God Save The Jungle

Album: I Tell a Fly (2017)
Play Video

Songfacts®:

  • This is a track from I Tell a Fly, a concept album about the voyages of refugees from Aleppo to Calais. The record loosely follows a pair of flies as they flit through various border scenes. On this track they visit the notorious refugee camps outside Calais in northern France, which are filled with desperate people who will use any means to cross the English Channel to the British Isles.
  • Q magazine commented that calling refugees "flies" sounds dehumanizing. Clementine responded: "When you're poor, people look down on you and walk away from you. Everyone is a fly; horseflies, butterflies, houseflies, different kinds of flies that do different things. In Ancient Greece, in painting, a fly symbolised healing."
  • Asked by HMV.com where the album title came from, Clementine replied:

    "Well, I always like it when there's a double meaning to the title of a book, I mean if you look at the title of the first album it's pretty much the same thing. I like to give my audience space to take what I've done and take it to another place. So that's the first thing I thought about and I ambitiously wrote about two flies wandering around the sphere of humanity, so that's how I came up with the title. I wanted it to be easier to remember as well, the album itself I wrote a lot, all the songs I really put a lot of effort into it, it takes a lot of listening to really understand I think, so I thought it was better to make the title a bit easier to grasp."

Comments

Be the first to comment...

Editor's Picks

La La Brooks of The Crystals

La La Brooks of The CrystalsSong Writing

The lead singer on "Da Doo Ron Ron" and "Then He Kissed Me," La La explains how and why Phil Spector replaced The Crystals with Darlene Love on "He's A Rebel."

How The Beatles Crafted Killer Choruses

How The Beatles Crafted Killer ChorusesSong Writing

The author of Help! 100 Songwriting, Recording And Career Tips Used By The Beatles, explains how the group crafted their choruses so effectively.

Strange Magnetics

Strange MagneticsSong Writing

How Bing Crosby, Les Paul, a US Army Signal Corps Officer, and the Nazis helped shape rock and Roll.

Director Mark Pellington ("Jeremy," "Best Of You")

Director Mark Pellington ("Jeremy," "Best Of You")Song Writing

Director Mark Pellington on Pearl Jam's "Jeremy," and music videos he made for U2, Jon Bon Jovi and Imagine Dragons.

Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull

Ian Anderson of Jethro TullSongwriter Interviews

The flautist frontman talks about touring with Led Zeppelin, his contribution to "Hotel California", and how he may have done the first MTV Unplugged.

Charlie Daniels

Charlie DanielsSongwriter Interviews

Charlie discusses the songs that made him a Southern Rock icon, and settles the Devil vs. Johnny argument once and for all.