Chumbawamba - CD collection

[12-02-2025]

Chumbawamba have been a constant obsession of mine for a couple of years now, and luckily for me, they are an extremely fun band to collect for. I've made different posts like this for my Chumbawamba collection across different platforms over the years, but all of them were either incomplete or didn't fit the standard I expect of myself today for a post like this about one of my favourite bands, so I never brought them over to my neocities. Since at this point, I haven't added to it in a long time because it is complete to a satisfactory level and I also frankly had other things to worry about lately than spending large amounts of money on obscure CDs, I figured this would be a good time to do this attempt at the comprehensive Nim Chumbawamba post.

As someone that exists in this world, I was of course aware of their song Tubthumping. I never had strong feelings about it, I had no context for what it was, what it meant, or where it came from. I didn't hate it, didn't love it, and never spent a second thought about it. It was just some generic novelty pop song, who cares. The band did, however, catch my attention for the first time in 2017, 5 years after they had disbanded, when I saw a meme about them reposted on twitter. "Chumbawamba was a what now?", so I started reading. It took me a while to warm up to the idea that a novelty pop group could be anarcho punks. Throughout the 2010s, I was deeply invested in punk rock, mostly of the melodic skate punk variety of Fat Wreck and Epitaph Records. While to this day, I hold many of these bands in very high regard, this limited view of what punk could be definitely informed my first kneejerk reaction to finding out about Chumbawamba. I didn't really buy the idea yet that a band that was musically so far away from the punk I knew could be rooted in, or even embody, the spirit of the music I loved. I listened to the Tubthumper album, wondering if maybe the title track was an outlier, if there was "real" punk rock somewhere on there. As someone who grew up with Die Ärzte, I was very familiar with the idea that a punk rock band could, on a song by song basis, hop into completely unrelated genres, even make a pop song every once in a while, and then return to punk rock on the next track. But nope, this was just a pop album. Big, bright, shiny, and soft. What the hell? I skimmed through some of their earlier material, trying to find their original punk sound, and trying to figure out where they "went wrong". But I couldn't really find that early punk sound either. I didn't understand this, cast them aside and forgot about them for a while. Until about 2 years later, when, once again on twitter, I saw someone post about how some parts of Chumbawamba's back catalogue had been made available on streaming. I remembered. "Yeah, that band. That supposed punk band that wasn't one. What was up with that again? I should look into this". By that point, I was a bit more receptive towards a wider range of sounds, including some pop music, so I took another attempt at understanding this band. I listened to their album Anarchy which had just been made available for easy access. For most of the album, nothing happened. I still didn't get it. But as I made it to the one-two-punch of Mouthful of Shit and Bad Dog at the end of the album, it was like an epiphany. "Yes, actually, this is fun. Dare I say, this goes hard af". And this is how my obsession started. Chumbawamba have since become one of the biggest subsections of my CD collection, and as I've said before, they are extremely fun to collect for. They have tons of albums, tons of singles, different versions, weird in-between releases. Some can be found in every second hand bargain bin, giving you an easy entry point, and some are rarities you have to hunt for, giving you stuff to look out for for years to come.

The common narrative on Chumbawamba is that they used to be a punk band and then changed their style to make Tubthumping and immediately landed a smash hit, but that's not quite what happened. Yes, Chumbawamba do come from the DIY anarcho punk scene and made DIY anarcho punk music. But even in their very early days, before they made an album and were just passing tapes back and forth, their music had quite a lot more to it than just DIY punk, as they were implementing elements of theater, pop and folk very early on. They used to have quite the punk edge in their sound with more shouting and louder guitars as well as very rough DIY production, but it never was as simple as just making punk music, and I would argue that all the elements that they would "transform" into later in their career have been there from the very beginning. They had been doing dance music years before coming out with Tubthumping. If you paid attention, you could have foreseen what they would go on to do.

Their first major release was the 7-inch Revolution (1985), which is generally considered a major part of their discography and lyrically serves as a mission statement for the band, but has never been re-released. The first two full length albums, the provocatively titled Pictures of Starving Children Sell Records (1986) and Never Mind the Ballots (1987) do not have standalone CD releases, they were, however, released as the bundle First 2 a couple years later in 1992. Although you don't get the original album art in this release, it does preserve all the original liner notes in its booklet, something that's an important part of the band's physical releases throughout their whole career, in which they give more detailed thoughts and context on the topics of the songs, quotes, or recommend further reading materials. I have made all the booklets available for viewing a while back on a dedicated tumblr blog (Since I don't use tumblr anymore, maybe at some point in the future I'll bring these over here, but for now, they remain on tumblr). During this time, Chumbawamba knew no sublety and pulled no punches. They came right out of the gate on the first track on their first album, titled How to Get Your Band on Television, swinging explicitly at many beloved figures of the pop music world, and denouncing their self-congratulatory involvement in pop-charity events such as Live Aid. Much of the album was concerned with the British media apparatus, its involvement in the exploitation of the third world and the hypocrisy of celebrities who played its game. The second album Never Mind the Ballots shifted to a more predictable topic for an anarcho punk band, electoral politics, with an album satirizing the public spectacle of elections and questioning their effectiveness. While all these topics on paper give off a strong sense of "no fun allowed", the music through which they're being expressed is full of life and joy. While they aren't afraid to get shouty and agressive at times, much of it plays around with many different styles of music from pop to folk and even involves sections akin to musical theater. Everything up until Never Mind the Ballots is generally considered to be their "punk era", but I would argue that simply calling it punk doesn't do it justice.

This era does not last long, however, as, dissatified with their second album, they quickly decided that they had become bored with what they were doing and instead decided to move on to something completely different. In 1988, they release English Rebel Songs 1381-1914, the first complete curveball of their discography, which is a collection of traditional, working class folk songs, performed almost entirely acapella. The next curveball comes with their next album Slap! (1990), on which they follow their newly found interest in dance music. This album sounds very disco-inpired, with continuous, repeating dance beats and rich intrumentation with lots of horns and piano. Lyrically, most of these songs are about very specific historic events, some more and some less nieche, and are generally of a much more celebratory nature than any of their previous work. This album also spawned the first CD maxi single, the anthemic I Never Gave Up, which here appears in a different version than the one on the album. For their next work, Chumbawamba decide to further embrace their troubled relationship with pop culture, and build an album around samples, re-interpretations and re-contextualizations of many popular songs. This album would be known as Jesus H. Christ, however, it never made it to release, as the majority if not all the samples have not been cleared for use, thus preventing the publishing of the album. It did, however, quickly make it to the public in the form of "bootleg" vinyl copies (I'm sure the members of the band had no idea how this could have happened), allowing you to be able to still hear this album today. Taking many of the now leftover ideas of Jesus H. Christ, they began working on a new version of the album, which would eventually become 1992s Shhh. Inspired by their prior experience with copyright law, much of the album is about censorship and freedom of speech, filling the double-page in the center of the booklet with rejection letters from record companies, as well many of the religious themes that carried over from their first attempt at the album. Musically, they start exploring the territory of electronics, making much more use of synthesizers and programmed drums. Many of the songs are also very spacious and atmospheric, leaving a lot of room for atmospheres to make their impact on the listener. This being their first foray into electronic dance music, this album marks the blueprint of the sound they would make it big with later. This album also contains the first collaborations with MC Fusion of the rap group Credit to the Nation, who would appear again much more prominently on the next album. Shhh also came with the single (Someone's always telling you how to) Behave, which on the album is a mostly instrumental, atmospheric transitional piece, but becomes an anthem for misbehaving queer folk, in two different versions, along with its counterpart b-side Misbehave. The two albums Slap! and Shhh have been re-released later in 2003 under the name Shhhlap!, which is also the name and artwork these albums appear under on streaming today. While Shhhlap! doesn't give anything new to owners of the two original albums, the new artwork does make it an interesting collectible to have, and also, it re-formats the liner notes of Shhh, which were quite difficult to navigate in the original release.

Their next album, 1994's Anarchy, sees them perfect the sound they had established on the previous album. The provocative cover showing the birth of a baby, a photo they got from a medical text book, which, all things considered, is not nearly as graphic as it could have been given the subject matter, got the album hidden or banned from many stores. The Japanese release and the later digital releases of the album replace the photo with a painting of roses. Nonetheless, with a great variety of instrumentation, grand, anthemic choruses, and as much snark as ever, this album houses many fan-favourites and is their most succesful one prior to them blowing up in the mainstream a few years later. The lead single Enough is Enough, another collaboration with Credit to the Nation, is a grand, anti-fascist protest anthem for peace and unity (and shooting fascists). This single also contains an electronic, full-band studio version of The Day the Nazi Died, a song that would appear at pretty much every live show in an acapella version. The other two singles, Timebomb and Homophobia, again appear in different versions on the single than they do on the album. While the change on Timebomb is fairly small, merely replacing the bridge of the song, the single version of Homophobia might as well be a completely different song. The album version, a dark, mournful folk song, usually performed acapella, and in the studio version containing a light brass backing that gradually builds up throughout the song. On the single version, also referred to as the Sister's Mix, they are joined by the performance group Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence for a high energy dance pop banger, with a similar energy to perhaps the Pet Shop Boy's version of Go West. Although the lyrics remain the same, pretty much nothing else of the song has remained in place between the two versions. Another fun aspect about the album is that all the songs are connected with a huge variety of samples and radio static, creating a very immersive listening experience as it gives you the experience of switching through different radio broadcasts. The album also contains my favourite song of theirs, the aforementioned Bad Dog, with its driving beat and a great horn line. I can especially recommend this live performance, where they go from the mournful folk Homophobia directly into the energetic, queer dance party counterpunch of Bad Dog. My crops are watered, my skin is clear, etc. This is what it means to be alive. Speaking of live performances, during this era, they also released their first "official" live album, Showbusiness!, although there have been many unofficial live tapes before that point.

The often overlooked 1995 album Swingin' with Raymond is yet another curveball in their discography. The album is split into two halves. The Love It side contains sweet, though sometimes slightly sarcastic, acoustic folk pop love songs sung entirely by Lou Watts, who is really able to show off her skills as a singer here. The Hate It side has them act as a full rock band again, with their full variety of different singers, loud, electronic guitars and a quite aggressive delivery. Although by this point they are well into their "pop era", I would argue that the second half of Swingin' with Raymond is the closest they ever came to playing "real" punk rock and contains some very aggressive, ranty songs like Salome and This Dress Kills. This album only brought one commercial single with it, the pop punk song Ugh! Your Ugly Houses!, although a tour exclusive EP for the Lou song Just Look At Me Now has also been released at the time. Ugh! Your Ugly Houses!, being a very goofy song with no lyrics aside from the title being repeated ad nauseam, is in its music video and liner notes clearly aimed at making fun of the bad taste of rich people's decadence.

Now this is the time where Chumbawamba are launched from being local indie heroes into worldwide mainstream fame. Their indie record label, One Little Indian, is unhappy with the direction of the band and asks them to rework their next album. Major label EMI, however, is willing to release the album, and after much consideration, Chumbawamba decide to make a deal with the enemy. I've mentioned this before, I see Tubthumper existing in a lineage of dance pop albums and a gradual, natural evolution of their musical journey. It is, however, curious, and cause for much ire from the punk community, that their signing with EMI immediately lands them a huge hit with the, at least on the surface, apolitical party song Tubthumping. Although the song by itself does not make much of a statement beyond "it's good to have a good time", the song was intended as a celebration of the continuous fight for progress, as an admission that even when things are bad, you have to allow yourself to relax every once in a while. To quote the booklet of the 1998 version of the album, "Tubthumping is Shouting to Change The World (then having a drink to celebrate). It's stumbling home from your local bar, when the world is ready to be PUT RIGHT...". Indeed, although the album opens on this rather light note, the rest of the album contains many more serious discussions of themes such as dissatisfaction with electoral politics, sectarianism between different branches of leftist though, gentrification, landlords, corruption in organized labour, social exclusion, or celebrations of female sexual expression. It is easy to miss what Tubthumping is about and I understand why many saw this as a sellout-move, but I think in the wider context of the album and their body of work, this song starts to mean so much more. And those who have only bought the single are immediately greeted with Farewell to the Crown as its b-side, a jaunty dance-folk banger about the abolition of the British monarchy. Further singles were Amnesia with its harsh guitar riff and stomping dance beat, and the more mellow Drip, Drip, Drip, the former of which came with several different physical releases, the second of which only came as a US-exclusive radio promo CD, which I am unfortunately still missing, featuring a picture of vocalisr Danbert Nobacon in the iconic brick-suit he would often wear during live performances of the song.

Speaking of different versions, the original 1997 US release of the Tubthumper album, with a light, yellow-ish green cover and the baby at about half size in the corner, came as a 12-track album without liner notes, and simply referring to the band's website for each of the songs, "due to the complexity of USA copyright law". Other versions of the album do contain the full liner notes the booklet, they do, however, also adapt the graphic design of the album cover, changing the shade of green to be more blue-ish, making the logo red, and the worst of all, increasing the size of the baby and placing it right in the middle of the cover, completely ruining its previously great composition. I am more upset by this than I should. The 1997 Japanese release of the album adds several of the b-sides found across the singles, and the 1998 European version of the album adds the standalone single Top of the World (Olé, Olé, Olé). We'll properly get to that one in a bit. The single releases for Tubthumping also have a different cover variant and different casing between the EU/UK and US version, although identical tracklisting.Amnesia came with 5 different CD maxi singles across the UK and mainland Europe, here pictured the EU "standard" and "special" editions. Also existing are UK exclusive versions with a yellow and blue colour scheme, labelled "CD 1" and "CD 2", as well as a two track version with an identical cover to the yellow EU version I have that only features the song Seven Days on its b-side, while the other version has a huge array of remixed and alternative versions. Furthermore, there are two different versions of the promo single for this song, one for the UK, featuring a horrifying, full-body version of the Tubthumper-baby on its cover, and the US version, featuring a photo of the band. Japan also gets the exclusive mini album, that features tons of "Country & Western" versions of Tubthumper songs.

As a whole, musically, this album has a very lush, electronic bent, with huge choruses and rich production, moreso than previous work, but I think lacks a bit of the variety of Anarchy. It's still an album I enjoy a lot though, and it's far from the sell-out, throwaway attempt at mainstream success that it's often criticized to be. They also used this new-found, bigger platform, to bring their anarchist agents of chaos energy into the mainstream and cause all sorts of mayhem for their record label and tv stations that were willing to have them on air for the next couple of years.

Before we get to the next album, a few things happen: In 1998, the lifelong soccer fans Chumbawamba release the standalone single Top of the World (Olé, Olé, Olé) for the ocassion of celebrating working class unity for the 1998 World Cup (They're from Britain, I'm from Germany, by all accounts I should be calling it football, but I have chosen to be a traitor. Plus, calling it soccer on the internet avoids the ambiguity of which sports you're talking about). Anyways, Top of the World was the one attempt they did at replicating the success of Tubthumping, though reportedly, the band members look back on this song not nearly as fondly. For many European fans, this song was known as the final track of the Tubthumper album, but elsewhere, it was a non-album single. They also release the compilation Uneasy Listening, which contains a good, varied overview of the band's pre-EMI output, including most of their most popular songs, but also a couple of otherwise hard-to-find deep cuts and alternative versions that were now made available for a broader audience for the first time. To promote this compilation, they re-released the popular 4 year old Anarchy track Mouthful of Shit as a 1-track promo single. This CD is only a curious collectible and does not contain anything new, as the song is identical to the album version. Also worth mentioning about Uneasy Listening, it was the first Chumbawamba CD I owned, and at the time of buying it, I didn't even realize I was buying Uneasy Listening. Many copies of this compilation come with a free 13-track Tubthumper album as a bonus second disc, and a full booklet for the album. Both booklets are crammed together into the case, but it's a full copy of the album with liner notes and everything that you're getting as a bonus. When I found this release in the second hand shop I was browsing, the Tubthumper booklet was in the case on the front, so initially I thought I was just buying the album. A lucky coincidence, because the compilation immediately gave me a good overview of the varied sound of their prior albums. They also release the doo-wop song Tony Blair in 1999 exclusive to subscribers of their mailing list, a move that EMI was reportedly also not happy about.

Finally, time for a new album. Initially, Chumbawamba were sticking with the sound of Tubthumper, but then decided to scrap everything they had worked on and start from scratch. The Wikipedia article to the album claims that a whole 10 track album was recorded, and thrown in the bin. I have very little hope that these still exist somewhere, but I would be very excited if we got to hear Tubthumper 2 one day. Anyways, the album they came up with instead is 2000s WYSIWYG, once again, a complete curveball. Sonically, the album has a much slimmer sound than the predecessor, focusing on lighter and punchier sounds with less electronics. The album is a wild mix of styles, with tons of short songs that smoothly flow into each other and never quite let you settle on one mood for too long. This results in a very difficult to promote album, as it has few very obvious pop hits. YouTuber Todd in the Shadows, in his One Hit Wonderland episode on the band, suggests that the album was deliberately tanked as far as pop sucess goes. I don't think that this is entirely true, but it definitely represents a conscious decision to move away from the path of mainstream success they have been put on and were expected to follow by their label. This fits to its lyrical themes, as a lot of this album is a very bitter critique of the machine of pop culture that they now have found themselves to be a part of. Despite all this bitterness, the album is an absolute joy to listen to and in my eyes quite possibly the band's best work, and the label was still able to pick out two singles, both of which came to their own bit of infamy. The lead single She's Got All the Friends That Money Can Buy, a catchy pop rock tune about shallow materialism, made headlines for its b-side Passenger List For Doomed Flight #1721, the lyrics of which contain nothing but a list of public figures they wish to see on board of the titular doomed flight. The second single Pass It Along, a song largely about gated communities and the refusal to directly engage with the world outside, has once again wildly different versions. The album version is a very atmospheric, slow, almost trip-hoppy electronic tune, while the single version replaces the synths with a driving rock beat. The single version of this song was licensed out to General Motors to use in their Pontiac commercials, only for the band to immediately donate all the proceeds from it to anti-car activist groups taking action against GM. One more non-commercial single was released during this time, a re-imaging of the Anarchy lead single Enough is Enough, which now was aimed directly at the fascist Austrian politican Jörg Haider (who died in a car accident in 2008, god bless) and sold at shows in Austria. This version replaces MC Fusion's rap verses with Dunstan Bruce's sprechgesang and expands the song to a more atmospheric, long-winded epic.

After failing to score another big and a couple of years of mischief under the EMI banner, they were dropped, and Chumbawamba were back to being an indie band. The next album, 2002s Readymades, is yet another huge stylistic change, but it is the first sign of a gradual, big, permanent change for the band. While WYSIWYG was punchy and all over the place, this new album is very focused, calm, atmospheric and dreamy and undoubtedly trip hop inspired. They also go back to their old friend folk music, as this album makes use of many samples of established folk artists, bridging the gap between modern, futuristic electronics, and traditional sounds. The track Jacob's Ladder was chosen as the first single, though in that version with the added subtitle (Not in my Name), and rewritten as a protest song againt the Iraq war. Further singles were Home With Me and Salt Fare, North Sea, the first of which was particularly extremely difficult to find a copy of, and neither of which contain any sorts of b-sides and all just come in slim cardboard sleeves. One rarity I am unfortunately still missing is another mailing list exclusive single, a parody of the Beatles' song Her Majesty, which again denounces the British monarchy. The following year, they released a soundtrack album they had made for the 2002 Alex Cox film Revengers Tragedy, the CD of which is also not easy to find, which continues many of the sonic ideas they had developed on Readymades, but with largely instrumental tracks. Given their newly rediscovered affinity for folk, they also decided to re-record their third album, now titled English Rebel Songs 1381-1984 to accomodate new additions to the tracklist. Two versions of this album exist, the jewel case version by their own label Mutt Records, as well as a digipack re-release on PM Press that is much more common. The Readymades album itself also received a re-release for the American market, titled Readymades and then Some, with a new cover and added bonus, a release I am unfortunately also still missing.

Before the next album, founding member, guitarist and (then mostly) backup singer Boff Whalley publishes his book footnote*, which is one half band biography and half a random collection of anecdotes from behind the curtains. A chaotic, but entertaining read. For their next album cycle, for 2004s Un, they continue the path of folk fusion. Although, while the previous album had dense, atmospheric electronic arrangements, this new approach instead takes the light acoustic folk as a basis and adds modern pop and rock elements to it, such as sprechgesang, acoustic drums or record scratches. This didn't age quite as poorly as it might sound like it would on paper, as these songs have feel a lot punchier than what the band had done on Readymades, yet it simulatanously has a lot of the sonic lightness that you would expect from folk music. Songs like When Fine Society Sits Down to Dine also show off beautiful arrangements with a great variety in instruments, bouncing back and forth between horns, strings and an accordion lead. Singles for this album were On eBay, a very pretty song lamenting the profiteering off historical cultural artifacts, and The Wizard of Menlo Park, both of which were exclusive to German markets, oddly enough, and contain alternative versions of the songs as b-sides. Shortly after this album, the band decided to split ways, with vocalists Dunstan Bruce, Danbert Nobacon, Alice Nutter and drummer Harry Hamer leaving the group, marking the end of Chumbawamba as a pop band. The split happened on good terms though, they just decided they wanted to pursue other things.

Without Dunstan, Danbert, Alice and Harry, the remaining members of the group were left without their primary chaos agents, and Lou Watts, Boff Whalley, Neil Ferguson and Jude Abbott decided to continue as an acoustic folk band, with Lou and Boff taking over the majority of the vocal duties. This version of the band would continue another 8 years, and the first thing they would release is 2005s A Singsong and a Scrap. This is the first entirely acoustic Chumbawamba album of original material. Although it does follow a gentle, acoustic folk instrumentation, the songs are largely built like pop songs, in both structure and arrangement. This album contains the fan favourite and live staple, their own rendition of the traditional Italian anti-fascist folk song Bella Ciao, that from this point on they would sing at the end of shows, and the final commercial single Fade Away (I don't want to), once again a Germany exclusive, and also the only Chumbawamba song I have ever heard on the radio that wasn't Tubthumping. This era also spawned their second official live album, Get On With It (2006). Their next album, which was released in 2008 and carries the catchy title The boy bands have won, and all the copyists and the tribute bands and the TV talent show producers have won, if we allow our culture to be shaped by mimicry, whether from lack of ideas or from exaggerated respect. You should never try to freeze culture. What you can do is recycle that culture. Take your older brother's hand-me-down jacket and re-style it, re-fashion it to the point where it becomes your own. But don't just regurgitate creative history, or hold art and music and literature as fixed, untouchable and kept under glass. The people who try to 'guard' any particular form of music are, like the copyists and manufactured bands, doing it the worst disservice, because the only thing that you can do to music that will damage it is not change it, not make it your own. Because then it dies, then it's over, then it's done, and the boy bands have won, or just The Boy Bands Have Won in short, continues on the prior established path, but seemingly detaches itself more again from the framework of pop music. In a similar vein to WYSIWYG 8 years prior, this album contains lots of songs, some which do have a pop structure, some which are only short snippets of just a few lines. The arrangements are a lot more minimalistic here, putting most of the emphasis on the vocals and their harmonies. Although no singles have been released of this album, Add Me, a satirical take on online weirdos that attempt to get a little too friendly for comfort with you, and El Fusilado, a story about a Mexican revolutionary who survived a firing squad, have quickly become honorary singles as highlights in the band's catalogue. This album also contains many samples from older tracks in their catalogue, going back all the way to Slap!. Their final studio album, ABCDEFG, released in 2010, sees them coming back again to fuller arrangements. Thematically, it is a concept album about music itself, and how it connects to the continued struggle for progress and liberation. Some personal highlights are Voices, That's All and Wagner at the Opera, and of course also Torturing James Hetfield, in which Chumbawamba continue their tradition of tongue-in-cheek wishing harm to public figures. This time, the lucky guest is Metallica's lead singer, for not denouncing the use of their songs being used for torture in Guantanamo Bay.

To close off their 30 year career, they play a final farewell show in 2012, which is released as the DVD Going, Going. This show features a wide array of songs from all over their catalogue, going all the way back to Shhh's Big Mouth Strikes Again. All of the former members who left the band in 2004 rejoin them for a final farewell in this show, and after making it through one final, very emotional performance of Bella Ciao, they send the band off to rest. I'd be amiss not to mention one more thing though. The band had retired at this point, but in 2013, we get one more piece of new music: In 2005, the band recorded an EP that was made available for pre-order, and would be released upon the death of Margaret Thatcher. The EP, plainly titled In Memoriam: Margaret Thatcher, features mostly acoustic tracks, though interconnected with samples and light electronics. This EP is also the holy grail, the white whale, of Chumbawamba collecting, for me. I was too young to really notice, care about or get this band at the time, so I had no opportunity to pre-order this thing. Its infamy coming from the circumstances of its release make it highly sought after. Maybe one day I can get my hands on a copy. But for now, I think I got pretty far, and I am satisfied, somewhat.

Chumbawamba have become such an important band for me, for giving me such a rich, varied discography with so many wonderful and meaningful songs. There were periods in the last couple of years where I pretty much just listened to Chumbawamba, just bouncing back and forth between their different albums, giving me more musical variety than I have gotten in 10 years of listening to countless Epi-Fat skate punk bands. But also, they ultimately have convinced me that punk politics does not have to be tied to a specific sound, and also made me more receptive to pop music in general and being able to appreciate beautiful, lush instrumentation or a good singalong hook. It's also such an enjoyable, deep rabbit hole to hyperfixate on. Seriously, there's so much fun shit about this band. If you're looking for a hyperfixation, this is a good one.