The mellow sound of Hawaiian folk-pop surf dude Jack Johnson has not got any less gentle on the ear with this first taste of his forthcoming new (seventh) album, so it might sound a bit abrupt when played alongside the likes of Prophets of Rage, but don't mistake that chirpy, slick production and cooing, treacly vocal for terminal insouciance. Jack Johnson is cross.
While streetwise urban rockers might pepper every chorus with a provocative "F*** Trump!!!", our Jack takes things down a notch or two. Maybe once upon a time he might have gone down that route - he has professed to have been influenced by Fugazi and Minor Threat as a younger man - but as usual he chooses to express himself without losing his cool. So, Jack simply says "I don't care for" Donald Trump's "us-against-them walls" and "I don't care for" the selfishness that put the current US president in power.
And in a way, that's to be admired - it's as if to say: "Mr Trump, you may be a bad guy, but you're not going to kill my buzz". So instead, Jack Johnson and his kids built a wall of their own, out of toy wooden blocks, with the lyrics from this song written on them, and then filmed the video for the song on his iPhone, in which he poignantly knocks it down with a bat. Take that, Donald!
You can learn more about Jack Johnson here
About the curator: Jon Ewing
After graduating from the University of Keele in England with a degree in Politics and American Studies, Jon worked as editor of a music and entertainment magazine before spending several years as a freelance writer and, with the advent of the internet, a website designer, developer and consultant. He lives in Reading, home to one of the world's most famous and long-running music festivals, which he has attended every year since 1992.
