TS: "The Bee Song" by Arthur Askey vs "Eardrum Buzz" by Wire

The great thing about them is that the lyrics to "The Bee Song" could have been written by Wire and those to "Eardrum Buzz" by Arthur Askey. Consider the rather vicious ironic undertow to Askey's jolly, deconstructing-as-it-goes-along ("This IS a silly little bee song...isn't it?") romp - and let's not pass over the undisguised campness of "Taking back the honey to the dear old queen" - taking potshots at the bee hivemind ("Building up the honeycomb that looks like tripe"), and expressing a morbidity which would not be out of place in the oeuvre of Throbbing Gristle: "Being with the butterfly strong upon the wing/Whoops! O death, where is thy sting?" and the Damien Hirst-anticipating payoff of: "Bees are all right when alive you see/But when bees die you really should see 'em/Pinned on a card in a dirty museum."

Meanwhile, "Eardrum Buzz" motoriks along like Big Audio Dynamite colliding with the Cocteau Twins - those great, Guthrie-esque cliffs of guitar which glide into the chorus like the ghost of the Titanic, counterbalanced by Graham Lewis' sinister contrabass chant of "Buzz buzz, buzz buzz in the eardrum" (along with "Zee zee, buzz buzz buzz," you could imagine Flanagan and Allen singing this in a different universe, or at least in a different theatre). Above and around this, Colin Newman narrates a tale of mediastinal alienation/absorption - as with the protagonist of Helen Reddy's "Angie Baby," it's basically about disappearing into, and becoming one with, one's radio - but lines such as "Custard Jack has lost his Mac/Captain Flash won't give it back" lend the song a curious vaudevillian aura which is further magnified by the impromptu historical lecture ("Adolf turned out very nice/Hannibal is afraid of mice" - Spike Jones and his City Slickers!). It was not much of a hit when released in 1989, as opposed to the top three smash it would have been had it been released seven years earlier, or fifteen years later.