Swing to the Right

Swing to the Right
Studio album by Utopia
Released February 24, 1982
Studio Utopia Sound Studios
Genre Progressive rock, pop rock, new wave
Length 38:55
Label Bearsville
Producer Todd Rundgren and Utopia
Utopia chronology
Deface the Music
(1980)Deface the Music1980		 Swing to the Right
(1982)		 Utopia
(1982)Utopia1982
Singles from Swing To The Right
  1. "One World"
    Released: April 1982
  2. "Lysistrata"
    Released: June 1982
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
Allmusic[1]

Swing to the Right is a Utopia (featuring Todd Rundgren, Roger Powell, Kasim Sulton, and Willie Wilcox) album from 1982. It followed the Beatles parody/homage Deface the Music. Swing to the Right swings into hard-edged commentary on corporate raiders, warmongers, political villains, and despicable music industry moguls. There is little in the way of progressive rock on this album, which is limited to its title track.

Originally recorded in the Winter of 1981 and set for release that June, Bearsville Records was reluctant to release the album because of the album's overly political and religious tone. In protest Utopia took this material on the road for a full year begging audiences to petition Bearsville Records execs to release it, even going as far as giving out the phone number and address of Bearsville Records and instructing audiences to ask for Albert Grossman.

The cover photo is a retouched and tinted reproduction of a well-known photograph taken at a public burning of Beatles records, which took place in August 1966 in the town of Waycross, Georgia in response to John Lennon's controversial "We are more popular than Jesus now" remark. It is a photograph, distributed by UPI and printed on front pages of newspapers including The Savannah Morning News, depicting the burning of the Beatles albums in Waycross in a large bonfire, while in the foreground a boy holds an LP which is about to be thrown into the fire. In the original image, the album the boy holds is a copy of The Beatles' Capitol Records debut LP Meet The Beatles, but on the Utopia cover this has been photographically replaced with an image of the Swing To The Right cover (thereby creating the illusion of an endless regression of the same image). The August 1966 event was promoted by WAXY radio in Waycross and one of dozens that took place across the country in August 1966 in response to Lennon's remarks.

Track listing

All songs by Utopia except where noted.

  1. "Swing to the Right" – 4:21
  2. "Lysistrata" – 2:43
  3. "The Up" – 4:08
  4. "Junk Rock" – 3:13
  5. "Shinola" – 5:21
  6. "For the Love of Money" (Kenneth Gamble, Leon Huff, Anthony Jackson) – 3:40
  7. "Last Dollar on Earth" – 4:13
  8. "Fahrenheit 451" – 2:47
  9. "Only Human" – 5:11
  10. "One World" – 3:24

Some CD reissues include the bonus track "Special Interest".

Note

  • One song entitled "God and Me" was left off the album, but is available in bootleg form

Personnel

Charts

Album – Billboard

Year Chart Position
1982 Pop Albums 102

References

  1. ↑ Erlewine, Stephen Thomas (2011). "Swing to the Right – Utopia | AllMusic". allmusic.com. Retrieved 8 July 2011.
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