James Mason

@batcountry1980 None of this will ever qualify as poetry because poems are a tradition, they have internal structures and rhythms which distinguish them from prose writing. Lyrics are called that for a reason, they may be literary but they are not poetic. Possibly equal merit but not the same.

Ever since rock n roll transformed into “rock”, so began an ongoing urge to frame lyricists as poets. A canon emerged: the rock n roll poets. Dylan. The Morrisons. Cohen. Patti Smith. Lou Reed. Joni Mitchell. The singer-songwriter elevated into literary figure. And rightly so in many cases. But even the most adventurous of them usually still work within the architecture of songs. Verses. Choruses. Narrative arcs. Emotional resolutions. Even when abstract, there’s often still a recognisable skeleton holding everything together. Which is why I’ve always thought Karl Hyde is one of the most overlooked lyricists in modern music. Because if we’re looking for a poet operating parallel to music, he might be the purest example. I heard Underworld long before I ever read William S. Burroughs, but when I did, my immediate reaction was: “This is like Karl Hyde writes.” Not because Hyde was necessarily imitating him directly, but in how he arrived at something strikingly similar through music. Burroughs’ cut-up technique broke language apart and rebuilt it through collision and association rather than linear meaning. Hyde does much the same thing lyrically. What he was doing with Underworld in the 90s often felt closer to actual modern poetry. Stream of consciousness. Beat writing. Impressionism. Snatched fragments of overheard conversations. Half-thoughts. Urban hallucinations. Internal monologues dissolving into external noise. Phrases don’t unfold logically so much as accumulate emotionally. “Let your feelings slip, boy, but never your mask boy Random blonde bio, high density Random blonde boy, blonde country Blonde high density You are my drug boy, you're real boy Speak to me and boy, dog dirty numb cracking boy You get wet boy, big, big time boy, acid bear boy Babes and babes and babes and babes and babes And remembering nothing boy, do you like my tin horn boy It gets wet like an angel, derail” It’s not storytelling in the traditional rock sense. It’s an immersion in words till meaning emerges from rhythm and repetition. And unlike so many “poetic” rock lyricists, Hyde wasn’t confined by the expectations of guitar music, trying to fit ideas neatly into verse-chorus structures built for catharsis and singalong release. The electronic framework of Underworld let him write in pure momentum. Loops. Recurring phrases. Fragments surfacing again like intrusive thoughts or flashes of memory. The words unfold the way consciousness actually does. There’s also something deeply modern about it. So much 90s rock lyricism felt trapped in the conventions of rock sincerity. Hyde’s writing felt more alive than that world, like the real experience of existing in cities. Slogans and conversations, skyscrapers and undergrounds, drunken repetition and urban anxieties, moments of beauty appearing suddenly through sensory overload. And despite all the fragmentation, there’s warmth in Hyde’s writing that separates him from the colder literary experimentalists. Burroughs often feels dystopian and detached. Hyde’s work feels human. Euphoric then lonely, seedy then sad. The sound of somebody trying to find connection in the noise. Which is why it’s strange he’s rarely discussed alongside the great lyricists of the era. In the mid-90s, rock music was still widely seen as the serious artistic medium. Britpop was everywhere. Grunge still lingered. Guitar bands dominated the cultural conversation. Yet one of the most original writers in music was operating within electronic music, a scene critics still struggled to treat with the same seriousness. Maybe that’s the issue. Rock criticism has always known how to talk about “songwriters”, slapping the “poet” label onto anyone writing literary lyrics within that tradition. Hyde was doing something far closer to actual modern poetry: collages, streams of consciousness, emotional fragments. And he belongs in any serious discussion of the most innovative lyricists popular music has produced.

@conkin_io @ShahrarAli The uselessness of liberal sophistry exemplified. "On the one hand", "On the other hand" cartwheels so as not to actually hold an opinion. Agree or disagree, that's it. Not more complicated really.

@ShahrarAli There is middle ground between her her and liberal view. Hers isn’t critical thinking at all, it’s pure hyperbole. You can accept that there are detransitioners and healthcare that expeditiously fast tracked treatment, while recognising being trans is right for some people

When I listen to this, it does fill me with pride that critical thinking exists but also that parents succeeded in raising a daughter to know how to think aloud (not to take away from her self-directed learning but to acknowledge vital part they must have played in nurturing it). The section on Cass & GIDS at 7-8 min is particularly powerful, then the crescendo to the ending. 👏🔥👏 The flip side to this is how universities and their EDI programmes mired in Stonewall have failed us. Maeve and those like her are the antidote.

@Melbelle2300 @OldRoberts953 @glosswitch Wit defeating understanding.

@OldRoberts953 @glosswitch She owns an incredible legacy. You're a jealous outsider looking in to women supporting women. You're not invited.

She could have had such a legacy

@SpeechUnion @ezralevant No citizen of another country has an absolute right to demand entry to another country they are not a citizen of. Plenty of people have/are being denied entry to the USA simply because they've been to Cuba on holiday. What you say on that? Does FSU support open borders now?

We have taken up the case of @ezralevant, a Gold member of the @SpeechUnion who has been refused entry to the UK to attend the ‘Unite the Kingdom’ rally tomorrow. After his ESTA was refused, he paid £1,000 to the Home Office to expedite a visa application because his flight is tonight. To date, the Home Office still hasn't responded. We hope our intervention will prompt it to issue a visa in time for him to catch his flight. Refusing Mr Levant a visa would be a clear breach of his rights. He's not a “far right agitator intent on coming to the UK to spew [his] extremist views”, which is how Sir Keir Starmer's described those who've been blocked from entering the UK for tomorrow’s protest. He is a Canadian commentator and journalist who has no criminal convictions and has never advocated violence, intimidation, discrimination or terrorism and rejects any assertion that he is ‘far-right’ or would make threats or spread hate. In reality, he simply holds views that the Prime Minister disagrees with. Perhaps it’s his outspoken support for Israel in its ongoing war with Hamas that has raised a red flag. Refusing Mr Levant a visa would be particularly egregious, given that Hasan Piker, the far left American political activist who has incited violence against Jews, has not been blocked from entering the UK. He's due to speak at at @unherd event on 5th June. Is it one rule for outspoken supporters of Israel, Prime Minister, and another for outspoken supporters of the Palestinian cause? Is that because you care more about not offending Britain's Muslims than you do about not offending British Jews? We very much hope that the Home Office will issue Mr Levant with a visa immediately and allow him to travel to the UK this evening.

@QueenAnticommie @Upwardchanging2 Wrong. We tip all the time whether it's rounding up the total or extra 12.5% in some European countries. We also respect our servers which is why we expect owners to pay them at least the minimum wage. Perhaps if you can't afford to pay your servers don't open run a restaurant.

@Upwardchanging2 They do in Europe People don’t tip there

I agree with this! If you can’t afford a tip, stay home

@englandcottages I do and have the sheep too.

Could you live somewhere secluded like this? 🏡

@YesterdaysBrit1 Buy?

Who used to buy their records and cassettes from Woolworths?

@Britains___Pubs Drinking French champagne rather than English sparkling wine? Tut tut.

Utter magnificence

@MbarkCherguia If I was 4 years old.

On what occasion would you wear THIS??

@elonmusk I live in a house that's older than USA history. Admittedly the thatched roof is a bit of a mess but rather a lot more perfect than the imaginary exceptionalism that reframes reality into fantasy.

@floboflo When satire becomes reality in somone elses head all hope is lost.

Mad to think Farage could be in number 10 as early as Saturday morning!

@SamaHoole Depends on whose high street. Ours a bakers, butcher, cheesemonger, pie shop with cooked meats & hot meat sandwiches. And a fish van. Admittedly no sugar out of a sack. Though we have two supermarkets we go to the independents for these. That's why they survive. Gone if not used

British food trades that effectively no longer exist on the high street: The fishmonger. The dairyman. The poulterer. The game dealer. The cooked-meat shop. The pie shop. The pickle merchant. The cheesemonger. The proper baker. The grocer who weighed sugar out of a sack into a paper bag. These were not luxury trades. They were how every British town fed itself in 1955. In their place, on the same high streets, in 2026: a Greggs, a Costa, a vape shop, a bookies, three charity shops, and a unit currently empty. The food did not get cheaper. The skill did.

@trad_west_ I'm a farmer, a tenant farmer not a pretend one who bought his 'farm' to avoid paying tax. He isn't the face of this farmer nor of any farmer I know. You ofcourse have the privilege of living off a fantasy, real farmers have to make Iiving while screwed by supermarkets.

>Be Jeremy Clarkson >Spend decades mocking the nanny state and bureaucracy on TV >Buys a farm and actually works it >Realize the government is destroying the working class and the food supply >Expose the insane government bureaucracy destroying British farmers >Becomes the face of the british farmers >Opportunity to become the modern-day Cincinnatus leaving the plow to save the Empire if he wants too >The Leader Britain actually needs His genius generates gravity, he might be able to save the UK.

@teambringit @mehdirhasan @MarinaPurkiss Not called politics, called amoral desperation. No different than taunting by bullies. If you think redemption is impossible you should advocate abolishing religion and closing prisons with capital punishment as the sentence for every crime. Smearing to win is what's dodgy pal.

@mehdirhasan @MarinaPurkiss It’s called Politics! You are trying to win, you expose your rivals background. The Green Party need to stop putting up candidates that are dodgy!

She was a drug mule nearly 30 years ago, helped put the dealer behind bars, regrets that young life of hers and “now aged, 54, she runs the Stretch charity based in Brixton, south-west London, helping drug addicts, homeless individuals, prisoners and ex-inmates. as well as other vulnerable people.” You really should delete this tweet @LondonLabour

@sturgios Buy a ticket for a specific train, at a specific time with a specific reserved seat but decide to travel on another train, at another time and without a reserved seat. Given the state of our train service I'd know I'm not guaranteed anything. Trains are abysmal not the issue here

Counter point - it IS outrageous to pay £80 for a train journey and not get a seat. If the train is so crowded you can’t sit down you should get a hefty refund.

@Meagain19797028 @RealDonKeith Labour have had, have and will in future have Sirs, Ladies, Dames, Lords and the like for the simple reason that it has never really been a working class led party. Angela Rayner is an example it's embarrassed by working class individuals. But it has a history is all was saying.

@errol_nihat @RealDonKeith I've spent most of my adult life working in and drinking in pubs. I agree, you're absolutely right about the unions and the Labour party, that was until Blair and the champagne socialists. "Sir" Keir Starmer? "Sir", does that sound like labour to you? Really?

🚨 Pub landlord Adam Brooks issues a stark warning on TalkTV. If Britain votes LEFT again we’re finished. We are becoming a hellhole. Labour is destroying the traditional pub industry and the kind of people who don’t even want pubs on the local high street anymore. Britain better wake up fast.

@dirk7890 Pretending to be American is what happened.

What happened 😳

@YesterdaysBrit1 Every East End pub has that picture over the bar apparently. There to boost morale during the Blitz and never taken down. That's all.

A majestic pint indeed.

@Meagain19797028 @RealDonKeith Tut tut, many a trade union was set up in pubs, many Labour party branch meetings were/are held in pubs. I may be a half-wit farmer but even I know why pubs are shutting. Turn up regularly to one if you care enough about them.

@RealDonKeith Labour always were anti pub. It's where people can gather on mass and discuss why the labour party is destroying the country and how they are going to vote them out and they can't have that.

@SamaHoole Our grandfather's didn't have endless access to crisps, chocolate and the like. They also worked longer hours in generally manufacturing jobs. As for the backyard chicken, the sausage with no slurry filler and bacon unsaturated in brine, I think we live in different countries.

The fry-up has been quietly demoted, over the last forty years, from a daily British breakfast to a Saturday indulgence. A hangover meal. A guilty pleasure. The kind of thing you order in a Wetherspoons at half past eleven on a Sunday with a slightly apologetic look at the waitress, on the understanding that you will be having a salad for dinner to make up for it. Your nutrition app flags it. Your doctor sighs at it. The newspaper runs an article every six months explaining that it will kill you. This is one of the great practical jokes of modern British life. The traditional Full English is one of the most nutritionally complete breakfasts a human being can sit down to. Two eggs from a hen that scratched about in a back garden, eating grubs and kitchen scraps. Complete protein, choline, B12, vitamin D, the whole fat-soluble suite delivered in a yolk the colour of a marigold. Two rashers of dry-cured back bacon from a Wiltshire pig. Stable saturated fat, B vitamins, selenium. A pork sausage made that morning with three ingredients by the village butcher. A grilled tomato. Mushrooms cooked in the bacon fat. Black pudding for the iron. A slice of fried bread. A pot of tea strong enough to stand a teaspoon in. This breakfast fuelled the men who dug the coal, laid the railways, fished the North Sea, and walked twelve miles a day delivering the post. Their cardiovascular disease rate was a fraction of ours. Their diabetes rate was a rounding error. Their obesity rate was zero. Then sometime around 1985 we were told this breakfast was killing us. We were instructed, by people in offices, to switch to a bowl of corn flakes with skimmed milk. To a yoghurt with fourteen ingredients. To an oat milk latte. To a green smoothie containing more sugar than a can of Coke. The cardiovascular disease rates climbed. The diabetes rates climbed. The obesity rates climbed. The breakfast did not change. The advice did. The advice was wrong. A plate of eggs, bacon, sausage, and black pudding will outperform any breakfast designed by a wellness brand in a Shoreditch office. It costs less. It contains no seed oil. It has been keeping the British upright since the Iron Age. Your grandfather did not feel guilty about his breakfast. He had bigger things to worry about. So do you. Eat it on a Tuesday. Without apologising.