TSHA - ‘The revolution will not be on social media’
Student radio gave me a fantastic opportunity to relay my music taste onto my adoring listeners (my mother and two out of four of my sisters). I had a regular feature where halfway through the show I would play what I believed to be the best song released that week. Now no longer a student, I have lost my access to the airwaves so instead, I will now be providing this vital public service through the written word.
To set the scene, the radio was on in the background, but I wasn’t fully aware of anything the presenter was playing or saying. This was up until I heard the lyrics to TSHA’s new song ‘The Revolution’. The phrase was immediately recognisable. It was a phrase I’ve heard so often but never before embedded within the electronic beats of house and club music. Turning up the radio, I stood by its speakers and waited through the next musical segment till the lyrics returned. But they were different from how I remembered them; the revolution, according to TSHA, will not be on social media.
TSHA’s ‘The Revolution’ pays homage to Gil Scott-Heron's ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised’. Released in 1971, the song was a product of the Civil Rights Movement and anti-Vietnam war protests that were both spreading rapidly across America. ‘The revolution will not be televised’ was a slogan originally coined during the 1960s civil rights activist campaign. Scott-Heron chose to position these words at the centre of his spoken-word-song, alongside verses of sardonic commentary ridiculing the triviality of consumerism. His simplistic yet bold lyricism delves deep into what it means to be a part of social change and to truly engage with a protest. Change is about action, not advertisement. Change comes from taking to the streets, not sitting in front of the screen. He looks consumerism in the face and exposes its role in pacifying even the most politically engaged within our society. In doing so, ‘The Revolution will not be Televised’ became an anthem for countless future revolutions. It’s iconic and provocative lyrics continued to inspire and to call to action generations of activist from those involved in London’s anti-nuke protests of 1983, to Tahrir Square, Cairo in 2011, to the Black Lives Matter marches of 2020.
Skip to June 2025 and we have now witnessed the modernising of Scott-Heron message in the form of a hypnotic dance anthem. With TV now being an outdated form of entertainment, TSHA uses ‘social media’ to bring Scott-Heron’s cry for action into the 21st century. We see the same mockery and disdain used against social media and online trends as Scott-Heron showed towards the TV culture of his time. References to Xerox and Coca Cola are replaced by Tik Tok and energy drinks:
“The revolution will not be a meme, it will not feature influencers with product codes, or a viral trend where everyone dances for change”
“The revolution will not be reposted, it will not be liked and shared or commented on, it will not come with filters to make it more appealing, it won’t be sponsored by energy drinks”
“There will be no Instagram story updates or Facebook status rants to explain it all”
We hear Scott-Heron’s lyrics echoed throughout the entirety of TSHA’s song. This echo haunts TSHA’s intense yet up-beat sequences as we the audience are brought to an understanding of society’s failure to learn from Scott-Heron’s original message. We are living in a time where the TV and adverts of Scott-Heron’s song are now relics of the past. Social media has not just replaced TV as the current form of entertainment; it has ultimately reconstructed how we are entertained. Our phones and the online platform which they grant access to hold the power to captivate and pacify our minds in a way TV never could. Since its release TSHA has written how the song was written as a reaction to ‘getting tired of seeing nothing but a sea of phones when DJing’. She discussed her fear that social media has removed us from ‘living in the moment and connecting with each other on the dance floor’.
I want to add that TSHA’s song taps into more than just social media’s power to render us socially and politically inadequate. Unlike TV, social media allows us to feel as if we are actually contributing to social change without having to do anything. As an online platform for communication, social media has found itself at the centre of social protests, so much so that some feel that nothing more needs to be done besides posting or liking a particular slogan or video. I’m not suggesting that social media is useless as a tool for social change. Since its birth, social media has proven itself essential in capturing the very spark that ignites social change and enables that spark to explode across the international stage. But we must always see it as purely a tool, nothing more. To assume platforms like Instagram, Facebook, or Tik Tok can be anything other than simply an aid to disseminating a message would be to fail to recognise what it truly means to engage in a political movement. Social media is not the site of a protest nor is it capable of truly encapsulating one’s energy. TSHA articulates this beautifully at the climax of her song:
“The revolution will happen in real life, out in the clubs, in the hearts, in the minds, the revolution will not be on social media”
Esme Gordon-Craig