D:Ream on being booked for Glastonbury and the return of ‘Things Can Only Get Better’

nme.com:

D:Ream have spoken to NME about their shocked reaction to their 1993 hit ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ returning to the charts after being played over Rishi Sunak announcing a general election in a downpour – and how it has led to them being asked to play Glastonbury 2024.Last Wednesday (May 22), as a drenched Sunak took to a podium outside 10 Downing Street to reveal the snap July 4 election date, in the background protester Steve Bray played the Northern Irish band’s Number One song which had long been associated with Tony Blair’s landslide victory in 1997.The clip has since gone viral on social media platforms and entered the iTunes chart Top 10 within 24 hours.According to D:Ream singer Peter Cunnah, though, the political connotations of the song had become an albatross for the band over the New Labour years and beyond.“My first reaction was ‘not again, please let me move on’,” he told NME. “We all wanted that change in ’97, that sense of positivity.

After doing the Good Friday Agreement, [Blair] looked like he was the great, great saviour. And then he sexed up the document and went to war in Iraq, and we were standing going ‘not in our name’.

Then you get accused of having blood on your hands.”Rishi dishing out this speech in the pouring rain as “Things Can Only Get Better” is played loudly.Is this an episode of the Thick of It pic.twitter.com/NpnOJXta0F— Scott Bryan (@scottygb) May 22, 2024However, Cunnah did see the humour in the moment. “Obviously, it’s very funny that Steve Bray took the initiative but who the hell advised Sunak to stand in the rain?” he said. “What else could you play that wouldn’t be perfect?