21st Century Survival Blues

Album: Be More Kind (2018)
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Songfacts®:

  • Thanks to the influence of Frank Turner's romantic partner, actress Jessica Guise, the subject matter of his songs on Be More Kind found him entering new territory. "It's a really different feeling for me as an individual as well as a writer," he told The Sun. "On other records I've made I'm figuring out my personal life. Now I have a partner who I am very happy with."

    "When the world starts falling apart I am not going to start reaching for an AK-47, I am going to try and figure out where my missus is," Turner added. "That's what the track 21st Century Survival Blues is about."
  • The song was inspired by a plane journey when Turner got talking to a businessman, who told him how he had spent a lot of his money on a warehouse full of guns.

    "He was telling me about how he had this stockpile of weapons and dried food ready for the end of the world," recalled Turner to The Sun. "He said, 'When the ship goes down you can't eat gold'. It was a striking conversation. He's planning on robbing people for food. I don't think that survivalists have a point and I don't think we are about to reach a state of society collapsing anytime soon but it got me thinking about what was important to me when the sureties that we depend on start falling apart."

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