Classic protest song, “The Man Don’t Give a Fuck” by Welsh band Super Furry Animals is the subject of an online campaign for the number one spot in the UK charts. The track, originally released as a “limited edition” single in 1996, is proving the perfect mode of expression for people frustrated, angry, and upset by the actions of Dominic Cummings, chief advisor to UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who flouted lockdown rules last month. It is widely felt that Cummings’s actions have confirmed a “one rule for us and one rule for them” attitude in the Westminster government.
The Super Furry Animals’s rousing anthem would be their first number one single if the campaign were to prove successful.
If you’d like to stream or download the track, you can do via these links.
More about the song:
“The Man Don’t Give a Fuck” is based round a sample from the Steely Dan song “Show Biz Kids“. The sample is repeated more than 50 times and so the single is claimed to feature the word “fuck” more than any other song, but Insane Clown Posse‘s “Fuck the World” in fact beats it with 93 instances. However, the live re-issue of “The Man Don’t Give A Fuck” broke that record.
The song was originally intended as a B-side for previous single “If You Don’t Want Me to Destroy You” but the group had not been able to clear the sample in time. However, they persevered and when they were able to clear the sample, released the song as a single in its own right. This arguably sealed the song’s cult status among SFA fans, and it became the group’s standard set-closer when playing live: the outro would often extend to ten or twenty minutes, with keyboard player Cian Ciaran in particular taking the opportunity to improvise wildly around the basic sample. A live version was released in 2004.
In October 2011, NME placed it at number 66 on its list “150 Best Tracks of the Past 15 Years”.
