This Petition Wants To Make Violent Soho’s New Song The Australian National Anthem

Now look guys, not to brag or anything, but when I picked Violent Soho’s new tune Like Soda for our weekly Music Feeds Faves column last Friday, it’s because I could smell its historical po-tentch billowing like the smoke of a thousand backyard durries.

And now, a petition has been launched to make it official, calling for Mansfield’s finest’s latest ditty to replace Advance Australia Fair as the Australian National Anthem.

The petition, started by one Matt Querzoli, appeals to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to oust Peter Dodds McCormick’s antiquated ode for Violent Soho’s feelgood punk banger, prefacing the demand with the claim that “We, the Australian people, deserve better”.

The campaign’s page on change.org also offers a scathing critique of Advance Australia Fair, cataloguing its various downfalls in a brief but handy list (number 3 is particularly salient):

1. No one uses the word ‘girt’ anymore.

2. We don’t really have any wealth for toil. It’s pretty much all been taken from the ground.

3. You can’t realistically head-bang to the tune.

4. The Southern Cross isn’t that radiant with all the light pollution.

5. People get confused with the lyrics. All you have to do is look at Kate Ceberano’s stuff up at the 2015 AFL Grand Final.

6. It’s a bit old and outdated

To this, we’d like to add that the line “for we are young and free” is somewhat undermined by the widely-publicised national crisis of our ageing population, and also the fact that the song has three dubious extra verses that basically no one knows about, which are filled with awkwardly sexist and racist undertones as well as several uncomfortable pledges to stay British.

Anyway, as the petition states, “The solution to all of this tomfoolery is Violent Soho.”

Querzoli’s main argument is that there is “nothing more Australian” than the following scene that their new song, Like Soda, describes:

“…those empty summer afternoons in a RSL and pubs – when all the pokies are empty, beer is warm and there’s nothing but horse-race noise in the background.”

And while we tend to agree, so far the petition has only garnered 340 signatures, and it’ll probably need a fair bit more if it has any hopes of usurping the spotlight from Advance Australia Fair.

So if you, like Matt Querzoli, feel that Australia deserves a fresh start, you can add your signature to the Make ‘Like Soda’ by Violent Soho the Australian National Anthem campaign, here and do something for your country.

Listen: Violent Soho – Like Soda

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