Advent of Holiday Horror: Song 17
Originally published at Big Ugly Man Doll. You can comment here or there.
Hard to believe we’re already on 17. We’ve been through Justin Bieber and Santa’s Beard - but I repeat myself. We’ve been through dead cats, Pearl Harbor, and priapic pine cones covered with marshmallow fluff. Are you getting hungry yet? I’m starved - in fact, I haven’t been this hungry since 1984.
But this isn’t about that. This is an advent countdown of Christmas and other miscellaneous holiday songs that make me barf a bit, the ones you know you’re supposed to love, but really you’d rather run hot wax in your ears than sit through them on the radio again - you know the kind I mean. Today’s exercise in holiday tune torture came to us from - oh, wait, this is about that. You know what we can do with all of Dean-o’s marshmallow fluff? Of course you do. We can feed the world.
Do they know it’s Christmas? Do they? I’m reliably informed, by which I mean my friend Beth told me and I’ve never known her to be wrong about anything, that 47% of the population of Africa is Muslim. They may know it’s Christmas, but I’m not sure they care much. There won’t be snow in Africa? Depends where you look, but mostly - no, no there won’t. There were 44 artists on the original cut of Bob Geldof’s immortal song, and by the time Do They Know It’s Christmas was recorded, most of them would have believed you if you’d told them it was Valentine’s Day. But hey, it was the ’80s. That’s OK. And hey, their hearts were in the right place, and they raised a LOT of money for a good cause. Maybe it’s time to write a new song, though? We could get 44 artists together to sing something that wouldn’t make people cringe 20+ years later…
Bob Geldof does not have a solo line in the song. There’s a reason for that. He also wrote it, and it shows. ”Hey, let’s put some really depressing words of guilt up against a solid, upbeat tune. What about something like ‘the Christmas bells that ring there /are the clanging chimes of doom / well, tonight, thank God it’s them instead of you.’ How about that?”
“Yep, that right there is the Christmas spirit, Bob. Thanks for playing.”
Oh, go on. You haven’t watched the damn thing since Martha Quinn’s first Christmas, and if you watch closely you can see Boy George giving his brother George Michael the finger.
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