Last Updated on April 12, 2021 by Kristen
Do you remember the United States of Whatever song? My husband and I love it and it’s still one of those songs that when we hear it, we have a moment.
It’s by Liam Lynch—his work seems to have been more popular in the United Kingdom than in the United States (ironically!). Lynch got his start when a friend found a story in Rolling Stone magazine describing a performing arts school Paul McCartney was starting called Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts. Lynch was 23, and he was one of 40 musicians chosen from around the world.
While attending LIPA, Lynch created the Sifl and Olly Show, and that’s where the Whatever song originated. One of the sock puppets decides to have an attitude and not care about anything anymore (very Gen X), and breaks into song. It made the top 10 on the charts in the U.K. and Australia, but it was more of an underground song in the United States. They played it for a brief time on the Live 105 radio station in the SF Bay Area and that’s how my husband and I discovered it.
This song brings be joy but it gives me so many other feelings too. Like: this was every asshole I fell in love with in my 20s and 30s. And I like to focus on women on this site, and this has nothing to do with women (he’s kind of a dick to the women in the song but he’s a dick to everyone, really, except Zapho). Still, it’s angsty and GenXy and I’m into it.