By The Landlord
“When I'm good, I'm very good. But when I'm bad I'm better.” – Mae West
“Education: the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty.” – Mark Twain
"I wouldn't say I was the best manager in the country. But I was in the top one." – Brian Clough
“My mother thinks I am the best. And I was raised to always believe what my mother tells me.” – Diego Maradona
“I am The Greatest. I said that before I knew I was.” - Muhammad Ali
Ladies and gentleman,
Look! Look! Look! From last week’s trumpeting elephants, it’s time to step it up to a marvellous mass tooting of one’s very own! This week’s topic arrives with a huge drum roll, a 96-piece orchestra, the swish of velvet curtains, the descent of a marble staircase, soaring fountains and pools filled with glamorous ladies doing synchronised swim-dance and grand gestures.
There’s a huge parade where nothing is more certain, and also insecure, than a brimming edition of self-aggrandisement with a dash of arrogance, of big-headed and bombastic braggadocio, of cockiness, conceited crowing and crazed confidence, with a dollop of self-delusion, of egotistical entitlement and exclamation, with hot-air highfalutin fantasy and hyperbole, smart-alecky snootiness, swagger and strutting and vainglorious vaunting of … ridiculously unnecessary words.
Bragging and boastfulness comes in many forms. It’s a mostly male pattern of behaviour in the natural world, from the peacock, who is all costume but with a terrible voice, to the strutting cock (or US rooster), the chest-beating silverback, the rutting stag to the outrageously ornate home-building bowerbird. And all to get a little action. It’s all about display – visual, vocal, and sometimes olfactory.
Cocky
And many forms of human endeavour could arguably be forms of boasting, from the caveman who exaggerated his hunt or the size of the fish that got away, to the history’s grand edifices of architecture, from the pyramids to great towering penile pillars and high-rises, all arguably either expressions of, or alternatives to, getting your end away.
And this week we explore it all through song, the prism of the musical performer, where boastfulness always comes with extra dimensions of insecurity and that primal cry for survival. So what we seek might start with “I’m the best”, but is even better with elements of nuance, humour, extra entertainment, sometimes satire, and it’s all in the lyrics, whether it might be the artists bigging themselves up, or with more sophistication, taking on the voice or persona of the boasting character in the narrative, or quoting them within it.
Boastfulness is nothing new. Jane Austen, a regular here at our Bar who enjoys an afternoon tea and biscuit before the stronger stuff, chips in with this lovely piece of nuance: “Nothing is more deceitful than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast.”
Samuel Johnson is also here, banging on with a line form his dictionary: “Quack: A boastful pretender to arts which he does not understand. A vain boastful pretender to physick; An artful, tricking practitioner in physick.”
People have been blowing their own trumpet, or horn, for centuries, which is where the word blowhard or braggart derives. It arose in the American West around the middle of the 19th century, but blow your own trumpet, dates back to at least 1576 when heralds blew trumpets to announce the arrival of the king or nobleman.
The great British 19th-century satirical cartoonist George Cruickshank loved to stick his pen in the direction of self-aggrandised boasts in all fields of politics and other social spheres. He plays on it in this 1818 musical themed cartoon of “A German Mountebank Blowing His Own Trumpet at a Dutch Concert of 500 PianoFortes”
In some cultures bragging and boastfulness is more acceptable than in others. In Britain it is perhaps more frowned upon than in America, but that doesn’t stop the British still thinking highly of themselves, as well as being able to self-satirise. In another cartoon of 1813, he comments on Anglo-American relations with “British valour and Yankee boasting or, Shannon versus Chesapeake”, but there’s a lot more going on here than that.
Arguably British people can find it particularly embarrassing when people boast. Boasting can work, but, on the case of ultimate boastings, such as Kanye West, or indeed Donald Trump, it’s a short-term plan that can also fall flat on its face…
Relative values
The long-running BBC Radio 4 programme Desert Island Discs is a perfect antidote to boasting, where celebrities are invited to talk about their lives but choose a selection of favourite records to take to keep them company in that isolated scenario that give them some distraction from themselves. But in a moment of ultimate narcissism, in 1958 British soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf decided that all eight discs would be recordings made by her, as a form of solipsism, to ‘relive my life’. And in the book choice, which is another feature of the programme, Englebert Humperdinck chose his own autobiography.
Elisabeth Schwarzkopf: listen to yourself
But where might this lead us in song? There are many male performers who, particularly in some genres, hip hop, modern R&B, or pop for example, braggadocio often comes as part of the commercial package, especially about money or sexual prowess. Flavor Flav of Public Enemy is here to bemoan that trend where the begging up he engage in was more to back Chuck D’s verses. “I remember rap music. We used to party and dance off of it. Today it's all about a whole different angle... Rappers are going against each other, and it's more of a bragging, boasting thing.” Perhaps he’s referring to Kanye, whose immense ego has created titles almost entirely free of irony, from Can’t Tell Me Nothing to I Love Kanye.
But there are also plenty of punchy, boasting female stars. Lauryn Hill is in the house with her entourage. Whaddya got, Lauryn? “I got Moxie, I'm so damn foxy. Industry try to block me like cops and paparazzi!”
There are many other artists worth exploring in this regard. Those who describe themselves as sexy, to the nth degree, ironically or otherwise. Artists, such as Taylor Swift or Lady Gaga or Britney Spears, who take on the persona of the heartbreaking, but also insecure bitch, taunting men or other women, but perhaps also in that acting role, employ something in themselves? This is where it gets interesting. Spears, but example, has employed that in boastful Bobby Brown song to give an extra layer of irony. And there are many other examples where the narcissist, in constant need of applause and attention is in part parody, in part self-projected.
Another potent branch of the boastful song is that in which the narrator makes a play for the object of their desire by being dominant, bossy, as well as self-aggrandising. This comes up in many genres from reggae to rock, and where it makes you wonder just how much this is unreliable narrator to the real thing, particular in songs from the mouth of Mick Jagger, but then again its all in the interpretation.
My favourite boastful lovers are also the funniest, so as well as some in song, of which there will be many in the crooning, rock and soul genre, for inspiration, here’s Ron Burgundy in Anchorman, whose seduction line is: “I have many leather bound books and my apartment smells of mahogany.”
But of course there are some who deliver boasting with less irony. “I have no stress, because I am the best,” says Lil Wayne, arriving in the bar.
“Yeah. Haters are just confused admirers,” reckons Justin Bieber.
Music of course comes with insecurity. In the wonderfully nuanced character of comedy’s Alan Partridge, strugglingly DJ and TV presenter, Steve Coogan’s creation is full of boasting as well as insecurity, his ego fragile as well as showy. When asked in the motel he in which he is staying which is his favourite Beatles album, to cover his ignorance, his brilliantly awful answer is:
“The Best of the Beatles.”
Some boasting can take on surprising directions. While most like to boast about their achievements, success, money or finer qualities, the Italian poet Arturo Graf adds: “If people have nothing to brag about, they brag about their misfortunes.”
And where is there a better example of this than the 1948 Show from the 1960s, a forerunner to Monty Python starring Tim Brooke-Taylor, John Cleese, Graham Chapman and Marty Feldman, and the Four Yorkshiremen Sketch. Luxury!
Yet in comfort or hardship, arguably the entire music and film industries are built for boasters, and some entire places run on it. “Hollywood likes to boast that it can elevate the national conscience,” reckons Mike Royko.
“Paris is certainly one of the most boastful of cities, and you could argue that it has had a lot to boast about: at various times the European centre of power, of civilisation, of the arts, and (self-advertisingly, at least) of love.” Julian Barnes
"Earth laughs in flowers to see her boastful boys
Earth-proud, proud of the earth which is not theirs;
Who steer the plough, but cannot steer their feet
Clear of the grave.” - Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson
In the corner of the bar there’s a game of chess going on between AA Milne and Hunter S Thompson. Only at Song Bar of course. The former says: “It is impossible to win gracefully at chess. No man has yet said "Mate!" in a voice which failed to sound to his opponent bitter, boastful and malicious.”
Thompson, who has lost this game, also tells us of other losses in something more down to chance than skill. “One thing I have learned in my painful career as a gambler is that bragging when you get lucky and win a few games will plunge you into gloom and unacceptable beatings very soon. It happens every time.”
“None but a coward dares to boast that he has never known fear,” chips in Bertrand Russell.
But fear and boasting often come together. And this is something that must also have fuelled perhaps the greatest boaster of the modern age, a man who could have succeeded in any field he chose. “It's hard to be humble, when you're as great as I am,” Muhammad Ali. And when he was just 22, still under his original name, Cassius Clay, he predicted his shock victory over Sonnie Liston in 1964:
And then before fighting George Foreman in 1974, no boaster has ever been more poetic that Ali.
“I wrestled with an alligator,
I done tussled with a whale;
Handcuffed lightning, thrown thunder in jail;
Only last week, I murdered a rock, injured a stone, hospitalised a brick;
I'm so mean I make medicine sick.”
It’s impossible to beat the greatest, so who else can we end it on? So with that, it’s time for your boastful songs in comments below, and keeping every piece of bullshit under brilliant control, I’m delighted to welcome back to the Song Bar chair, the supreme ShivSidecar! Brag about and suggest you songs in time for deadline at 11pm UK GMT time on Monday for playlists published next week. It’s time to play it up!
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