He Always Was An Ugly Man

mieyeed
May 24
2 min read

Fifth in a series of posts about Protest Music for the Current Crisis.

More than twenty-one years ago The Guardian quoted Rickie Lee Jones: You're an ignorant, low-class, opportunistic man, both personally and politically, who does everything for political gain and nothing for the wellbeing of the people, and you should not be in office, and the kind of fascism you're perpetrating on our country we don't want..."

She could easily have been describing the current occupant of the White House instead of George Bush, who she was writing about and who now seems positively tame compared to the greedy, imbecilic autocrat now sitting behind the resolute desk.

It's what makes great topical music great - the universality that allows it to be applied two decades after it was written. It's also the curse of great topical music - that it needs to be applied to another situation two decades after it was written.

That's the nature of Ugly Man, from Ricki Lee Jones most political album in her career, The Evening of My Best Day. Jones, who made a career writing, and performing songs that mixed jazz and blues and pop, was never known as a political songwriter, but this album put her on the map.

Ugly Man

It's a song with a simple, direct message, delivered as a jazzy shuffle. Ugliness runs in the family, and it's fueled by a selfish desire for power. The resolution, as in many of the best of protest songs, is that the only way our from under the boot of the ugly man is to call upon the power of the people.

The best news. George Bush came and went. Certainly the painful destruction he caused cannot be dismissed or forgotten, but he's gone, painting childish canvases on his Texas ranch. And someday, the current ugly man will be gone too.