Moving to a new city: Bronski Beat – Smalltown Boy

At first glance, Smalltown Boy seems to be written for anybody who has moved from a small town to a larger one. It could belong in the pantheon of songs that include ”New York, New York” (which Frank Sinatra made his own), where the motivated outsider triumphs in an environ dripping with the opportunities that do not exist at home.

But that’s clearly not what’s going on.

I’ve just relocated to Berlin and I’m utterly overwhelmed, trying to eek an income and gigs for my alter ego Aurora Kiss. Walking to the post office on some mindless errand, Bronski Beat‘s Smalltown Boy crept into the headphones of my Hello Kitty mp3-player.

And I began to think, sure, the music never fails to get people dancing. It’s upbeat, but perhaps manic is a better word given the underlying melancholia in its cascading minor chords. And lyrically – in stark contradiction to “New York, New York” – the song is not about triumph in a new homeland. In fact there is no reference at all to the destination, only the hurt and the suffering most of us incur growing up in our own claustrophobic home towns, wherever they may be.

Of course, frontman Jimmy Somerville wrote the song to describe the experience of being persecuted for his homosexuality in Glasgow – his small town – and his flight to what I imagine was London. So it is a song about being queer. But in interviews I’ve watched Somerville invites anyone who can identify with the song’s alienation to take it on board.

With the repeated refrain “Run Away, Turn Away, Run Away, Turn Away, Run Away”, Smalltown Boy is the perfect song for a new life in a new city – adrenalin, elation, but a new world inevitably defined by the old.