#You know his whole universe had gotta look like a Sex Pistols album cover

[one-lovely-little-idiot]

Nice to have a British character in American media who isn't a posho hahahssg

[sgtxpreacher]

write abt the music that reminds you of jake !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I HOPE YOU’RE READY FOR THIS THREE-PART ANALYSIS

warning: it’s super long. i hope read mores work on mobile. if not, i am so sorry if you are reading this on mobile.

part i: i guess i should start with the things on my playlist (with the exception of green day, because green day gets a whole section)

i’m just gonna go song-by-song (well, artist-by-artist) on this and try to explain my reasoning for each song pretty succinctly (though again, i’m saving all the green day ones for the end.) so, starting from the beginning!

prelude/angry young man, no man’s land, and shades of grey – billy joel

i’ll be honest, i was debating whether or not to add “prelude/angry young man,” just because the musical vibes itself don’t quite fit fit jake – but the lyrics fit him so well that i had to include it. ( and he’s never been able to learn from mistakes / so he can’t understand why his heart always breaks ) while “no man’s land” doesn’t remind me of jake specifically, it seems relevant to the class issues, media monopolies, and media addictions that plague pete’s world and that jake feels particularly concerned with ( i see the children with their boredom and their vacant stares / … / thanks to the condo kings, there’s cable now in zombietown ). and “shades of grey,” for me, fits the ideological growth jake goes through over the course of the war and getting to know mickey, and that continues on as he gets older and deals with more morally gray situations in torchwood. while i typically write him still more radical and self-righteous than the speaker in the song, it fits one of his major character arcs: these days it’s harder to say / i know what i’m fighting for / my faith is falling away / i’m not that sure anymore.

anarchy in the UK – the sex pistols

honestly. classic british anarchist song. it’s gotta be included. though it pains my heart to remember that pete’s world has the people’s republic of great britain and isn’t a monarchy, so the sex pistols never released “god save the queen” (and if they did, it would have been vastly different.) so jake simmonds, who went through an anarchist phase in university and continues to be very into anarchist punk, has never heard “anarchy in the UK.” please hold him in your heart the next time you hear the sex pistols.

runnin’ riot – cock sparrer

violence? self-destructive behavior? anger at the rich? constant desire to start fights? what about this song doesn’t scream jake simmonds? (other than the fact that the band is from the south, of course. jake would hate to be mistaken for a southerner.)

viva la revolution – the adicts

celebrating revolutions? emphasizing freedom of thought? enough said

london’s burning and london calling – the clash

okay honestly half the reason i included “london calling” is just because it was the soundtrack for the scene in billy elliot where tony is chased + arrested by the police, and jake relates to tony just about as much as he relates to billy. but it does also seem like the kind of marching, rhythmic song that would fit scenes of marching cybermen ( london calling to the zombies of death / quit holding out and draw another breath. ) “london’s burning” just seems to fit jake’s general london aesthetic – watching people zone out to media while he sits around and bides his time.

random number generation – hedwig and the angry inch

i’m going to talk some more about hedwig later on, but “random number generation” in particular reminds me of jake and the cybermen, with the combination of punk rock and programming the human brain ( all of our feelings and thoughts / expressed in ones and in aughts )

sucker punch – jonathan coulton

this song makes me think a lot of jake and the preachers ( third location and a second-string team and one awful plan ). but honestly, the whole song is about getting into fights, breaking things to relieve stress, and fully embracing self-destructive behaviors ( i don’t wanna straighten up / i don’t wanna fly right / i just wanna drive around a while and / bust a couple things up with the bad kids / / and i feel better already, and i feel better already ). it’s jake in a nutshell.

sheep – pink floyd

i remember reading on tvtropes once that age of steel actually references pink floyd’s animals, which is the album this song comes from; there’s a shot of battersea power station in the episode that’s really similar to the album cover. “sheep” in particular fits the cybermen to a T. it produced the description for my blog until i changed it today. ( what do you get for pretending the danger’s not real? / meek and obedient, you follow the leader / down well-trodden corridors into the valley of steel. )

part ii: the musical soundtrack to jake’s life, because i’m theatre trash

billy elliot

so if you’ve spoken to me for 5 minutes about billy elliot, you’ve probably realized that a) i love billy elliot b) jake loves billy elliot. now, jake probably hasn’t seen the musical (though i can imagine, if pete tyler bought a bunch of tickets as part of a “look at me i’m cultured” thing, jake wouldn’t mind going along just to see what it was like.) but there are a couple of songs that just really remind me of jake – “solidarity,” given that half of it is literally striking miners clashing with the police; “he could be a star” makes jake a little embarrassedly emotional whenever i listened to it, just because of how much he relates to tony and how strongly he believes in communities coming together.

hedwig and the angry inch

hedwig is the one musical that i feel that jake would actually really like (that and american idiot, maybe, bc green day.) but a couple of songs in particular remind me a lot of him. jake is sort of unreasonably attached to the idea of soulmates, though he would never say as much, and he finds most portrayals of the soulmates concept cheesy. but he does think that sometimes, two people click in a way where it’s clear that some kind of fate brought them together, and it’s not just that they bring out the best in each other – they bring out the essence of each other, for good or bad. (cough no i’m not talking about mickey cough.) so “the origin of love” gets him pretty emotional; i’ve been toying around with the headcanon that jake’s got a sun tattooed on his wrist, in reference for aristophanes’ children of the sun.

but!! the song that i really associate with jake, the one that basically sums up my eventual goals for his future happiness, is the reprise of “wicked little town” (+ “midnight radio,” since they more or less go together.) coming to terms with being left by the person you consider (openly or not) your other half, and with the idea that “there’s no mystical design / no cosmic lover preassigned.” in “midnight radio,” coming to terms with being whole on your own, not needing someone else to convince you of it.

part iii: did you know i never used to be into green day until college?? who would have thought, looking at me now

okay, so if you’ve spoken to me for five minutes or looked at my blog playlist for five seconds, you’ve probably also realized that i really strongly associate jake with green day. now, originally i associated him most with american idiot, in part because it was the only green day album i knew for a long time – and let’s be real, one nation controlled by the media is like.... literally pete’s world. the songs from american idiot i still associate with jake are “st. jimmy” because of – like many of the songs on the list! – the self-destructive behavior (and hence why i took the URL for my second blog from the line i’m the resident leader of the lost and found,) and a section of “homecoming” (mostly because of how it’s staged in the musical, with the one major character who’s been left out of all the action sitting on his couch, getting drunk, and snarling at himself nobody likes you / everyone’s left you / they’re all out without you / having fun.) oh, and “give me novocaine” – escapism and addiction, what what.

the second green day album i associate with jake is revolution radio. i mean, with so many songs about sticking it to the Man, is it much of a surprise? the title song is apropos for the preachers: compare a group named because they preach “the gospel truth” to give me ... the headline ‘legalize the truth’. if i had any kind of animation skills or the dedication to follow through with an animation project, i’ve had a vague idea for an animation set to “say goodbye” ft. traveling the world, fighting cybermen, and mourning the preachers. say goodbye to the ones you love cuts to a photo of ricky, and mickey saying goodbye to rita-anne; violence on the rise / like a bullet in the skies has the boys trying not to be, y’know, killed by cybermen or anything. 

but again, there’s one song in particular that makes me think of jake, and that’s “bang bang!” i saw an interview with andrew hayden-smith once for a behind-the-scenes doctor who thing, and he said something along the lines of jake joining the preachers and getting so into fighting lumic because he thinks it’s a bit of a laugh. now, i don’t totally agree with this – jake seemed pretty into the idea of executing pete tyler for working with lumic, and killing the guards who were guarding the zeppelin, and i think there’s some motivation for that other than just “lol murder is fun” – but jake does definitely enjoy the fighting, the conflict, more than he should. he grew up idolizing fighters, idolizing soldiers, idolizing people who use violent means for political ends. ( i wanna be a celebrity martyr / ... / i wanna be like the soldiers on the screen ) jake would make himself a martyr for the sake of the preachers’ cause; as much as he grieves ricky and mrs. moore’s deaths, he admires how they died. it’s how he wants to die: fighting, making a statement, going out in a blaze of glory. ( literally, in ricky’s case. haha. i’m terrible. )

finally, there’s one album that as a whole makes me think of jake, and that’s 21st century breakdown. its aesthetic, the styles of music, the themes intertwined throughout the album – media control (”the static age,”) religion & doubt (”east jesus nowhere,”) war and patriotism (”peacemaker,” “21 guns,”) abandonment and self-loathing (”restless heart syndrome”) – all resonate strongly with jake. (also, the kind of wistful loyalty in “last night on earth” makes it very much the kind of love song jake would listen to while lying face-first on his bed and having Feelings about the person he’s in love with. just sayin’.) 

finally, “know your enemy” is such a jake song. he’d play it to motivate people before going up against cybermen. he’d play it to pump himself up before a fight. he’d listen to it during training. he’d play it while getting ready in the morning and headbang so hard he accidentally headbutts the sink. that punk rock marching anthem, that call to violence, the stamp-your-boots-on-the-floor rhythm – they all work together to make me instantly think of jake whenever this song comes on.

IN SUMMARY: 

hell yeah punk rock!! revolution!! self-destruction!! (don’t follow jake’s example kids!!) if you’ve read all the way to the end, i admire your dedication. i don’t know how interesting it is or how much sense it makes, since i’ve also been half-watching death note while writing most of this, but i really enjoyed writing it. jake is a punk mess. i love him.