In an all-too-brief (yet perfectly succinct) lumbering sway of a rocker in 6/8, The Laughing Group call out “The New Meritocracy” in modern life (society and politics, I’m sure, but more the latter) by painting a picture of entitlement, cronyism, and carelessness, and then coloring the whole thing over with very gray F# minor tones that serve as a warning for the eventual doomsday to come if we fail to remember the lessons we’ve learned as we’ve journeyed to this particular moment in time. By the close of the song, we’ve learned several things: The Laughing Group are a tight rhythmic unit, they can pull off strong vocal harmonies, and they’re well-read (all three of which make for some of the best music out there).
On its face, meritocracy should be a good thing—achievement of jobs, positions, and callings based on skill and talent. But Michael Young, the man who coined the term in his 1958 satire, The Rise of the Meritocracy (NOT a Star Wars film), came out against Tony Blair’s use of the word 40 years later and said, “It is good sense to appoint individual people to jobs on their merit. It is the opposite when those who are judged to have merit of a particular kind harden into a new social class without room in it for others.” And this is where The Laughing Group shows that they understand what Britain’s former PM didn’t: no system works exactly the way it was designed when there is power to be had, however moral or beneficent the intents of the powerful seem to be—less so when money is involved and the intents don’t even seem moral or beneficent.
The great trick of “The New Meritocracy” is within its half-minute intro: crashing drums outline physical collapse over a bassline that attempts several melodic ascents only to find itself rooted to a descending chord progression driven by the rhythm guitar, all of which neatly foreshadow the only course possible for a society or government operating under misguided ideals, summed up in the song’s final lyrics: everything’s gonna sink.