19 July 1969
Most of us would probably agree that systemic poverty is a bad thing. So, I want to be generous to the impulse behind the writing of ‘In The Ghetto’. That said, this is a dreadfully manipulative, exploitative and condescending record. Its main lyrical concern is that the poor are fecklessly reproducing, growing restlessly violent, and then committing random acts of car theft. Be nice to the poor, or the next car owner could be you.
I’ll also put most of its dreadfulness down to the millionaire mansion-dweller tearfully crooning this over maudlin strings like a missionary leading a novena to save the souls of natives to whom he’s already given measles and the clap. The word “ghetto” is racially coded too, of course, but perhaps after making his fame and fortune by adulterating Black music for a white mainstream audience Elvis here feels some pang of guilt as he eats his cheeseburger while sitting on the toilet.
‘In The Ghetto’ was number one in Ireland when Neil Armstrong set foot on the Moon. (It only reached no. 3 in the US and no. 2 in the UK.) This calls to mind two far better records of the time that interrogate the same issue but with the requisite intelligence, insight and anger: Marvin Gaye’s ‘Inner City Blues’ (“Rockets, moonshots / Spend it on the have-nots”) and Gil Scott-Heron’s ‘Whitey On The Moon’. Still, though, listening to ‘In The Ghetto’ makes me want to seize the means of production of ‘In The Ghetto’ so that it can never be made or bought again. That’s a start.
