With the final week of the election campaign coming to a close, with voters hitting the polls to decide who will lead Australia this Saturday, many are still feeling disillusioned.
If you’re planning the kind of post-polls party that’s less about celebration and more about getting blotto, then an anonymous campaigner has emerged to offer another solution… or at least a soundtrack.
A benevolent benefactor is pushing to get ‘Drunk On Election Night’, the anthem to political disillusionment from Dan Kelly and the Alpha Males, to #1 on the iTunes charts for the final week of the election, “or get drunk trying.”
The cheeky anonymous campaigner has set up the push as a way for ‘the people’ to give the whole political circus a big middle finger, by having both the country and the downloads charts ticking over with a new leader come Saturday night.
“It is one week before voting day and every newspaper and TV news bulletin are already declaring Abbot will be our next prime minister. Even SPORTSBET is paying out all bets on the Coalition nine days before Australia goes to the polls,” reads a statement that was issued to media this week.
“We still have a voice! You don’t have to be John Farnham to know that! How about making a charming little song about getting hopelessly drunk on election night back into the Australian single charts? How cool would it be if it was actually the number one selling song in Australia on Election night? All you need to do is download “Drunk On Election Night” for less than the cost of a cup of coffee via iTunes.”
A simple enough plan; a Facebook group and Twitter account have been set up for the big push to get Kelly and his song, taken from the 2006 album Drowning In The Fountain Of Youth, to become the top download following the polls closing on the Federal Election this Saturday. The anonymous viral campaigner describes the rallying cry to get Kelly’s lilting yet sweary song into the iTunes pole position as a way to “get people talking, create a groundswell and have some fun.”
For those who might smell something fishy, say Kelly himself anonymously lining his coffers pre-Election, a proviso on the campaign proclaims: “This campaign is in no way associated with Dan Kelly or Dan Kelly & The Alpha Males,” as well as handily (or disappointingly) noting “We do not advocate the large consumption of alcohol.”
The lead-up to the election has seen the spheres of politics and music cross over in a number of ways already, ranging from the serious to the silly.
In July, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd drew attention for pledging $560,000 towards the creation of the National Live Music Office only to turn up later as one of the many political stars in the music video for Canberra indie punk band, Super Best Friends, who managed to convince a range of Canberra’s political figures to play silly for the cameras, including Rudd, Tony Abbott, Bob Katter, Greens leader Christine Milne.
Meanwhile, The Greens have pledged $12 million towards getting musicians tax breaks and recognised for Centrelink, as well as ongoing financial support for community radio broadcasting with up to $27 million in backing.
Last weekend, ABC’s iconic music show, RAGE, was – controversially – guest programmed by the deputy leaders from the Labor, Liberal, and Greens parties, a move that irked many that saw it as an unnecessary use of a cultural program as a political platform.
The strangest politics/music cross-over has to be awarded to Juice Media, the makers of the popular YouTube Rap News series, who produced an hilariously bizarre parody of the election campaign that took in hip-hop, allusions to Game Of Thrones, and a guest appearance from Julian ‘Wikileaks’ Assange giving his best karaoke impression of John Farnham, proving the old adage that truth is stranger than fiction.
