Billy Bragg The Million Things That Never Happened LP

TAS Rated 4/5 Music, 4/5 Sonics in the December 2021 Issue of The Absolute Sound!

Billy Bragg's The Million Things That Never Happened, his tenth studio album, is the first pandemic blues album of our times but also a heartfelt paean to human resilience, featuring 12 soulful country rock gems. The record was produced by Romeo Stodart and Dave Izumi at Echo Zoo studio in Eastbourne. All songs are written by Billy Bragg apart from the final song ("Ten Mysterious Photos That Can't Be Explained"), which is co-written by Billy's son Jack Valero.

The track "I Will Be Your Shield" is a beautiful love song and is the beating heart of his new record. Says Billy: "To me this is the heart and soul of the album. I've come to the conclusion that empathy is the currency of music - that our job as songwriters is to help people come to terms with their feelings by offering them examples of how others may have dealt with a situation similar to that in which listeners find themselves. After what we've all been through, the idea of being a shield, physically, emotionally, psychologically, should resonate."

Billy Bragg has been a fearless recording artist, tireless live performer and peerless political campaigner for over 30 years. Among the former Saturday boy's albums are his punk-charged debut Life's A Riot With Spy Vs Spy, the more love-infused Workers Playtime, pop classic Don't Try This At Home, the Queen's Golden Jubilee-timed treatise on national identity England, Half-English, and his stripped-down tenth, Tooth & Nail, his most successful since the early '90s.

The intervening three decades have been marked by a number one hit single, having a street named after him, being the subject of a South Bank Show, appearing onstage at Wembley Stadium, curating Left Field at Glastonbury, sharing spotted dick with a Cabinet minister in the House of Commons cafeteria, being mentioned in Bob Dylan's memoir and meeting the Queen. At their best, Billy's songs present "the perfect Venn diagram between the political and the personal" (the Guardian).

Billy Bragg added best-selling author/musicologist to his CV with the success of his acclaimed 2017 book 'Roots, Radicals & Rockers - How Skiffle Changed The World'.