"Nick Clegg Says I'm Sorry (The Autotune Remix)", also shortened to "I'm Sorry", is a 2012 song created for the satirical website The Poke by music producer Alex Ross. The song is a remixed version of a video of

Nick Clegg Sir Nicholas William Peter Clegg (born 7 January 1967) is a British retired politician and media executive who served as Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2010 to 2015 and as Leader of the Liberal Democrats from 2007 to 2015. H ...

(then

Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom The deputy prime minister of the United Kingdom is an honorific title given to a minister of the Crown and a member of the British Cabinet, normally to signify a very senior minister, the deputy leader of the governing party, or a key political ...

) apologising for voting in favour of raising

tuition fees Tuition payments, usually known as tuition in American English and as tuition fees in English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English, are fees charged by education institutions for instruction or other services. Besides public spen ...

. The song reached number 143 in the UK singles chart.

Background

In the 2010 general election, the Liberal Democrats stood on a platform of voting against any increase in university tuition fees and Clegg signed the National Union of Students'

Vote for Students pledge The National Union of Students (NUS) "Vote for Students" pledge is a pledge in the UK to vote against tuition fee increases that was signed by over 1,000 candidates standing in the general election in 2010, notably including a large number of ...

against any increase. The result of the election meant that the Liberal Democrats were the third-largest party in the

House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the Bicameralism, bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of ...

and formed a coalition government with the Conservative Party. Following the

Browne Review The Browne Review or Independent Review of Higher Education Funding and Student Finance was a review to consider the future direction of higher education funding in England. It was launched on 9 November 2009 and published its findings on 12 Octo ...

, there was a vote in Parliament to raise tuition fees to £9,000. It passed with a majority of 21; several Liberal Democrat MPs, including Clegg, voted in favour of it because of the principle of

Cabinet collective responsibility Cabinet collective responsibility, also known as collective ministerial responsibility, is a constitutional convention in parliamentary systems and a cornerstone of the Westminster system of government, that members of the cabinet must publicly ...

History

On 17 September 2012, Clegg issued a video apologising for voting in favour of raising tuition fees. On Thursday 20 September, the video of Clegg's apology was remixed and set to

Auto-Tune Auto-Tune is audio processor software released on September 19, 1997, by the American company Antares Audio Technologies. It uses a proprietary device to measure and Pitch correction, correct pitch in music. It operates on different principles ...

music composed by Alex Ross. The chorus of the song consists of Clegg singing "I'm sorry". The video containing the song was published on

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

by The Poke's official channel. The song became popular and The Poke announced plans to release the song as a single on

iTunes iTunes is a media player, media library, and mobile device management (MDM) utility developed by Apple. It is used to purchase, play, download and organize digital multimedia on personal computers running the macOS and Windows operating s ...

and asked the Liberal Democrats for permission to do so. Clegg granted permission for the song to be released on the condition that the profits went to the Children's Hospital Charity in

Sheffield Sheffield is a city in South Yorkshire, England, situated south of Leeds and east of Manchester. The city is the administrative centre of the City of Sheffield. It is historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire and some of its so ...

. The single went on sale the day afterwards. Clegg was reported to have found the video personally amusing and remarked it was "very catchy". Clegg's wife,

Miriam Miriam (, lit. ‘rebellion’) is described in the Hebrew Bible as the daughter of Amram and Jochebed, and the older sister of Moses and Aaron. She was a prophetess and first appears in the Book of Exodus. The Torah refers to her as "Miria ...

, described the song as "genius" and "very good".

Charts

The song charted at number 143 in the UK Singles Chart. It was noted that the song would likely have charted higher had it been released earlier in the week instead of on the Friday when the charts were officially published on Sunday.

References

External links

The Nick Clegg Apology Song: I'm Sorry (The Autotune Remix)
(The Poke) {{authority control 2012 songs Political songs Liberal Democrats (UK) Nick Clegg Satirical songs Songs based on speech samples Songs about politicians Cultural depictions of British people Cultural depictions of politicians