Anthem - Intellect

Signifying Europe
This generation has no nation / Grass roots pressure the only solution / We’re sitting
tight / ‘cause asylum is a right’.
Outside the mainstream pop field represented in the ESC, the topics of war, division
and death stand out as a dominant thematic cluster in songs with ‘Europe’ in their
titles, at least in indie rock, metal and singer-songwriter styles. To some extent, this
supports the previous interpretation of Europe Day, the EU motto and the EU anthem.
Just to pick an example, Roxy Music’s melancholic ‘A Song for Europe’ (1973) depicts
how the ‘I’ walks alone in Paris and Venice, remembering lost moments without any
hope for future redemption: ‘There’s no today for us / Nothing is there / for us to
share / but yesterday.’ At the end of this truly melancholic song, words are also sung
in Latin and French. This was written at a time when Europe was still caught between
the superpowers, with a serious atomic threat looming large. British post-punk band
Killing Joke’s ‘Europe’ (1985) expresses a deep anxiety over the history and threatening
future of war: ‘Take up your arms pick up your courage / A black sun is rising as the
gods of Europe sleep’. Catastrophes and atrocities are mentioned: ‘What have they
done, what are they doing? / The place I love so butchered, scarred and raped / The
years have passed us, still we’re fighting’. The song is desperately pessimistic: ‘Glory
glory how we watch in Europe / the day humanity is over / Let nations east and west
tremble at the sight’ until ‘reason dead forever—god let it be soon’.
‘Europe after the Rain’ is the title of a song by John Foxx that has been reused with
a completely different tune by the German thrash metal band Kreator (1992). It also
spans a temporal narrative with a problematic past, a paralysed present and an even
more frightening future. Today’s ‘indecisive government’ with bizarre ‘perversion’ has
created confusion concerning good and bad: ‘Can’t remember who we are’, ‘Emotions
paralyzed’, ‘Terrifying industry protect departed nations / Can’t get back together again
/ Leaving Europe after the rain / Acceptance of neo-fascist / Persecuting anarchists /
Put the wrong ones on the list’. Meaninglessness and hopelessness rule in a capitalist
Europe run by ‘materialistic parasites’.
The Swedish melodic heavy metal band Europe was founded as Force in 1979 but
changed its name in 1982, allegedly inspired by the Deep Purple live album Made in
Europe. 440 The band has never released any song with ‘Europe’ in its title, though it had
one called ‘America’ (2004), indicative of the direction of identification of the band, in
spite of its chosen name. However, some 1980s Swedish singer-songwriter tunes paint
a similar picture as the previous ones. Jan Hammarlund: ‘Jag vill leva i Europa’ (‘I want
to live in Europe’, 1981), Anders F. Rönnblom: ‘Europa brinner’ (‘Europe’s burning’,
1982) and Björn Afzelius: ‘Europa’ (1984) all relate not to the wars left behind in the
past but to a persistent war threat with missiles accumulating on both sides of the
iron curtain. Hammarlund’s song combines this with the other main theme, that of
enjoying romantic visits to key continental cities, but in a nostalgic light, expressing
the risk of loss through nuclear war. This depressing feeling lifted after 1989, and
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