English Band Finds New Fame Behind Hit Song

Listening to “Tubthumping,” the catchy new single by the English rock band Chumbawamba, you’d never guess that the song was recorded by a group of anarchists bent on overthrowing the British government.

It seems nothing more than a party anthem, an ode to drinking (“He drinks a whiskey drink/He drinks a vodka drink/He drinks a lager drink/He drinks a cider drink”), celebrating life and wasting the night away.

Only the defiant chorus gives a hint to the band’s politics: “I get knocked down/But I get up again/ You’re never going to keep me down.”

“It’s a song for the underdog,” explains Dunstan Bruce, who sings the lead vocal over a lilting melody. “It’s a song for all those people who only get a chance to express their opinion when they stand up in a pub drunk and start mouthing off about something, or when they’re singing on the way home from the pub. … “It’s a song for those people who don’t really have a voice.”

Dissecting a best-selling single is a strange turn of events for Chumbawamba, a group of five men and three women from Leeds who, until this year, had survived 15 years together and released eight albums in England without producing anything more than a cult hit. (The name is drawn from one of the musicians’ dreams in which a men’s restroom was labeled “chumba” and the ladies’ room “wamba.”)

Usually the band members, all in their 30s, are asked more about their actions than their anthems - such as titling their first album, released within months of the Live Aid famine relief charity concert in 1985, “Pictures of Starving Children Sell Records.”

But nothing has drawn attention to Chumbawamba like “Tubthumping,” the lead track on its new album, “Tubthumper,” which was released last month on Republic/Universal Records.

The question is, can anarchism and pop stardom coexist?

“They’re totally compatible,” says Bruce. “Anarchy isn’t about being in your own little exclusive club. Our whole attitude toward what we do is, we want as many people as possible to hear what we’ve got to say because we think what we’ve got to say is of much more value than what, say, the Spice Girls or Oasis have to say.”

The group’s goal, adds bandmate Alice Nutter, is “the breakdown of the state. … We cannot see a case anywhere for one group of people having more power than another. People should have the power to control their own lives.”

The success of “Tubthumping,” of course, opens a whole new audience for Chumbawamba - even if the song’s message is lost on most listeners.

Combining dance beats, samples, ironic commentary and working-class voices, “Tubthumper” is a satisfyingly eclectic mix of songs that Chumbawamba hopes will not be dwarfed by the success of the lead single.