BROWN SHOES

From the film Sing Street

2016s Sing Street is up there with the pinnacle of band movies. The scenes in which Ferdia Walsh-Peelos Cosmo and Mark McKennas Eamon write, and the songs themselves, lend an authenticity which is rarely found in the genre.

The seriousness in which they take themselves is endearing, if bordering on pretentious, and the music videos they make are rough, yet ambitious, but crucially all of this is 100% believable.

The song I am focussing on today is the films penultimate, and the bands final, song Brown shoes.

Brown Shoes is a song that’s anger seeps through with every passing line, but its defiance, the bands unwillingness to change who they are in the face of adversity, is the main takeaway from it.

It is a fist-in-the-air anthem for the kids who were unapologetically different.

It is a song that sums up the entire film. A song that looks forward, not backwards. A futurist song. It is a song the showcases the bands journey from the start of the film to the end and one that sticks a finger up to those who try to hold down those with different values to themselves.

It is a song that, ultimately, sums up Sing Street. Both the band, and the film.


Directed by: John Carney

Starring: Ferdia Walsh-Peelo; Lucy Boynton

UK Release Date: 22nd April 2016