Jesus wept.

That was my first thought after this song was thrust into my otherwise pleasant life following the recent replacement of the ipod dock in my office with a radio. I can only object with every particle in my being to sampling the entire chorus of an incredibly popular track that has maintained prevalence in popular culture since its release in 1982, even if it did so by being used as the soundtrack to sell us coffee, shit sofas and most recently, fish fingers.

I too can only assume Madness sanctioned this wholesale transplant of their entire song in order to flog this donkey for every penny they could get out of it, fund their comfortable retirement and ensure some pre-teens turn up to their summer festival tour after their acclaimed (by mainstream media at least) reformation (which must have come once Suggs realised he couldn’t make a career selling fish fingers, releasing god awful solo material, and appearing in the BBC’s ill informed attempt to make a music version of Question of Sport that still gives me shudders). But possibly the worst thing about this group/song is my deep suspicion it is the product of bored music executives similarly attempting to squeeze whatever is left from the music industry, and this inevitably means appealing to under 10s.

I can see it vividly; ‘we need something to appeal to the kids, with some British street cred, talking about real things that kids can relate to . . . oh . . . and it needs to be a guaranteed hit’. Thus they are called ‘Kid British’ so that you know they are British, and they are talking to ‘the kids’, they have taken a hit in its entirety and reconfigured it, thus creating that hit again, and their album is titled ‘It was this or Football’, to ensure they can cover the now well established ‘lads’ market – Soccer A.M here we come. The fact that their album is being released in ‘two halves’, first half out now, second half later in the year, smacks only of cynical marketing strategies.

. . . read more . . . http://www.whatisthegrain.com/2009/07/chasing-the-shitegeist-kid-british/