And Nothing Ever Happens

…nothing happens at all.
The needle returns to the start of the song
And we all sing along like before
And we’ll all be lonely tonight and lonely tomorrow.

Driving home from town the other night from town I found myself sitting at a red robot* while precisely no vehicles went the other way.

And it reminded me of Del Amitri’s 1989 single Nothing Ever Happens, which includes the line:

Now the traffic lights change to stop, when there’s nothing to go

Not 100% accurate, in that my issue was that the traffic lights had turned to stop when there was something to go: me. More like the traffic lights had turned to go, when there was nothing to stop. Which is equally irritating.

We can put a robot onto the surface of Mars (and not get it stuck at traffic signals), but we can’t have traffic lights that are able to see if they actually need to allow no cars to flow freely across junctions.

Anyway, that got me thinking of all the other lines in that song.
There are several.

As an observational piece about modern, urban society, it’s pretty accurate.
And pretty damning.
And pretty depressing.

What did intrigue me was that although this song is now basically 30 years old (eina!) – an entire generation on – and given the progress we have allegedly made in that time, nothing has really changed.

American businessmen continue to snap up Van Goghs for the price of a hospital wing.
Bill hoardings go on advertising products that nobody needs.
Bachelors still phone up their friends for a drink while the married ones turn on a chat show.

 

And we’ll all be lonely tonight and lonely tomorrow.

 

* a traffic light. 

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