Gang of Four - Entertainment! (appreciation post)

Hey guys, today I am here to talk about an album that is near and dear to my heart: Entertainment! By Gang of Four. I think I must have been twelve or thirteen when I first heard it, and it’s stuck with me ever since. There were so many frustrations that I had built up but didn’t know how to express, and this album voiced them all so beautifully, and helped me understand some of the things I was struggling with.

Album cover designed by Jon King

Entertainment! is not just my favorite punk album, but also my favorite statement of intent within the genre. All of punk aims to target authority and protest the evils of the ruling class. But, while bands like the Sex Pistols and the Clash were writing songs against corrupt authority figures and unsustainable economic systems, Gang of Four took aim at something subtler, closer to the skin, but equally pernicious: the commodification of pleasure. 

This radical statement is clear from the very beginning. The album opens with “Ether”, a criticism of the boredom of the modern ideal. The song’s lyrics are minimal but effective, a description of perfect capitalistic middle-class success, which amounts to a freedom from pain, an itemization of goods, and the furthest possible feeling from contentment. The aching human want that drives said consumption is nothing but “the dirt behind the daydream”, an inconvenience. 

Track two, “Natural’s Not in It” makes things even clearer and introduces the topic of sex. Physical pleasure, the most basic form of which might be sexual pleasure, has been repackaged and sold back to us. This is done by corporations, which create a “market of the senses”, maintaining our interest through sexual imagery and thereby enticing us toward consumption of their product. But it is also done by individuals who have been conditioned to view sex as a commodity, a service that can be done in exchange for something. To view physical intimacy this way, the band suggests, is both a tragedy and an inevitability in a world driven by profit. Sex is just another one of life’s joys that a corrupt society is attempting to commodify. 

“Glass” is a focused expression of boredom. Pharmaceuticals free the consumer from petty pains, and a middle-class lifestyle provides them with comforts enough to survive, but nothing more. “At Home He’s a Tourist” tells a similar story of subjugation to the processes of achievement, wherein a couple strives for a comfortable life but ends up spending their time removed from the joys of true human connection.

Finally, “Love like Anthrax” closes the album out with one of its most direct statements. Love, we can all agree, is something all of us want. We could hardly stand to live if we thought we could never have it. But, the band says, love has been written about so much that the very idea of it has become confused. They promise not to sing about it because, in a world where everything can be defined, isolated, and sold, love at the very least ought to be spared from that cycle. We cannot truly love in a world where “...We all have good intentions, but all with strings attached”. 

All in all, Entertainment! expresses a sharp simmering rage at a world where love, sex, and happiness are viewed not as aspects of life but rather as capital to be traded with one another. We are trained by the capitalist order to view life’s greatest pleasures as assets to be spent and purchased, but the goal of all these transactions is left undefined. Many of us are stuck viewing the things we truly want as means to an end that, Gang of Four says, doesn’t actually exist. And the album’s sharp sound and startling message encourages us to do whatever we can to break out of this horrible cycle.

I know that all of this might sound sort of bleak, but I really think it’s the opposite. This album genuinely makes me feel free and happy, because it reminds me that joy isn’t something I can spend all my time chasing, purchasing, or selling. It’s something that’s out there in the world, and if we want to find it, we’ve got to quit consuming and start seeing. We’ve got to find joy in the people around us; to look at each other without reduction and without assumption, and embrace the difficult mystery of everything and everybody we hold dear. 

I hope this has made sense. This album means a lot to me, and if you haven’t heard it yet, I hope you’ll give it a listen!