QSMP is kinda complicated

Classism

First point. Britian is Rooted in classism. It runs deep, it is older than America, it is so rooted into every single aspect of our lives. When we started inventing racism, we built it on the back of our thoroughly developed classism. Classism is so strongly rooted that is the basis of the North/South divide that has since grown legs and developed a life of its own as a deeply intertwined axis of operation. Our grocery stores are class markers. There is not a part of English culture that is not bathed in classism.

Cullture

Second, England sold it's soul for white supremacy. Britain is colonial, it has been for a long time and it continues to be so- England especially so. We colonised Scotland n Wales and Britain still occupies parts of Ireland today. When we did that there was/is an active effort to suppress their culture and attempt to homogenize Britain into one thing. This also require us to first start to kill our own connection to our historical culture. When we start colonising outside of other white people, we invented racism to justify our actions against people of colour - in doing that we basically entirely wiped out our own culture and replaced it with colonial white supremacy so we could stomach what we did.

This is not to say that England does not have culture(s). There are Loads of thriving cultures within England, London alone has sooo many cultures in it because of it's wide class gaps and multi-racial composition. Basically any group that faces oppression is going to find ways to resist and in that create culture (This is over simplified but i don't got time).

Even groups that face no oppression still have a culture, but because of the background of- all that mentioned above, it is a culture based on defining yourself in what you are not (not working class, not a person of colour) and on apathy to harm caused by the structures they participate in to maintain it.

This is the beginning of our discussion of the fall.

This song is a dissection of how those 2 things intersect. The POV of this song is a white, middle/upper-class southerner, we know this because of how the singer talks about lower class people with a sense of distance. There is a consistent through line of this song of an general, active and maintained incuriosity about what allows this person to do the things he does.

There must be more to this

So leave those sink estates, and let's book a holiday

We're painting all the counties in blue

'Cause we're already boring, and we're already hoarding

What else have we got left to accrue?

There is this aching, deeply empty boredom that comes with being at the top and not allowing yourself to see the bodies you're standing on. It is a sense of being unrooted. In England for white people, there is a feeling that you have no home, no roots, there is nothing for you - you live in a dead and dying culture built in blood.

If you are not upper-class and southern there is also a deep understanding that the people who run your country do not care about you. Sometimes they actively want you dead, sometimes they're just happy to let you die. And they do.

If you are middle class, like the singer is here, there is a requirement to be both indifferent and ignorant to the people who built the world around you,

And the ramblers will say

"It's got a marvelous view!"

But they don't know how many lives it took, no

Thеy'll never know what you knew

and numb to the shit you go through.

And wе're so calm, but we're— (Fucking scared, fucking scared!)

And we're so calm, but we're— (Fucking scared, fucking scared!)

And we're so calm, but we're— (Fucking scared, fucking scared!)

There is also a necessity to separate yourself from the working class.

And we're so calm, but we're fucking scared of people like you!

The fall rest of the song up unto the end bit is about the empty symbols (Custom license plate to show wealth on the most standard yet expensive care you can get AudiR8, the grocery store you shop at), how to numb out (which also discusses the access to mental health services in the South which the North does not have.) and desperate attempts at connection falling through (" We've got a country house now, old dog has been put down now

It's nice to be around trees")

The end bit

And finally, we get to the most explicit and clear break down of the entire song. This is favourite part of the entire album that made my Northern ass cry when hearing it because it was one of the frist times I'd heard a southern musician acknowledge the North/South divide

I look to all of you and see a different fucking species! Aspiration for a different destination to me

English classism is rooted in a concept of "bad blood" and "bad breeding". There is a reason we have maintained the monarchy and it is in part because we have not left behind the idea that people who are working class or proximate to working class are different species. People enjoy the proximity to the good blood of the royals. This is what we based racism off of.

The “aspirations for a different destination to me” is literal and figurative.

To start literally, England is geographically segregated by class. We have the largest form of the north south divide, wherein the North is a historically (and still now) a working class area. In that, we have just- worse,,,things. We have more food desserts, more crime, worse health care, less access to university, less access to education as a whole, less access to lucrative jobs ect ect ect- This is so deeply rooted that because England has regional dialects and accents, having a Northern accent will Wildly influence how you are treated by other people. The North/South divide is classism that grew legs and started its own deeply intertwined axis. The divisions are then broken further into city, then area of city, then road, the section road. It’s class all the way down. There is less opportunity for working class people to literally move out of their hometown.

Figuratively, middle class people are funneled into university and up to typically business in the south or public sector in the north, working class people are pushed out of university through school, social and monetary pressure and expected to usually having lower paying jobs such in things such as manual labour. Finally Upper class people go to oxford and private (here called public) school and then rule the country

Across the Pennines, there's a thin blue line, a knife and a mall

I would do something if it wasn't all so effortful

I would Highly recommend reading the genius annotation for the first part.

For the second we have the most biting part of this entire song. An admittance that they know there are problems and they don't fuckin care about us. They will let the working class and North die before they put the effort in, because they have numbed out. There are fixes, and they will not take them.

'Cause I'm so high, my brain can't even look at the fall

And when you've reached the top, there's nowhere else to go but...

Ultimately, the only real class mobility is down.

So! Uh- this was really long, and i did not even get to all the things i wanted to say, but I hope it was at least a brief look at the sociapolitcal/cultural aspects discussed in some of lovejoys songs that are harder to access if you don't live here.

Full disclaimer again. I am white, English, middle class, disabled, northern and queer. My POV will be shaped by all of that. I have Barely mentioned the london nor immigration in this