The best and worst songs about Europe

REM, Roxy Music, Gruff Rhys, and Johnny Marr have all written songs about Europe. Simon Hardeman investigates his music collection

Gruff Rhys of Super Furry Animals wrote “I Love EU” and is firmly in the Remain camp (Rex)

As EU D-Day approaches (is D-Day an appropriate tag?) I find myself seeking guidance. And yet all the traditional sources of advice and information seem to have been exhausted. So I’ve turned to music. After all, when I was short of ideas for travel I was advised to get my kicks on Route 66; when relationships were difficult I was counselled that it’s a little bit me and a little bit you; and at parties I’ve been told to stay on the scene like a sex machine. And, frankly, two out of three correct isn’t bad.

First stop, my iTunes library. In nearly 14,000 songs there are precisely three that have “Europe” in the title. The first is Roxy Music’s “Song for Europe”, from the 1973 album Stranded, in which Bryan Ferry croons what seems a warning lament from an empty café in Paris… “I remember/ All those moments/ Lost in wonder/ That we’ll never find again… There’s no today for us/ Nothing to share but yesterday”, but then goes on to intone in Latin – the language of a European union that lasted more than a thousand years, so is the message to give the EU more than a few decades? I’d ask Bryan, but I stood on his hand once and he hasn’t spoken to me since.

The second song offers little help. It is REM’s wonderful “Radio Free Europe” but its lyrics are from Michael Stipe’s gibberish period. “Instead of pushing palaces to fall/ Put that, put that, put that up your” is the closest to sense in it. The gibberish theme is continued by the third song on my iTunes, “European Blueboy” by the Mamas and the Papas: “And the tears that you cry are for you/ One for Napoleon after Waterloo”. Must have been written during some California dreaming.

Roxy Music performing from their album 'Stranded' in 1973 (Rex)

Time to look further afield. There is at least one current referendum-inspired song by a major artist: “I Love EU” by Gruff Rhys of Super Furry Animals. Despite him memorably singing the minor hit “The Man Don’t Give a Fuck” – a song he described as against “any organisation which you feel is terrorising you as an individual”, he is now firmly in the Remain camp, largely due to, as he sees it, Europe’s culturally civilising influence on we barbarous Brits: “You liberated me from pie and mash/ You cultured me with sophistication and panache” and, “When I met you, I'd never tasted pasta or baguettes/ I'd never heard the golden call of castanets.” What’s the EU ever done for us? Spag bol, says Gruff.

Another band offering succour to the EU cause would appear to be The Clash in “Safe European Home. But once past the title you realise that the track, from Give 'Em Enough Rope, is actually about how anywhere in Europe feels safer than Jamaica, where Joe Strummer and Mick Jones had been sent on a writing sabbatical, and where “every white face is an invitation to robbery”. Dunno, I’ve been down some dodgy back alleys in Italy.

Promoting continental Europe rather better is Kraftwerk’s “Trans Europe Express”, presumably something we may need a visa to take advantage of soon. Most of the track (song, not rail) is a repetition of the title, but it does contain the tantalising possibility that if we go to Dusseldorf we could meet David Bowie and Iggy Pop, though I’m sure this would have been hardly more likely in the mid-Seventies than it is now, so its vote-winning qualities are limited. There’s more mournful Euro-disco in Suede’s “Europe is Our Playground”, from 1996, which features a striking juxtaposition of destinations: “From Heathrow to Hounslow, from the Eastern Block to France/ Europe is our playground, London is our town... let's make a stand… from Spain to Camber Sands”. Comparing the Costas and Camber seems a vote-winner for the Remainers.

Another celebrant of Europe, though in general and not the EU, is Johnny Marr in “European Me" from 2013. “Being in America … I remember thinking that the entire country seems to be built largely on European heritage, so it's just me celebrating Europe, really,” he told New Statesman. “Now there is no turning back/ Once gone the traces impact/ War child there's no changing”, the song goes. One wonders how his old Smiths writing partner, Morrissey, would feel about that – Morrissey lamented in 2007: “Although I don't have anything against people from other countries, the higher the influx… the more the British identity disappears”. Mind you, he was living in Rome at the time, so what difference does it make?

Curiously, there are two songs called “European Son”. The first, by the Velvet Underground, is the closing track on their debut and states, prophetically given it was 1967: “You better say so long/ Hey hey, bye bye bye” (it was in fact to a dying friend of Lou Reed’s); while the second is by New Romantic retro-glammers Japan, and offers “Here I am/ European son/ Sometimes the passenger”, perhaps alluding to a lack of democratic accountability in a nascent continental superstate. Or to a bus trip.

There are quite a few songs about the attractions of the European women whom male rockers will have more problems meeting post Brexit, so we have to feel for them and note their chansons d’amour. Johnny Borrell’s “Pan-European Supermodel Song” does exactly ce qu’il dit sur la boite, while The Divine Comedy’s paean to euro-cool “When the Lights Go Out All Over Europe” says “Doris Day could never make me cheer up/ Quite the way those French girls always could”, and The Stranglers’ “European Female” comes over all Adolf H. with “the European female's here – we'll be together for a thousand years”. Well, with a break for the occasional Gitane.

But let’s not go out (or, er, stay in) on a note of superficiality. Killing Joke’s “European Super State” from 2010 addresses the issues directly: “From the Baltic to the Straits of Gibraltar/

A blue flag, gold star, sparks a brand new empire/ Ours to build, ours the choice”, builds to a chorus of “I'm in a European super state/

Every citizen required to debate”. Indeed. It’s Europe: The Final Countdown.

Zut. I was hoping to get through this piece without mentioning that one.