City With No Children

Album: The Suburbs (2010)
Play Video

Songfacts®:

  • This song finds frontman Win Butler singing, "Never trust a millionaire quoting the sermon on the mount." The line is a quote from Butler's favorite author, 1984 novelist George Orwell, and is meant as a statement about conformity and hipster-political posturing in parts of London and New York. He explained to The NME July 31, 2010: "I don't know if you've ever been in Williamsburg or those parts of London where everyone is 30 years old, everyone has the same haircut and there's no kids, no older adults, almost an oppressiveness at not having real human life on display in society. On the one side you have a lot of pressure to be part of a commercial society, and everyone's trying to sell you something all the time. And then on the other side there's this kind of hipness, and trying to find what's cool, which has also a certain amount of emptiness associated with it. I think it's really difficult to try and navigate those two extremes."
    Butler added that while some may think the line is about U2 frontman Bono, it's not in a negative way. He said, "As much as people slag Bono, I will forever give him credit for engaging with George W. Bush when he was president. Even though it was a deeply unpopular move, even in his own band. The HIV medications in Africa, every aspect of the US foreign policy - it was a hell of a lot more than any president before had done."

Comments

Be the first to comment...

Editor's Picks

Subversive Songs Used To Sell

Subversive Songs Used To SellSong Writing

Songs about drugs, revolution and greed that have been used in commercials for sneakers, jeans, fast food, cruises and cars.

Rock Revenge Songs

Rock Revenge SongsMusic Quiz

John Lennon, Paul Simon and Lynyrd Skynyrd are some of the artists who have written revenge songs. Do you know who they wrote them about?

90s Metal

90s MetalFact or Fiction

Test your metal - Priest, Maiden, and Beavis and Butt-head show up in this one.

Into The Great Wide Open: Made-up Musicians

Into The Great Wide Open: Made-up MusiciansSong Writing

Eddie (played by Johnny Depp in the video) found fame fleeting, but Chuck Berry's made-up musician fared better.

Janis Ian

Janis IanSongwriter Interviews

One of the first successful female singer-songwriters, Janis had her first hit in 1967 at age 15.

Female Singers Of The 90s

Female Singers Of The 90sMusic Quiz

The ladies who ruled the '90s in this quiz.