Side 2 Track 5 5.52. A song about how Britain, and London in particular in this case, became something of a battlefield towards the end of the late Eighties.
'King's Cross sums up how PSB's alchemy was becoming prophetic at this point. A song about poverty and disillusionment under Thatcherism, referring to the station that becomes the main gateway from the impoverished north, Tennant is talking about 'the smack of firm government when he sings of 'Dead and wounded on either side'. Two months after Actually's release, on 18th November 1987 thirty-one people lost their lives in a fire at King's Cross underground station. Many saw the disaster as a symbol of how London had declined under a government hostile to its multi-cultural politics, a sort of murder by neglect. The song seemed to see it coming.'
Garry Mulholland, Fear of Music
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