Line #60 Music/MitchBenn


1	[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/benn.jpg]]
2
3	->''"That's how it is with me, folks. Slightly grim, slightly rude, reassuringly clever."''
4
5	Mitchell John Benn (born 20 January 1970) is a British satirical songwriter, best known for his topical comedy songs on ''Radio/TheNowShow''. His favourite topics include James Blunt, Music/{{Coldplay}} and Website/{{Twitter}} (where he had a feud with Creator/StephenFry, which was settled when Fry agreed to make him 'Viceroy of Website/{{Facebook}}' in return for Benn giving up the quest to be 'King of Twitter'.) He is [[OopNorth Liverpudlian]]-[[UsefulNotes/{{Scotland}} Scottish]] and [[HornyVikings looks a bit like a Viking]]. He has released several albums, some solo and some as 'Mitch Benn and the Distractions'.
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7	He's done two other radio shows: ''Mitch Benn's Crimes Against Music'' started out with him discussing various aspects of music and musicians with Robin Ince, before the third series became a sitcom about him and Ince going on tour. Either way, the plot was an excuse for him to play his songs and Ince to be rude about them. ''The Mitch Benn Music Show'' is simply him showcasing his favourite comedy records by others. He also made the ''Mitch Benn Specials'' in 2005, following on from the radio adaptation of his stage show ''Mitch Benn is the 37th [[Music/TheBeatles Beatle]]'', but looking at the influence of other musicians. The episodes were: "The [[Music/BobDylan Freewheelin']] Mitch Benn"; "Mitch Benn is [[Music/DavidBowie the Fat Pink Duke]]" and "Mitch Benn [[Music/ElvisPresley Has Left the Building]]".
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9	His first novel ''[[Literature/TerraTrilogy Terra]]'' was published in July 2013. You can see some of his celebrity friends reading the first chapter [[http://wingedreviews.com/2013/07/trailer-premiere-terra-by-mitch-benn-part-1/ here]]. ''Terra's World'' was published the following year, and a third installment, ''Terra's War'' published in 2021.
10
11	----
12	!!Tropes used in Mitch Benn's songs include:
13
14	* AntiLoveSong: Plenty, including "Now He's Gone" and "Imagine You Were Mine". The latter is a StalkerWithACrush song.
15	* BearsAreBadNews: Averted in no less than four songs about [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knut_(polar_bear) Knut the Polar Bear]], most recently an Music/EltonJohn-style Eulogy.
16	* BlackComedy: A lot of his comedy songs seem to be about death. Often real deaths. "Rock'N'Roll Hall of Death" is about a museum dedicated to how rock stars died ("We got Mama Cass's sandwich box and Music/BrianJones's flippers"); "Auto-Erotic Asphyxiation" is about people who hanged themselves, and whether [[OutWithABang they were attempting this]] ("Did they wanna die? There's no way of knowing/They couldn't tell if they were coming or going").
17	* BoyBand: a song called "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RaDXh726Co Boy Band]]"
18	* BriefAccentImitation: Imitates all kind of accents, especially [[RuleOfFunny when it's funny]]. Exceptional examples include:
19	** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtr0YhwldxM "Five One"]] (about the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germany_1%E2%80%935_England_(2001) famous World Cup qualifying game]]), in which he imitates the accents of several English players and the Germans as a whole.
20	** "Gordon Brown has Saved the World", sung from the perspective of Gordon Brown with Gordon Brown's accent.
21	** "Baby Knut Must Die", which is mostly in a silly Bavarian accent but briefly turns into metal grunt.
22	** "Poisonous Frogs", in a ridiculous yet mostly-comprehensible Scottish accent.
23	* BringMyBrownPants: "Credit Crunch", an advertisement-style jingle based upon the observation that Credit Crunch sounds like a breakfast cereal, contains
24	--> And remember kids, Credit Crunch is so worrying it even turns your trousers brown!
25	* CrapsackWorld: His song ''Hello Aliens'' is a plea to be [[AlienAbduction taken away]] because Earth is so horrible
26	--> ''The World's full of Nutters all ready to Snap.''
27	--> ''The Air's full of Poison, the Sea's full of Crap.''
28	--> ''[[SurroundedByIdiots People are Stupid]] and LifeIsntFair.''
29	--> Series/DoctorWho'''s finished and [[UsefulNotes/BorisJohnson Boris]] is Mayor!''
30	* {{Determinator}}: "Good Luck, Sir Ranulph Fiennes" focuses mostly on the man's fondness to keep adventuring despite having "left bits of himself all over the world".
31	* DistantDuet: "West End Musical" (also a CounterpointDuet)
32	* ElvisImpersonator: "Everybody's Elvis" and "If Elvis Were A Northerner"
33	** Benn also provided the voice for Elvis in [[Series/GoodOmens2019 Good Omens]].
34	* EnemyMine: Benn found himself begging Manchester United, arch-rivals of his hometown team Liverpool, to win quickly and easily in a televised cup match so that it wouldn't go to extra time. [[note]]They won 4-1.[[/note]]
35	--> Are you listening Man U?
36	--> I hate you enough already without you making me miss ''Series/DoctorWho''
37	* ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin: Most of his song titles.
38	* FiveFingerDiscount: "So Long Woolworth's", in which he worries about where all the [[LowerClassLout Chavs]] will shoplift from with Woolies going bankrupt.
39	* FollowTheLeader: [[invoked]] "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Wckix4kUko Everything Sounds Like Coldplay Now]]". Also "Virgin Bills Dead People", a song calling out Virgin Mobile for callously sending bills to the family of a man who'd passed away, follows a similar premise to "United Breaks Guitars" by Sons of Maxwell calling out United Airlines for refusing to compensate a band member after their employees carelessly (some say deliberately) broke a valuable guitar.
40	* FreudianSlip: "Gordon Brown Has Saved the World" is predicated upon one that the then-Prime Minister made during a speech.
41	* GenreShift: Aside from [[GenreRoulette drawing upon a broad range of musical genres]] to parody, the song "Baby Knut Must Die" alternates between sounding like a Bavarian Oom-pah cliche and something resembling death metal.
42	* GravityIsAHarshMistress: "Toddling Along" uses the Gravitational Cognizance version as a metaphor for the financial crisis.
43	* GreatBallsOfFire: "Never Mind The Song (Look At The Stage Set)"
44	* HellBentForLeather: "Stinky Pants" discusses the hygiene problems of leather trousers.
45	* HornyVikings: "IKEA", which borrows the first line of Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song"
46	* HowIWroteThisArticleArticle: Benn wrote and recorded an entire album in 24 hours for charity. The last song, "Party Animals Need Not Apply" is about how this SelfImposedChallenge isn't fun and ends with a repeated line about how he needs to [[{{Padding}} pad it out]] to make the time.
47	* KeepCirculatingTheTapes: Invoked in "The Hardest Song In The World To Find"
48	* IWantSong: 'I Want'. Appropriately.
49	* LargeHam: "Brian", which imitates the Film/{{Flash Gordon\|1980}} [[{{Music/Queen}} theme song]] and ends with [[Creator/BrianBlessed the man]] shouting "Blessed's annoyed".
50	* LastSecondWordSwap:
51	** In "There Are Things Worth Rioting About Right Now", along with a minor SubvertedRhymeEveryOccasion:
52	--->Now they want to ration visits to your own GP\
53	it's the latest brainwave from Jeremy Hunt\
54	You might want to look at your priorities\
55	or are you just a gang of stupid racist c-\
56	cause there's things worth rioting about right now.
57	** An inversion of the usual mechanic occurs in AntiLoveSong "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_6LkWVWZA0 Not Bitter]]" where lines start offensive but are rendered almost-innocuous:
58	--->You bitch, you bitch, you bet your life I will be OK\
59	You whore, you whore, your horoscope told you\
60	This was the right thing to do today\
61	You slut, you slut, use lots of self control and don't turn round\
62	You cow, you cow, you count on it\
63	I won't be breaking down.
64	* LeastRhymableWord: Benn is inspired by Music/TomLehrer, and it shows.
65	* {{Pastiche}}: He has done a lot.
66	** "I'm Proud Of The BBC" is a pastiche of the Music/BillyJoel song "We Didn't Start The Fire".
67	** "IKEA" takes a lot from [[Music/LedZeppelin The Immigrant Song.]]
68	** "We Never Fly Without A Teapot" riffs on the genre of UsefulNotes/WorldWarTwo patriotic anthems.
69	** "Not Everybody Has To Imagine" is pretty much "Imagine", but with the lyrics on the other end of the SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism
70	** SubvertedRhymeEveryOccasion
71	* ListSong: 'These Ghoulish Things Remind Me of You'.
72	** "I'm Proud Of The BBC" is a list of awesome BBC shows and personalities. [[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment Including]] ''Series/DoctorWho'' [[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment three times]]. Although perhaps each mention is for [[FridgeBrilliance each of the show's three incarnations]]: the original run from 1963-89, [[Recap/DoctorWhoTVMTheTVMovie the TV movie]] and the new series.
73	** "I'm Still Here" is a list of all the ways a musician trying to go out with a bang has failed to get himself killed.
74	* MidwordRhyme: In ''Mitch Benn's Crimes Against Music'', to rhyme with [[LeastRhymableWord orange]].
75	* MixedMetaphor: "The Devil And A Hard Place", inspired by a global warming spokesman saying the world was "standing on the precipice of a runaway train".
76	* MushroomSamba: "Tea Party"
77	* NewMediaAreEvil: "Steal This Song" disagrees:
78	-->Home taping isn't killing music\
79	Music's dying of natural causes
80	* JustForFun/OneOfUs: He's an ardent fan of [[Series/DoctorWho a certain long-running BBC Science Fiction show]]; its return to the airwaves in 2005 after a sixteen-year hiatus occasioned the writing of the song "Call Me During Doctor Who ''And I'll Kill You''".
81	* ProtestSong: Most of his songs on ''Radio/TheNowShow''. He's usually funny about it, though. "Not Everybody Has To Imagine" is interesting, a skewering of Music/JohnLennon's "Imagine" from the opposite end of the SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism:
82	-->And you may say I have no dreams,\
83	Well perhaps that's how it seems,\
84	But in a world this tough,\
85	Dreaming's not enough.
86	* RuthlessModernPirates: "The Pirate Song", a ''Now Show'' song that included the lyrics "On land they'd recognise us for the psychos that we are" and "The papers call us pirates tho' we're muggers in a boat / Armed robbery is jolly when it's done while you're afloat".
87	* SelfDemonstratingSong: Many, such as "BoyBand", "Stay The Hell Away From [[Music/JeffBuckley Hallelujah]]" (to the tune of "Hallelujah", of course) and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Wckix4kUko "Everything Sounds Like Coldplay Now"]]:
88	--> "...and you dooooo a high bit in the middle eight\
89	then yooooou have almost solved the riddle of just how...\
90	to sound like Music/{{Coldplay}} now."
91	* SelfDeprecation: In "Why Are The BNP So Fat?"
92	-->Why are the BNP all so overweight\
93	I know that I'm on pretty thin ice asking this but wait
94	* ShoutOut: Quite a few. 'Hardest Song in the World to Find', for example, has a ShoutOut to ''Film/TheRing''.
95	* SubvertedRhymeEveryOccasion: "I May Just Have To Murder Music/JamesBlunt" rhymes the title character with "confront" and "back to front" and then notes that "he's the only man alive who is his own [[CountryMatters rhyming slang]]."
96	* TeenageDeathSongs: Parodied in "Now He's Gone".
97	* SubliminalSeduction: "Please Don't Release This Song" ends with a backmasked version of the chorus of "We Haven't Got A Clue".
98	* TakeThat: Expected, as many of the ''Now Show'' songs are political. "Why Are The BNP So Fat?" springs to mind, along with "There Are Things Worth Rioting About Right Now".
99	* ThisIsASong: "West End Musical".
100	-->This is a great big opening song
101	** For balance there is also his [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwut3CgU_2Y Very Happy Ending Song]]
102	* ThisIsWrongOnSoManyLevels: "Stay The Hell Away From [[Music/JeffBuckley Hallelujah]]"
103	* ToTheTuneOf: "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2pdv6faw8M Now Coldplay Sound Like Everything Else]]" (to a SuspiciouslySimilarSong of 'Viva la Vida', which Coldplay were accused of plagiarising). He also recorded a song strongly reminiscent of Music/LedZeppelin's "Stairway To Heaven" which included the lines:
104	--> And now everyone here is staring at me in fear,\
105	'cause this is meant to be Stairway, obviously.\
106	And the original song's a good eight minutes long,\
107	He's not going to do all of it, is he?\
108	(Stairway-ish riff)\
109	[[{{Troll}} I think I'll let you wonder...]]\
110	(Riff) Nah, that's it.
111	* ToiletHumour:
112	** The discovery of methane on an extra-solar planet led to this song:
113	--->Something's farting way out there in space\
114	it's hitherto unknown to science\
115	someone's letting off gas giants.
116	** More literally, there's the song he wrote when Music/BobDylan was sued by his neighbours because of the [[http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/03/18/us-dylan-odd-idUSTRE52H3O220090318 smell from the outdoor toilet]] on Dylan's malibu property:
117	--->It's my Port-a-Loo, it's got Nothing to do with You.\
118	Except when the Smell comes a-blowing on the Wind !
119	** And when the [[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/5867380/Astronauts-struggle-to-fix-flooded-lavatory-in-space.html International Space Station had problems with its lavatory]]
120	--->We've got Nowhere [[Franchise/StarTrek To Boldly Go]]\
121	We're ''Series/LostInSpace'' without a Lav
122	* TruckDriversGearChange: {{lampshaded}} in "Boy Band" with ''"Off the stools!"''

Context Music / MitchBenn