I was holed up in a hard-to-find shady corner of Grand Park, watching the crowd and taking nearly illegible notes during the Fighting Oligarchy rally when the familiar opening notes of a song caught my attention. Style Council? It was “Shout to the Top,” I knew that for certain before Paul Weller’s voice came in with the first verse. But, here? At a political rally in the U.S.? 

That’s weird, I thought, but whoever added the song to the playlist deserves some props. “Shout to the Top” was a good choice, thematically appropriate with the lyrics, “and when you’re down on the bottom/there’s nothing else/but to shout to top.” Still, your average American has little-to-no-idea who Paul Weller is. They might have heard “A Town Called Malice” or “My Ever Changing Moods” somewhere in their lifetime, but they probably do not know that both come from the same guitar hero/fashion icon— the Modfather, as he’s often called—  and that he also has a treasure trove of songs about class politics. 

“Shout to the Top” certainly wasn’t the only Style Council song that would have worked on this Saturday afternoon. “Walls Come Tumbling Down,” a northern soul-style stomper, is a little more direct with its chorus, “governments crack and systems fall/ ‘cause unity is powerful.” Okay, maybe it’s too direct? 

Then there’s post-punk funk jam “Money Go Round.” Weller sings, “Said too much power in not enough hands/Makes me think, get rich quick, take all I can.”  It’s telling how a song from 1983 remains spot-on in 2025. 

The Jam/Style Council/Paul Weller cult in the U.S. was never quite as huge as, say, the Depeche Mode or The Cure legions, or even The Smiths/Morrissey/Marr and Joy Division/New Order bases, and, tbh, it’s been sadly shrinking. Back in the late 1990s, in L.A., the city’s big Britpop and mod night was Cafe Bleu, a weekly party named for Style Council’s debut album. It was a total IYKYK reference because Cafe Bleu was specifically the British import version of the album. (The debut was titled My Ever Changing Moods in the U.S.) We danced to loads of The Jam’s songs there and a decent amount of Style Council ones too. Later on, in the early ‘00s, when I DJed at Bang!, the two bands were still dance floor staples. I’d have to dig up old playlists to try to remember all of the songs that were played because there were quite a few that qualified as hits. Now, though, I have those songs on reserve for bar gigs, when I don’t have to worry about packing a dance floor. The last time I played “A Town Called Malice” on a dance night, it cleared the floor. 

In a way, I kind of get the relative obscurity of Weller’s work in the U.S. The mod revival of the 1970s and ‘80s doesn’t hit the algorithm in the same way that meme-friendly subcultures and artists, like goths or Morrissey, do. Plus, Weller’s work is extremely British. Even an avowed Anglophile probably has to look up the references in “The Eaton Rifles”. Moreover, a lot of Weller’s political songs during The Jam and Style Council eras are specifically about class struggle, which doesn’t necessarily resonate in a country where people believe that if they just work a little harder, they can bootstrap their way to “self-made billionaire” status, just like the trust fund brats did. 

But, maybe my fellow Americans are starting to see that the game is rigged against us and that there’s no one simple hack to get us out of this mess. That’s why, today, I’m directing you to the music of The Style Council. This is the band, really more of a collective, that Weller led in the aftermath of The Jam. The Style Council existed throughout most of the 1980s with Weller on lead vocals and guitar, Mick Talbot (previously of Dexy’s Midnight Runners) on keys and a rotating cast of vocalists and musicians. “My Ever Changing Moods” (the more upbeat, single version of the song, not the version on Cafe Bleu) was the closest they had to a hit in the U.S., but, if you follow DJs who play funky, synth-heavy sets, you may have heard “Long Hot Summer” while out an about as well. 

The Style Council’s music fell into what was later categorized as sophisti-pop. Really, it was a mishmash of soul, funk, jazz and house and it was this sound that makes Style Council’s music so subversive. 

Weller wrote a lot of incredible songs for The Jam with lyrics that remain relevant, like “Going Underground,” but the band came out of the punk era with a heavy influence of The Who, so they had a raw, rock sound that lent itself to the cynicism in lines like, “the public wants what the public gets.” That The Jam was political was more or less expected. The Style Council, on the other hand, was smooth, cocktail hour-appropriate even. You could play “All Gone Away” to a roomful of developers  and CEOs sipping wine and tapping their toes to the bossa nova beat, totally oblivious to the lyrics, “But somewhere the party never ends/and greedy hands rub together again/shipping out the profits that they’ve stolen.”

But, The Style Council weren’t really sneaking political messages into songs. They were overtly political. Shout to the Top, a BBC Radio 2 documentary from 2003, talks about the band’s solidarity with the Miners Strike and other then-current events in the U.K. 

There are also messages printed on the band’s records, context that you might miss if you’re listening on streaming platforms. On 1983 mini-LP Introducing the Style Council, a note under “Money-Go-Round” states, “For us in the U.K. 1983 was the year of decision. The U.K.’ers made the wrong one by voting Thatcher back in. That’s the reason for this seven and a half minute epic.” (The note also stated that the writer’s royalties for the song would be donated to the Youth Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.)

On My Ever Changing Moods (the version of the debut album in my own collection), there’s a quote from the French Revolution figure Jean Paul Marat that reads, in part, “don’t be deceived when they tell you things are better now. Even if there’s no poverty to be seen because poverty’s been hidden.”

Meanwhile, on The Internationalists, the U.S. version of The Style Council’s sophomore album, the back cover notes state, “Check the title track of this LP and then tell me Socialism is a threat to ‘Democracy’— Socialism is Democracy! Check ‘Walls Come Tumbling Down’ as surely they will eventually, when all wake up to see the day as it really is and then decide to change it for the better!”

The Internationalists  (called Our Favorite Shop in the U.K. and released with a slightly different track listing) is my favorite Style Council album and the one that seems most relevant right now. The title track, co-written by Weller and Talbot, more or less expresses the theme of the album, that everyone who isn’t part of the ruling class needs to unite in order for change to happen. More than that, though, is that the album closes on a hopeful note with “Shout to the Top!” and “Walls Come Tumbling Down,” two absolute bangers that I suspect might be more motivational to a U.S. listener now than they would have been 40 years ago. 

Liz O. is an L.A.-based writer and DJ. Read her recently published work and check out her upcoming gigs or listen to the latest Beatique Mix. Follow on Instagram  or Bluesky for more updates.

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