Streets of London (by Frank Mc Tell)

The song blames us for ignoring the lonely and poverty- stricken persons who live in our city, village or vicinity (“let me take you by the hand and lead you through the streets of London”). n and that makes us feel frightened and pensive. He makes us aware of the seriousness of poverty and due to the fact that each one of us could end like the old man in the song, we suddenly worry about the poverty described by Ralph Mc Tell. We realise that the persons mentioned in the song do not have any responsibility for their poverty, they just had bad luck and that’s what could happen to us in some years time.

I reckon Ralph Mc Tell was one of the first musicians who dared to write a song about that kind of poverty and due to the splendid rhythm of the song and his admirable voice, “Streets of London” is extremely popular and well- known. As long as we are well off, we don’t care about any other persons, we close our eyes when we walk through the streets so we do not have to see people who are begging and living on the streets.

An other reason for the song’s immense popularity is, in my eyes, that Ralph Mc Tell uses many symbols in his song (“yesterday’s papers telling yesterday’s news”, “looking at the world over the rim of his teacup”).

The song accuses us for being too egoistic and pampered (“so how can you tell me you’re lonely and say for you the sun don’t shine”) and for not caring about the people around us. Only by analysing the song very carefully, we can really understand what it tries to tell us.

Most people think that poverty only exists in Third World Countries, where there is not enough to eat and the water is polluted but Ralph Mc Tell doesn’t sing about the enormous poverty of millions of people in Africa or Asia, he sings about the (individual) poverty we can find in our neighbourhood and in our own family.