Probabilistic Jukebox: "Look Back in Anger" by the Television Personalities

Illustration detail from the cover of Popular Science magazine, September 1938

Say what you will about the part-time punks in the Television Personalities - they exhibited a frightening prescience at times. For instance, who else would have thought to write a response song to Oasis's "Don't Look Back in Anger" fifteen years in advance. Actually, the phrase is borrowed from a '50s Richard Burton movie (and the original play it was based on). The movie is about a love triangle where class difference plays a key role - coincidentally, not unlike "A Place in the Sun" (which I was writing about yesterday.)

The Television Personalities' song, from their 1981 debut album And Don't the Kids Just Love It, is strictly binary, though, involving a "me" and a "you". Singer Dan Treacy seems conflicted - the verses are all regret and apology, but the chorus is where he's "looking back in anger at you." For me, the sentiment is undercut a little by the fact that I always imagine the Television Personalities as being very small. Not like actual "little people", but around 5'2" or something. This impression is reinforced by the fact that they sing about "midget submarines" and "little works of art" and things.

"Look Back in Anger" by the Television Personalities