17 October 1991
I had thought this song’s second life must have been connected to a cinema re-release or video re-issue of Monty Python’s Life of Brian. (The Irish film censor ban on the film had been lifted in 1987.) But no: apparently ‘Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life’ came around again because BBC Radio 1 DJ Simon Mayo had been playing it regularly in a novelty song slot on his morning show so it just took off in Britain. It’s entirely feasible that many of the shoppers who put this to number one in Ireland (and number three in the UK) were simply buying a record they liked, with little interest in the closing scene of a Monty Python movie. Plus, the video released to accompany the single showed clips from the Monty Python’s Flying Circus TV series, not from Life of Brian. So, we can approach it here in the same spirit, as a stand-alone song.
Without the not-inconsiderable context of being sung by an unduly-chipper crucifixee as an ironic comment on the inhuman barbarity of religious and justice systems, ‘Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life’ loses its satirical edge; it just becomes a traditional English music-hall comedic number. Worse, it becomes the catch-cry of ‘wacky’ types—usually men—who think nothing of telling total strangers—usually women—to ‘cheer up!’ or ‘give us a smile!’ Even when the song looks like veering into truth-bomb territory with “Life’s a piece of shit / when you look at it” it immediately corrects course back to the jauntier and blander “Life’s a laugh and death’s a joke, it’s true”. You can like Life of Brian and also hate what this dumb song from it has become – a little Englander anthem for enforced jollity.
