Pandemic Songs

Johnson is an English singersongwriter who wears his heart on his sleeve and always fights the good fight. His forefathers are the likes of Billy Bragg and the late Phil Ochs; like them he is always championing the underdog and critiquing those in power via song. Pandemic Songs was written and recorded while the UK was in the first grip of COVID-19 and so could be seen as frontline musical reporting. Unfortunately, it’s not very good – either as reporting or music. The songs are broad brush satires and polemics and serve only to confirm that no matter how much we might loathe Johnson’s Conservatives, they are near impossible to nobble. Johnson & The Irregulars pump out a basic singalong folk-rock protest sound but neither the musical arrangements nor the lyrics are astute enough to be effective. Instead, his lyrics tend to be polemical rather than incisive and on one number they lapse into lazy anti-Americanisms.