00:00Brian, what does A Night Like Tonight tell us about the relationship between culture, politics and change?
00:05That's a kind of act of hope, that there is a relationship.
00:09You know, I hope that culture is upstream of politics.
00:15I think it is.
00:16So I think the state of mind that culture creates in people
00:20encourages or provides a frame on which politicians,
00:26within which people can operate and politicians can operate.
00:29But I don't know that that's true.
00:32It's an act of faith.
00:33It sometimes works and it sometimes doesn't.
00:36And that's different from writing songs that tell you what to think.
00:41Propagandistic songs, that's not something I'm particularly interested in.
00:45But I think the terms of a culture, the nature of the media,
00:51for instance, does it make a difference to people to suddenly see on a stage
00:55a lot of people from different backgrounds together?
00:58I think it does.
01:00I think it sort of says, look, no problem.
01:03We can work together and we can enjoy our differences rather than be frightened by them.
01:08I hope that it's true.
01:10But this is all an act of faith.
01:12What would you say to music fans that are watching at home and feeling a bit hopeless?
01:15I don't blame you.
01:19You are helpless at the moment.
01:22Did you say helpless or hopeless?
01:23Well, both.
01:23Hopeless.
01:25No, don't be hopeless.
01:28You are in the middle of the biggest social movement in human history,
01:33the climate movement and all of these social justice movements.
01:36They're all part of the same thing.
01:37It's all part of people thinking the thing is really fucked up.
01:42We can do something about it.
01:44We have to do something about it.
01:45And they're doing that in the absence of political leadership.
01:49There just isn't very good political leadership at the moment.
01:52And people are just fighting over the most absurd issues.
01:57You know, the leader of the Conservative Party makes some absurd statement
02:02to an absurd misquotation from somebody else.
02:06And that becomes the issue for a few weeks.
02:09You know, really, it's so disappointing.
02:12The quality of the conversation is so disappointing.
02:16And the interesting conversations now are being had between people like you and me.
02:22People who aren't, strictly speaking, qualified.
02:25We are finding our way.
02:26But we're finding a different way from what those politicians found.
02:30Brian, thank you so much.
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