Chumbawamba

Among the most engaging and misunderstood bands in popular music, Chumbawumba's sixteen-year career has been an inexhaustible quest to expose injustice in Britain and around the world. The band burst into headlines with the brutal and deliciously appropriate response to Band Aid, Pictures of Starving Children Sell Records (1986). One of Margaret Thatcher's loudest enemies, Chumbawumba consistently organized and played benefits for anti-conservative causes. Unlike fellow anarchists the Ex, whose politics are couched in a more demanding, often abrasive musical style, Chumbawumba's work has always fallen more on the side of pop than Punk -- the idea being to infect and eventually cripple the musical and political establishment by educating as many listeners as possible. Despite this strategy, many were surprised to learn of the band's decision to sign with major label behemoth EMI in 1997, and subsequently flabbergasted by the Top-10 success of the single "Tubthumping." The hit put the band in the best position thus far to reach a wide audience with its radical message.