These are the songs that we have listened to, laughed to, loved to and laboured
to, as well as downed tools and danced to. Covering the last seven decades, Stua
rt Maconie looks at the songs that have sound tracked our changing times, and -
just sometimes - changed the way we feel. Beginning with Vera Lynn's 'We'll Meet
Again', a song that reassured a nation parted from their loved ones by the turm
oil of war, and culminating with the manic energy of 'Bonkers', Dizzee Rascal's
anthem for the push and rush of the 21st century inner city, The People's Songs
takes a tour of our island's pop music, and asks what it means to us.
This is
not a rock critique about the 50 greatest tracks ever recorded. Rather, it is a
celebration of songs that tell us something about a changing Britain during the
dramatic and kaleidoscopic period from the Second World War to the present day.
Here are songs about work, war, class, leisure, race, family, drugs, sex, patri
otism and more, recorded in times of prosperity or poverty.
This is the music
that inspired haircuts and dance crazes, but also protest and social change. Th
e companion to Stuart Maconie's landmark Radio 2 series, The People's Songs show
s us the power of 'cheap' pop music,- one of Britain's greatest exports. These a
re the songs we worked to and partied to, and grown up and grown old to - from '
A Whiter Shade of Pale' to 'Rehab', 'She Loves You' to 'Star Man', 'Dedicated Fo
llower of Fashion' to 'Radio Ga Ga'.
