In 1997, a feelgood house track soundtracked Tony Blair's election campaign. Now 27 years on, it's back in the headlines. With D:Ream set to play Glastonbury 2024, the band discuss its impact.
Even Rishi Sunak's most loyal supporters would agree that 22 May 2024 wasn't his best day. Standing outside his official London residence, 10 Downing Street, the British prime minister announced that he was calling a general election, so voters would have to choose between his Conservative Party (also called the Tory Party) and the opposing Labour Party. Unfortunately, Sunak made this announcement while being drenched by the bucketing rain, so he wasn't looking too confident.
To dampen his spirits further, the speech was accompanied by D:Ream's Things Can Only Get Better, a song that had been used by the Labour party when they swept to victory in the 1997 General Election under their charismatic leader, Tony Blair. Sunak wouldn't have wanted voters to remember that result. And, in fact, on this occasion Labour had nothing to do with the song being played, nor did it signify that the party was sure to triumph.
But an anti-Tory activist, Steve Bray, was standing at the end of Downing Street, blasting out Things Can Only Get Better on a portable PA system. "I heard the rumour on the day that he was going to call an election," Bray tells the BBC with some relish, "and I thought, what could be the most appropriate tune to troll him? I wasn't actually endorsing Labour, I was telling the Torie.
