FORT MYERS, Fla. — Conservative metalhead Edgar Hardy insisted that the “woke” interpretation of what life was like as a Powerslave in ancient Egypt is all wrong, according to viewers of a TikTok video he produced from his F250.
“The narrative on the left in the metal community is that the experience of being a Powerslave was entirely negative, and that’s just not correct,” said Hardy as he balanced a phone on his steering wheel in preparation for his next video. “The wokesters are always trying to hold people accountable for shit that happened a really long time ago that we had nothing to do with. Actually, things really weren’t so bad for the powerslaves. They learned skills like how to cut huge stone blocks from quarries and move them great distances. It would be good for young people today to toughen the fuck up and learn the value of hard work like that.”
Bruce Dickinson, Iron Maiden frontman and writer of the song “Powerslave,” offered some clarification on the matter.
“I doubt this sod ever actually listened to the lyrics,” said Dickinson while performing a pre-show codpiece snugness check. “If he had, he’d know that the song is told from the point of view of a pharaoh who is distraught that even as the most powerful person in the Egyptian empire, he is still a ‘slave to the power of death’—a mortal, just like everyone else. I’m not surprised, really, as Tories and the like have a tendency to misread most anything that has any nuance.”
Rock journalist Cliff Quist says that the right has a propensity for missing the point when it comes to song meanings.
“After researching conservative music criticism for some time now, it’s clear they generally have a hard time understanding what songs are actually about. For instance, I recently saw a video essay where a man holding an AR-15 asserted that Filter’s ‘Hey Man, Nice Shot’ is a pro-Second Amendment anthem,” said Quist. “There was a conservative music podcast that attempted to recontextualize Crass as a libertarian band. I also read a Substack article that somehow came to the conclusion that Bad Religion’s ‘Flat Earth Society’ was genuinely in support of the Flat Earth theory.”
At press time, Hardy had uploaded a new video suggesting that The Arcade Fire’s “Neon Bible” should be taught in schools.