The Modern World

If "In the City" is The Jam announcing their existence, "The Modern World" is them defending their right to mean something. There's a confrontational directness in the opening that hasn't softened at all — Weller almost spits the verses, daring a listener who doesn't care to keep listening. The guitar work is tighter than the debut, with a precision that reveals how seriously this band was taking craft even at their most aggressive. What distinguishes it is the chip-on-the-shoulder defiance of the lyric content: this is a song about being dismissed by people who think intelligence and passion belong to educated classes, about the particular rage of someone who taught themselves everything and still gets looked through. The production keeps it close and confrontational — not much reverb, not much space, which suits a song about being crowded out and fighting back. There's a class consciousness running through it that's entirely specific to British punk's second wave, the mod-inflected, working-class-intellectual strain that The Jam represented more purely than almost anyone. Weller sounds like he's arguing with someone who isn't in the room, which is exactly the kind of argument you can never win and can't stop having. This song lives in that frustration — righteous, slightly furious, absolutely serious about itself.