensing vibrations. Because even if you don't think you know it, you'd hear it and think "I know this song".

And it's definitely deserving of it's placing as one of the 500 greatest songs of all time. Rolling Stone argue: "Thin Lizzy's Lynott sang the hard-rock drama of "The Boys Are Back in Town" with the Gaelic soul of a self-described 'black Irish bastard' (his mother was Irish; his father was a Brazilian sailor). Just as crucial to the song's success was the twin-guitar lead by Scott Gorham and Brian Robertson. Lynott died from years of drug abuse in 1986; he remains a beloved Springsteen-like figure in Ireland." Which really says nothing about it. All it says is that Phil Lynott was a badass, which is corroborated by the fact that he's a hero of Henry Rollins's.

But.. there's a problem. This song is too badass. It's been co-opted by the mainstream in the worst possible way. This is a song that has been played at every sporting event ever. I'm willing to bet that it was played at the Women's Table Tennis World Cup. Anytime two people face off against one another in any kind of sporting contest, this song is playing. As as result, it's also in every sporting movie ever, normally at the critical juntion where the plucky underdog team have just finished getting their asses kicked and have stepped into hero mode to return the favour on the antagonists.

As a result, we're all sick of this song. I certainly am. I can't listen to it in the way that Thin Lizzy intended it to be listened to, as a major key, fuzz-box power-chord shuffle-based paen to soldiers returning from Vietnam. If you could step back from its current context as a song jocks use to slap their chests together to, it's still a rock anthem and one that's been covered about a billion times as tribute to it's awesomeness. In fact, wherever someone is playing covers in a pub he's playing The Boys Are Back In Town, if not note for note, then in spirit. And how hard can it really be to cover a song written by a bunch of drunken Irishmen?

Taxonomy: Guilty pleasure rock anthem, tune up that air guitar

Tomorrow: Brook Benton - Rainy Night in Georgia