XTC’s Colin Moulding Wants AI Slop, Bad

Swindonite and founder member of XTC Colin Moulding released a new single last week, Want It Bad (The Pep Talks and Playing Fields of Old England). It’s previewing a three-track CD single being released via Burning Shed. This is Moulding’s second single in five years, following 2021’s The Hardest Battle, but is it simply a smooth, rose-tinted specs wishful motivation, or is Colin really making plans for Nigel?!

In this single, Moulding continues to explore the distinctly English pop sensibility trademark of XTC, through qualities of melody, rhythm, variety, idiosyncratic subject matter and a bucketload of nostalgia. It began as a song of sport and camaraderie, but soon took on a broader meaning. Colin explained, “although this song started life as a sporting pep talk, it was clear that it could easily be thought of as a mantra for one’s own life ambitions whatever they may be. If you want something in this life you have to really want it. And if you really want it, you’ll get it; that was my mantra.”

And, like Paul McCartney’s Wings, it is a lovely song of motivation from a mature, experienced professional, seemingly themed ambiguously, with meaning that could be interpreted by the listener. It’s the accompanying video which unfortunately feels like a cringeworthy political allegory, and this causes any imagination the listener might have conjured, to collapse within itself.

Colin was born in Swindon in 1965 to a GWR worker and a laundrette wife and lived in Penhill. They were in every essence working class. Through jam sessions he met Andy Partridge around about 1972, introduced him to Terry Chambers and they formed the band Helium Kidz, which changed name to XTC. Through their angular guitar riffs considered pop in an era of punk and new wave, and an abrupt ending due to contractual disagreements with Virgin, they achieved only sporadic commercial success, but attracted a considerable cult following. 

There’s therefore every reason for Colin to write a song about wanting it bad. But what is it he wants so bad? The video begins with Great British sporting achievements and more randomly, the Moon landing. Yet it wanders off onto some kind of patriotic kickback to an England of yore, with Colin handshaking a wealthy dummy, driving through the fields in a psychedelic dressed Morris Minor, is adorned with images of Lord Kitchener and spitfires, housewives marching village streets wearing gasmasks, and toy soldiers on a bandstand. The irony is, the video might feel like an Orphism collage influenced by Aardman’s Sledgehammer, but appears to be prompted rather than created by Thomas Walsh, who is renowned for using AI slop. This is suspiciously AI, and I cannot abide by that.

I’ve no issue with patriotism, and rose tinted spec nostalgia, provided it’s divisive and supports equality, and the content here, while glorifying war, isn’t suggesting anything more. Except, similar cringeworthy AI creations are predominately used for far-right propaganda, causing the video to feel uneasily related to such politically motivated imagery; which is a shame. Particularly due to XTC’s most known hit “Making Plans for Nigel,” recently being used, for and against, the rise of Reform and fascism in England.

You can want something bad, you could strive to reach that goal, but, I quiver, as a professional musician, should you sacrilegiously destroy any further creativity with AI? And if you do, how in the good name of England’s green and pleasant land is that nostalgic in any shape or form?!

Nice song, shame about the video! Want It Bad is available on CD from the 18th September, exclusively via Burning Shed.

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