When I began planning this series, I put together a pretty lengthy list of tunes to feature... but as time passed and enthusiasms waned, I realised it would become repetitive in many cases to go "here's another potentially racist / sexist / homophobic / transphobic tune, let's rehash the same arguments we had about the last one".
Still, I figured it might be worthwhile sharing the rest of my list with you. Most of these were found by doing google searches relating to "songs that are now considered politically incorrect" or similar. So I'm not the one pointing the finger, honest guv. Apart from maybe this one...
Here's the rest of the list. Here's what we could have talked about... and if anyone feels strongly about any of the songs below, and would like to pen a few words expressing their feelings for or against cancellation, I will happily run your thoughts in a bonus edition of the CCC at a future date.
And so we arrive at the final edition of the Cancel Culture Club, a worthy experiment, but one that has become more and more tiresome as time has gone on, because with a few worthy exceptions, I (and the majority of the committee) don't actually believe in Cancel Culture, even for the most offensive of old records. "Different times," as Mark Radcliffe often remarks, and we can probably leave it at that.
Still, it was fun while it lasted, and I've been impressed, humbled and immensely grateful to all the contributors for taking time out of their busy schedules to give me their opinions. You're all amazing, proof - and believe me, proof is needed on a daily basis - that it's not quite time to cancel the human race.
Our final tune then, comes as a special request from my "brother from the gutter", Ernie - although I did already have it on my longlist. Let's go back to 1978 when this Ode to the Gentleman's Game by Stockport's finest was at the top of the UK charts...
I was going to say that we'll kick off today... but that's not an appropriate metaphor, is it? Instead then, here's Walter from A Few Good Times In My Life to make today's first delivery...
10cc had a real hit with this song. Criticism has been levelled at the song for using too many stereotypes of Caribbean people in the lyrics and for linking their dialect directly to crime. We all know that generalisations are inaccurate. However, I doubt that Mr Gouldman intended it that way. Should it be ‘cancelled’? No, because there are too many songs whose content can be misinterpreted if one so wishes.
I started with Walter because his comment pretty much sums up the general consensus regarding, if not this particular song, then certainly the series as a whole. There are indeed too many songs whose content can be misinterpreted if one so wishes, and we've only scraped the surface of them here. But all good things must come to an end.
From Germany then, we jump up to Scotland to hear from Alyson and her Jukebox Time Machine. So Alyson, Dreadlock Holiday... What's It All About?
I had a look at the lyrics to Dreadlock Holiday last night and although I didn’t think of it back in the day, they are not particularly complimentary about the Jamaicans the tourist met along the way. Also, a white band from the North-West of England singing a reggae song would just not happen today.
Perhaps not, but it's amazing how many British bands jumped on the reggae bandwagon back in the day, isn't it? From the Police to The Clash... and if we were happy to let those guys do it, we can hardly chastise 10cc for the same cultural appropriation, can we?
BUT, like nearly every song we’ve explored in this series, it was written when the thinking about such things was not as highly evolved, so I’m not particularly blaming Graham Gouldman for having done so. He himself admits he wouldn’t write that song today although at the time most of the lines in the song were taken from real-life conversations he and Eric Stewart had whilst on separate holidays to the Caribbean. So, like nearly every song we’ve looked at, I’m going to give it a pass. The world was a much smaller place back in 1978 with travel to far-flung places only for the well-heeled. Globalisation has meant we now know about people from all over the world and we no longer make jokes about their perceived idiosyncrasies - they are often real people we know in our day to day lives. We now just need to get the warmongers off the global stage and life would be far less scary.
Hear hear! Though I'm not sure we're any more evolved these days - we just have a greater awareness of cultural sensitives. Well, some of us do anyway. Although there is a strong contingent desperate to turn back the clock to times when it was "OK" to be racist or sexist or homophobic - perhaps the white male elite who feel threatened that their patriarchal grip might be slipping...
Like with many of the other songs we’ve looked at, although I’m giving it a pass, I don’t really want to hear it on the radio anymore and I can’t say I have for a long time, so job done.
We'll stay in Scotland for our penultimate contribution today - and check out what The Vinyl Villain himself has to say about 10cc's Jamaican odyssey. What do you think, JC?
One thing worth remembering is that 10cc were a highly-regarded musical act, critically as well as commercially, as can be see from the run of hit singles and albums they enjoyed in the early-mid 70s.
There was often a bit of the theatrical about them, with them trying to perhaps show themselves up as being better than their peers, and to be fair the sounds/music that came with the 1975 ballad ‘I’m Not In Love’ were quite unlike anything many of us had heard before
The splintering of the band in 1976 saw the more avant-garde and creative duo of Kevin Godley and Lol Creme go one way, leaving Eric Stewart and Graham Gouldman to keep the band name and lucrative record deal.
The hits did still come via ‘I’m Mandy Fly Me’ and ‘The Things We Do For Love’ and then in 1978, came ‘Dreadlock Holiday’.
It sold in huge numbers…..spending three months in the chart between mid-August and late November, and laying the foundation for the parent album ‘Bloody Tourists’ to hit #3.
But it came at the expense of the critics turning on the band. And rightly so as Dreadlock Holiday is a stupidly cheesy piece of music, almost akin to a novelty record, with a lyric that was in some places cringey and toe-curling and in others horrific for stereotyping Jamaicans as having two loves in life – watching cricket and mugging white holidaymakers.
And let’s not forget that some of these lyrics were delivered in a faux-accent that nowadays would, rightly, be called out as racist behaviour.
It was, of course, a different time and I’d never dream of calling Stewart or Goldman racists – there was so much of that going on across ‘popular’ culture of all sorts, including some of our most watched television programmes.
Times, thankfully have moved on. It’s best that we bury Dreadlock Holiday in a vault and do our best to forget it ever existed.
The thing I like the most about JC's wonderfully considered response is the awareness of time, of effectively judging the song twice, once by the standards of the day, and once through more contemporary eye-glasses. We've had to do that a lot as this series progressed, and it's made me aware of how much the lens we view the world through changes. Not just society's lens, but our own individual lenses too. This may explain why we might now have friends who were radical lefties when they were young, but find themselves swerving towards Farage in later life. That swerve might be the result of a subconscious belief on their part that the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction. Or it may be that we're all destined to become Daily Mail readers in our dotage. I do hope not.
All of which brings us to today's final contributor, someone who I can't ever imagine turning to the dark side like that, even though he's sat out most of this series due to a "live and let live" liberalism which is most admirable. But when something does get his goat... watch out!
I'll start by saying that as much as I dislike the record I wouldn't cancel it. It is easy enough to avoid these days. That said I do really, really dislike it.
My main problem isn't with the dodgy accents in the choruses. They are clearly a bad thing and hopefully wouldn't be repeated if heaven forbid the song was recorded today, but to an extent you can use the "it was of its time" argument that has appeared in earlier editions of the CCC.
My problem is the lyrics. To illustrate my point I will make a comparison with another well-known example of dodgy Caribbean accents from the 1970s - "Barbados" by Typically Tropical.
Take away the dodgy accents from "Barbados" and what you have is a harmless song about a man in a dull job looking forward to his holiday. This perhaps comes through more clearly in the Vengaboys' classic remake...
Take away the dodgy accents from "Dreadlock Holiday" and what you have is something which is unpleasant, sneering and has nothing positive to say about the country at all. It trots out all the worst Jamaican stereotypes and the only Jamaicans to appear in the song are muggers and pushers.
It is hard to imagine the Jamaican Tourist Board will invite 10CC to the island in 2028 to celebrate the record's 50th anniversary, as happened to Typically Tropical in Barbados last year.
(Ernie sent a link to this, but I couldn't get it to open. You may have more luck.)
Graham Gouldman has claimed in interviews that "the idea was to take the mickey out of a white person trying to emulate West Indian cool", which sounds distinctly like what a professor of logic might describe as a load of post-hoc bollocks. If that was really the case then there must be plenty of ways of doing so without portraying Jamaica in an entirely negative way - unless of course Graham thinks mugging and drug-pushing are cool (they're not kids!). And it certainly wouldn't necessitate calling the locals "brothers from the gutter" (Graham has at least had the good grace to disown that particular line).
We live in a world of post-hoc bollocks though, don't we? Trump has made that the predominant language of the world... I'm not sure we'll ever go back now.
In the same interview Graham says that "every West Indian person I’ve spoken to about it has said they love it". While it is good to know that some of Graham's best friends are black, I still don't like it. Oh no!
Ooh - claws out at the end there!
Thank you, Ernie... and thank you to everyone who contributed to this series over the past nine months. I'm not going to belabour the conclusions we've arrived at... but neither am I willing to flog a dead horse.
Except... there will be a postscript tomorrow that may or may not be of interest. Until then - don't you cramp me style, don't you queer me pitch.
Welcome to the penultimate edition of the Cancel Culture Club. Yes, the steam's running out of this feature, but I like the idea of doing a Top Ten before calling it quits. Plus, I promised Ernie we'd find room for one of his favourites.
Meanwhile, we come to Lola. One of the biggest, most-loved hits by arguably Britain's best band of the 60s. Who in their right mind could possibly consider this classic pop song worthy of cancelling?
Step forward, honorary Cancel Culture Club member Richard Melville Hall, aka Moby, who last month decided that every copy of Lola should be burned in a big bonfire outside J.K. Rowling's mansion.
Here he is speaking the Grauniad, who probably cherished this quote and sent Moby a medal for his Services To Pseudo-Woke...
Lola by the Kinks came up on a Spotify playlist, and I thought the lyrics were gross and transphobic. I like their early music, but I was really taken aback at how unevolved the lyrics are.
OK, with the cat now firmly ensconced amid the pigeons, I wonder what the original CCC Committee members think about this matter? JC, The Vinyl Villain - care to offer your thoughts?
As long as I get to use the cliché ‘Moby’s a Dick’…
And to be honest, if that was the only response Moby's rant had elicited, I'd have been pretty content to leave it at that. But JC wasn't alone in his opprobrium. Here's the aforementioned Secret Agent and Alan Wicker replacement, Ernie from 27 Leggies..
Can we cancel Moby for being a pillock and, according to Natalie Portman, a bit of a creepy perv?
Do I need to add the word "allegedly" to that? Just to be on the safe side?
Blur - Girls & Boys
All very good, of course, but none of this is getting us any closer to considering the issue at hand - is Lola transphobic? SWC from No Badger Required...?
I do as it happens, have a very good story about Lola by the Kinks.....
Well, I do hope you'll share that with us one day, SWC, perhaps on your own blog in between all the other top notch features (currently a reader-generated list of the world's most underappreciated bands, of which my own entry will stick out like a sore thumb).
Here's C of Sun-Dried Sparrows fame to finally address the gender-swapping elephant in the room...
Unlike Moby, I just can't get worked up about 'Lola'. I interpret it as being positive, inclusive and, given the year of its release, really quite brave to tackle its subject at all, especially in such an unprejudiced way. I hear no negative connotations at all - in fact, quite the opposite: trans woman Lola gets pride of place, whilst the song's male narrator is self-deprecating and candid about his own naiveté.
That's how I've always interpreted it, C - and as always, you are able to express that in a far more precise and succinct way than I could have managed. And although songwriter Ray Davies remained silent on Moby's comments, his brother Dave was less reluctant to wade in...
“I am highly insulted that Moby would accuse my brother of being ‘unevolved’ or transphobic in any way.”
Dave goes on to explain how the song had support back in the 70s from San Francisco band The Cockettes, which included transgender members.
“We appreciated them. Why is Moby being so rude about this simple song? We’re not transphobic. Why does he have to have a go at us?”
Furthermore, Dave shared a letter from Dallas-born trans-punk singer Jayne County who admitted to being “thrilled and amazed” by Lola...
“Lola will always be one of those songs that for me ‘broke the ice’ so to speak! A song that breaks down barriers and brings a used to be, hush, hush subject to the forefront and makes it sound perfectly natural to be singing a song about a ‘girl’ named Lola!”
All of which sounds pretty conclusive to me, but it does open up a wider issue, which - once again - I'll let C put into words far better than mine...
What concerns me more instead is if there becomes an increasing trend of jumping on the 'woke' bandwagon without actually thinking something through and fully examining why, and Moby's outcry about these lyrics strikes me as a perfect example of that - a knee jerk response. There's only one jerk here as far as I can see, though, and it's not Ray Davies.
When I was initially putting together a list of songs for the Cancel Culture Club to tackle, I never considered Lola... until I asked Professor Google and found a number of people online who held the same opinion as Moby... and it wasn't just Lola that raised their hackles. No, there's also a lot of grumbling about this little beauty...
Holly came from Miami, F.L.A.
Hitch-hiked her way across the U.S.A.
Plucked her eyebrows on the way
Shaved her legs and then he was a she
She says, "Hey babe, take a walk on the wild side"
And because I figured that tune might well come up today, I mentioned it to the rest of the committee. Here's Walter from A Few Good Times In My Life with his thoughts on both tunes...
In both The Kinks’ song and “Walk on the Wild Side”, the lyrics are taken out of their original context. I can’t detect any homophobia or disrespect toward gender identity in either of them. What they have in common is that, in their lyrics, they tackled topics that were still considered taboo more than 60 years ago.
I don’t think anyone should have the right to judge a historical phenomenon in hindsight. If such texts are no longer used today, that’s fine. But they shouldn’t be criticized in hindsight or from a narrow perspective. In that sense, “cancelling” them is not appropriate.
Thank you, Walter. I think one thing we've agreed upon (with a couple of exceptions), through the duration of this feature, is that "cancelling" isn't appropriate in most circumstances. Maybe that's why we need to Cancel the Cancel Culture Club. Otherwise, we're just encouraging the likes of over-sensitive bandwagon-jumpers like Moby.
Our final response today comes from Swiss Adam, the man in charge of the Bagging Area...
Moby is, not for the first time, wrong.
I've always heard Lola as being totally sympathetic to Lola and to trans people. In fact Ray concludes by saying 'it's a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world / Except for Lola'. In the song, Lola is the least messed up and most sorted person. Lola knows exactly who she is.
Walk On The Wild Side is a work of genius, a song by Lou Reed at his post-Velvets best and who was living at the time he wrote it (and for the rest of the decade) with Rachel, a trans woman. Lou is celebrating Holly, Candy, Little Joe, the Sugar Plum Fairy and Jackie and all the other mixed up, shook up people who lived in his downtown New York world. His use of the word coloured is dated but we're going to have to let that go, I think.
Yeah, but at that time, "coloured" was considered the less-offensive terminology, wasn't it? Which links very nicely to what Walter says above.
I'm saving Adam's final line to close this post with... but first, a confession.
I had hoped to get an expert, first-hand opinion on today's issue, so I sent an email to an old friend who has become a leading figure in the transgender community. I felt a little cheeky in doing so, but I also felt like I'd regret it if I didn't ask her opinion on the matter.
Sadly, my email received no reply. There could be any number of reasons for this, but now I'm wracked with guilt in case I've caused offence. This is someone who often speaks about her own journey, and who is considered a champion of the transgender community... but there's a difference between being approached for comment by the press, and getting a personal email from an old colleague. Because I didn't want to follow that email up and worsen any potential offence I might have caused, I'd like to apologise here for it, just in case. My intent was honourable, in my mind at least.
But this did make me think... just because Jayne County and other members of the LGBTQ+ community have leapt to Lola's defence, we can't take it as read that every trans person feels the same. As the Cancel Culture Club has proved, our responses to art can vary, and there's no such thing as a "wrong" opinion, if you can justify it. I find Forrest Gump a deeply offensive film, for example, while other people think it's just a bit of light entertainment with a cheery moral. Am I wrong or are they? Or are we both just responding to a text in our own ways? I guess what I'm saying is, if a trans person does find Lola objectionable, who am I to say they're wrong? They've got more right to their opinion than I have to cast aspersions on Gump.
Against Me! - Transgender Dysphoria Blues
Still, I do think it comes down to intent versus interpretation. Going back to Moby's initial objection - is Lola... or Walk On The Wild Side, for that matter... actually transphobic? It may be possible to interpret either song in that way, but that surely wasn't the intent of either songwriter. One might infer an offensive meaning, but it doesn't appear either songwriter meant to imply that interpretation.
Or, as Swiss Adam puts it...
If Lou Reed and Ray Davies are on the wrong side of this debate, then I'm not sure where the debate has gone.
Welcome back to the feature where distinguished members of the blogosphere decide whether certain dodgy-opinion-voicing records of the past deserve to be cast into Room 101 (or sent into exile, which as I'm sure you'll know, if you've read 1984 rather than just watched the BBC show with that name, is a very different thing).
After last month's weighty debate about whether domestic abuse should be excused via the medium of popular song, I thought I'd choose something a bit lighter this month. Of course, the danger of that was that nobody would have much of an opinion either way... or, as Swiss Adam put it, "I can't really come up with anything for Mungo Jerry - I'm pretty ambivalent about it."
Membership of the Cancel Culture Club is on an unpaid, and entirely voluntary basis. So if you ain't got no opinion, you are fully entitled to say that and watch the tumbleweed blow across your screen. But before we see if anyone did have strong feelings one way or t'other, let's remind ourselves of this month's defendant...
When I initially searched the web for "songs that should be cancelled", this was one that initially had me scratching my head. A radio staple from my youth - what could possibly cause offence?
I'd almost forgotten about this one, sorry! But I think it's because 'In The Summertime' doesn't elicit any strong response in me other than the memories of hearing this so much as a kid and being mesmerised by Ray Dorset's sideburns on ToTP performances. I'd never seen anyone like him. I've never really given it much thought other than to accept it as one of those catchy, singalong, happy sounding songs, part of the soundtrack to my childhood. And, apologies, but to use words that come up so frequently in this series, it's another one of those that's very of its time. Maybe we're being more conditioned to take things literally now, but to me this song is just too lightweight for the lyrics to be of concern that way.
Therefore - yes, it references drinking and driving, it's laddish and hedonistic, but it's just not a song to be taken seriously on any level. so I wouldn't cancel it.
I'd cancel his sideburns, but that's just me.
(I think their follow-up 'Baby Jump' may give more cause for alarm - although it's a great grungey track!)
Anyway, back to In The Summertime. I was just about to draw the shutters down on this particularly uninspiring edition of the Cancel Culture Club when a last minute missive flopped through my virtual letterbox. And boy oh boy... it was a doozy.
There are a lot of things wrong with ‘In the Summertime’. Obviously, there are the lyrics, but I’ll come back to them. But before all that, you’ve got the awful plinky plonky piano nonsense that is trundling along in the background and the stupid noises that Ray Dorset makes across the song and all his grunts and groans that make it sound like he is dry humping his pillow during the closing bits of the song – all that I suppose is bad enough to cancel not only this song, but the band, their entire back catalogue and most of the seventies with it. Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if ‘In The summetime’ erm, popped up in one of those awful ‘Confessions…’ films starring Robin Asquith.
Anyway, let’s look at the lyrics, which were, even 50 years ago, depressingly stalkerish. You can imagine some crazed sex offender playing this track as he packed his little rape kit up and stuck it in the back of his Ford Anglia.
It starts, ok:
In the summertime, when the weather is high
You can stretch right up and touch the sky.
There is not much wrong with that to be fair, although I’m not sure how weather can be high, but we can skip over that. It’s the, well, rest of it that is a bit squirmy.
When the weather's fine
You got women, you got women on your mind
Have a drink, have a drive
Go out and see what you can find
Hmm, women on your mind, eh, well we’ve probably all been there, but have a drink, have a drive, go out and see what you can find…. I’ll refer you back to my line about the crazed sex offender and his Ford Anglia. It, unbelievably, gets worse.
If her daddy's rich, take her out for a meal,
If her daddy's poor, just do what you feel.
Speed along the lane, do a ton or a ton and twenty-five.
When the sun goes down
You can make it, make it good in a lay-by
So….Ray….rich girls, needs to be spoiled, before they let you have your wicked way, but those poor working class lasses, well they’ll probably put out for 50p and a bag of grapes, right??!?
You can tell he's the South West Correspondent. "Bag of grapes"? How posh is that. It'd be a bag of chips where I come from, lad.
Personally, I'm always impressed that they managed to get the word "lay-by" into a song, with all its sordid connotations. I was going to look if I could find any songs about dogging, but I decided to not risk putting that term into my search engine.
But not content with a planned molesting of a some really unfortunate female, you are also going to scare the life out of her by driving at a hundred and twenty fives miles a hour, after ‘having a drink’ and then pull into some layby for a bit of how’s your father…I’ll refer you back to my comment about Robin Asquith…
But its ok, folks, because Ray has a philosophy….Oh goody.
We're not grey people, we're not dirty, we're not mean.
We love everybody, but we do as we please.
When the weather's fine, we go fishing or go swimming in the sea.
We're always happy, life's for living
Yeah, that's our philosophy
Not quite sure which school of philosophy that comes from, possible Foucault and his Idea of Top Down Coercion or maybe Kant’s lesser known Theory of Blatant Misogynistic Bollocks.
Ray – love – you are grey, you are dirty and you are pretty mean. I don’t care if you love everybody, you really can’t do as you please, not now, not then. That’s why Dave Lee Travis can’t be on the radio anymore, he had that attitude and it wasn’t cool. Stick to your fishing and your swimming, at least then might get washed away by a rogue tidal wave.
Ah, I do love a good rant. They're the very oxygen this feature lives by. So thank you to SWC for that - and the rest of you, with your mild ambivalence: look what you're missing.
We might do another one of these next month. Or this might really be the last gasp. That's my philosophy.
I had wondered whether there was any merit / desire to
continue the Cancel Culture Club into 2026. We had such a good run towards the
end of last year, maybe we should have quit while we were ahead.
I decided to test the water and see if there was any
willingness to continue. And despite (or perhaps because of) the rather
sensitive subject matter of today’s songs, the committee rose to the occasion. Let’s
hear what they all think of this "classic" 1962 single from Phil Spector’s Wall
Of Sound…
We’ll start with JC, the Vinyl Villain, purely because he
was the first to send me a reply. And to be honest, until he did, I figured we
were all prepared to let this feature fade into the mists of the blogosphere…
The Phil Spector ‘wall of sound’ era was the early-mid 60s,
and so my initial knowledge of the songs that had been huge hits came solely
from hearing them, as a young kid, on BBC Radio shows at least a decade or so
later.The songs were constantly played
in ‘Golden Hour’ segments and suchlike, and with the radio being a near
constant presence in my home, I can, more or less, still recite the likes of
‘Be My Baby’, ‘Da Doo Ron Ron’ and ‘River Deep, Mountain High’ as they are
ingrained in my memory.
But I can’t do similar with ‘He Hit Me (It Felt Like A
Kiss)’.Indeed, I had to go to You Tube
to familiarise myself with it, and I genuinely didn’t recognise it.I’m not saying, for certain, that this was
the very first time I will have heard it, but it wasn’t a tune I recognised.
This, in my mind anyway, kind of says that the song was
cancelled long before that sort of phrase had ever been thought of.Having now heard the lyric, and looked it up
online to make sure I had heard it properly, let’s keep it that way.It’s abhorrent.
It turns out that JC is right - the song was pretty
much cancelled back in the day… something I hadn’t realised myself as it still
crops up on Crystals and Spector compilations pretty frequently. Allmusic
tells us…
While radio play was initially encouraging, the complaints
quickly began pouring in and, with the general public itself apparently
preparing to rise up in protest against the record, igniting one of those
periodic feeding frenzies to which society is so oddly prone, Spector pulled
the single, ironically just as it prepared to enter the chart. Controversy can
encourage sales, after all, as well as cripple them.
We’ll return to JC later, but for now let’s jump
over to Khayem from Dubhed, who’s ready
to separate the song from the sentiment… to start with, at least.
Structurally and sonically, it’s a brilliant song, the
minimal (at least, for Phil Spector) layers of sound perfectly complementing a
frankly perfect vocal delivery.
Neither songwriters Gerry Goffin and Carole King nor Spector
have, as far as I’m aware, sought to present the song as anything other than
what it was, the narrator rationalising that being hit by her boyfriend is a
sign of his love. The song was inspired by a real-life exchange Goffin &
King had with a teenage “Little” Eva (pre-Locomotion, she was their
babysitter), when she shared that she was regularly beaten by her boyfriend,
but had normalised the experience.
The song makes no attempt at a value judgement or counter,
the narrator simply presents their perspective as a statement of fact. I don’t
know that Goffin & King were intentionally trying to subvert the pop form,
but there is a power in what is left out as much as what is explicit in the
lyrics.
“If he didn’t care for me I could never have made him mad But he hit me And I was glad”
The image those lines create is of an otherwise emotionally
bereft, controlling relationship where physical harm is seen as a validation, a
hint of attention, a ‘gift’ of love.
And it’s clear that the chilling final line of “And when he
kissed me / He made me his” isn’t about how we might make ourselves vulnerable
and give ourselves wholly when feeling in love, but of objectification, of
being owned, possessed.
At least, that’s how it looks in the 21st century. I get it,
that I was already an adult when I first heard this song properly, with a
(slightly) greater understanding of what is now recognised and reviled as
abusive behaviour.
Would the target audience of 1962 have read between the
lines? Possibly not, given that it seemed socially acceptable - amusing, even -
to hit women until relatively recently. That scene in 1980 film Airplane!
springs to mind, with passengers queueing behind Leslie Neilson’s doctor to
‘slap sense’ into a distraught female passenger. And this is a comedy.
I had asked myself exactly the same question, K, so I was rather
surprised to discover (above) that most of the audience back in 1962 clearly could
read between the lines and didn’t like what they heard. It’s always tempting to
wonder if the generations that preceded us were ignorant savages. It’s the
arrogance of youth, but I should be growing out of that now I’m in my 50s.
Maybe we never learn.
Yet, I’m sure that the song resonated with many, who read
that deeper, darker meaning into the lyrics at the time. Despite Spector’s
‘neutral’ production - and acknowledging the subsequent revelation of his
monstrous abuse of woman - this is no jaunty sing-a-long. The funereal bass
line throughout and Barbara Alston’s vocals are not the norm. I hear the latter
now as being flat and disembodied, the life and expression seemingly
dissipated, the words of ‘justification’ seemingly learned by rote. That said,
it’s perhaps no surprise that the band disliked the song and Alston later
disowned it.
Interestingly, Carole King would also disown the song later
in her life – but perhaps that change of heart only game after she herself fell
victim to domestic violence (not from Goffin, but from her third husband, Rick
Evers, who died in 1978).
I have a couple of cover versions of He Hit Me (And It Felt
Like A Kiss) in my collection. One is by Grizzly Bear, which effectively
translates to a same-sex relationship. The other is by Catherine Anne Davies, aka The Anchoress, who has openly shared her lived experience of an abusive
relationship. I recalled that they both sounded like pretty straight covers but
I was intrigued to revisit them and see if either artists had adapted the
lyrics in any way. As it happens, they haven’t.
All of which protracted preamble (and thanks for sticking
with me) leads me to conclude that I don’t think this song should be cancelled.
I don’t think the writers or performers, then and now, have intended to present
a narrative or message that an abusive relationship is okay. They’re simply
conveyed the perception of someone in that situation and left it to the
listener to arrive at their own understanding and interpretation of the
narrative.
I think you nailed that, K – over on allmusic again, critic
Dave Thompson suggested that both the songwriters and Spector were more
interested in “documenting” domestic violence rather than “preaching”. Again,
it’s tempting to wonder if a pop song aimed primarily at teenagers is the right
place to do that… but in asking that question, am I making a similar value
judgement on young people that I aimed at older generations earlier? Can’t
teenagers be just as socially aware as adults – even more so in some cases? I
dunno… I think back to myself as a teenager. I certainly thought I knew it all,
and knew better than my elders in a lot of cases… but a lot of my opinions back
then wouldn’t stand up to any kind of scrutiny today.
Let’s move on to C from Sundried Sparrows,
who also feels initially torn between the medium and the message…
Sadly, no matter how much I like this song aurally for its
kitsch, characteristically Spector, production - the strings, the drumbeat, the
vocals so of their time, etc. - I just can't listen to it now without thinking
about the many women I've heard about, and the few whom I've also known, who've
been physically abused by their partners.The song delivers its heartrending message with haunting sincerity.At no point does it seem satirical or
exaggerated.He hit me.And I was glad.
It absolutely nails the particularly toxic psychological
element of an abusive relationship. The very idea that the boyfriend's violent
reaction to the girl's unfaithfulness is proof of his "love", and
that she's grateful for this, grateful that he showed how much he
"cares", reveals so much. She's grateful to be loved by someone
capable of hitting her, as if the circumstances - where she confessed to being
unfaithful - made it perfectly acceptable for him to do so. We all know that,
in reality, it wouldn't end there. It would only be the beginning.The balance of power has already been tested
and proven in his favour, the cycle of abuse would continue.
I’m reminded of Lucy Mangan’s review of a new Netflix
documentary that I read recently in the Grauniad.
I’ll quote a whole paragraph for context…
Lover, Liar, Predator tells the stories of several women who
were coerced, abused and raped by a man called Aaron Swan over his decades-long
career. He was 17 when he approached Natalie at a party. She was 17 too but, as
a devout Christian with a very protected upbringing, effectively younger and
highly vulnerable to his charms. He put pressure on her to give up her
virginity. She got pregnant and they married. He was “demeaning and unkind” to
her, insulting her looks, claiming to be in love with his ex and subjecting her
to violent, unwanted sex (“I endured whatever was required … I thought that’s
what sex was”) for years.
Mangan calls the documentary “an instant rebuttal to that
most unsympathetic question: why don’t women just leave their abuser?”, and the
explanation given at the end of the paragraph above is both horrifying and
deeply, deeply sad. It’s heartbreaking that anyone can grow to accept this
behaviour as a norm. And in the current climate, where so many rich, powerful
men are attempting to justify the mistreatment of women, to excuse it, to
normalise it (or to just pretend it didn’t happen)… I guess we have to keep
reminding ourselves how that power balance works. Maybe that’s a reason not to
cancel this song, as unpleasant as it clearly is. And maybe that’s why artists
like the ones Khayem cites above feel the need to revisit it 60+ years later.
It's very telling too, I think, that our narrator uses the
phrase, "but it didn't hurt me".It's really subtle but something about the use of the words
"it" and "me" in this line give it a different slant. To me
this says nothing about actual physical pain, instead it appears to refer to
the overall outcome - i.e. she's come out of it ok.She now has proof of his love, no harm done.Being hit and being kissed are now
metaphorically the same to her, declarations of adoration.
Which takes us right back to that chilling quote from the
Lucy Mangan article, doesn’t it?
Also very telling, as sadly so many women in abusive
relationships will attest to, is the description of the boyfriend's tenderness
immediately afterwards.It's so
desperately, horribly true that typical behaviour of an abuser is to bombard
their partner with affection, tenderness and remorse as well - lovebombing -
enough to manipulate the abused into complete forgiveness and denial of the
bright scarlet flags being waved in their faces.And then we get the possession thing:
"and when he kissed me, he made me his".Of course, all my modern feminist tendencies
are aggrieved by this one small possessive word - and I know it was very
different in past decades, I must cut it some slack!But still, given what has gone on before in
this simple, disturbing description of a relationship, that final line carries
a graver message.
Yeah, I don’t think that line would be so exceptional in
another pop song – there’s a distinction surely to be made between possession
in terms of ownership and possession in terms of symbiotic devotion? It’s human
nature to want to be so close to another person as to feel like you belong to
them. I thought about all the songs that use this particular phrase...
What do you notice about those lists? The songs claiming
ownership all come from men. The ones pledging to be (or denying that they are)
a possession all come from women.
Admittedly, I’ve rigged the vote, there were some songs that
broke the gender barriers established in my samples above (in fact, after about
1990, far more women appear to be claiming a man to be “mine” than the other
way round). Maybe relationship equality really has taken hold in the pop world?
Sorry, C – I keep interrupting you!
I only read about the history of this song after I'd put
down my own thoughts - the background (as has probably already been mentioned)
being that Goffin & King wrote it after their babysitter, Little Eva, told
them that she put up with her boyfriend beating her because it was motivated by
his love. I also read that there were widespread protests about it on its
initial release, so it's not as if we're just coming at it from a more modern
perspective.Should it be cancelled now,
though- or are we able to hear it as a
brutal but cautionary tale?Unfortunately, whilst I can hear it as the latter, I just think it's too
close for comfort for airplay in an age where domestic abuse is still so
prevalent. And knowing it was based on truth and presented without any irony
just puts the tin lid on it now.
Ah yes – the irony interpretation. It would be possible to
present the lyrics of this song in an ironic fashion – arguably, that may well
be what the cover versions Khayem alerted us to earlier are attempting to do.
But to quote Dave
Thomson one more time…
In more ironic hands (and a more understanding age), 'He Hit
Me' might have passed at least as satire. But Spector showed no sign of
appreciating that, nor did he feel any need to.
Which might be a good time to let Alyson of the Jukebox Time Machine have her say.
What’s It All About, Alyson?
This response won’t take long Rol, because any song that is
titled, He Hit Me (It Felt Like a Kiss) is a big no-no from me. Having looked
into it a bit more, it seems this was a line used prior to the song being
written as it appeared in films, most famously in the musical Carousel. The
songwriters Gerry Goffin and Carol King apparently heard their babysitter
(Little Eva of Locomotion fame) use it and Gerry (the lyricist) thought it
would be a good subject matter for a song – WRONG. It seems that people who
suffer domestic abuse or endure dysfunctional relationships can see it as a
sign that their partner really loves them, because of the passion aroused in
them at the thought of losing them!! I know what I would think if anyone ever
hit me, and it wouldn’t be that they felt so passionately about me they were
driven to violence. But I suppose I have been lucky in that regard, and not all
women are as lucky. The fact Amy Winehouse also recorded it reflected her
troubled relationship with “her Blake”.
I couldn’t find a version by Amy anywhere, Alyson, although
I did find this
clip where she discusses the song. Then again, I also saw it suggested
online that Amy had wanted to do a cover of Lesley Gore’s You Don’t Own Me… but
she settled on recording another Gore song instead.
It’s getting harder and harder to sift facts from fan- or
AI-created nonsense these days though. Anyway, you were saying…
So, for the first time in this series, I am going for
absolute cancellation. It doesn’t even have any redeeming features in terms of
how it sounds – a dirge that matches the grim subject matter being explored.
Ironic too that the song’s producer was Phil Spector who had a dire track
record when it came to relationships with women.
Yes, I’m surprised other committee members haven’t made more
of the fact that Phil Spector was the man behind this particular misfire. Perhaps
Martin from New Amusements
will have something to say about that…
The Crystals. Where to begin? I mean, the lyrics are
desperate - first of all, our narrator tries to make light of her boyfriend's
casual violence ("he hit me but it didn't hurt me"), then find a
positive in it ("he hit me and I knew he loved me"), then celebrate
it ("he hit me and I knew I loved him"). In the middle of all that,
she even seems to welcome the abuse ("he hit me and I was glad"). All
of which made me wonder if this warped perspective came from producer Phil
Spector but no, it's a Goffin-King composition, and based on the real-life
experience of their babysitter, Little Eva. So a cautionary tale, perhaps? And,
as such, there may be no cultural grounds for cancellation. That said, this is
far from the best work of everyone involved, so if I never heard it again I
wouldn't be too upset. You might even say I was glad.
Which seems to be the overall sentiment regarding this
particular tune. Thank you, Martin. But wait… when I threw this suggestion out
to the committee, I also name-dropped a couple of other tunes which (on the
surface, at least) tackle a similar subject matter. Mainly because I figured
they might pop up as part of the discussion… although I’m wondering now if they
might not have done, and the only reason people felt drawn to comment on them
was because I’d made the link.
The first was this, which has quite a similar title…
Should we be equally disturbed by the way Florence links
love to violence?
Let’s return to Martin…
The Florence & The Machine track, at first glance, is
less concerning. Both halves of the couple seem to be giving as good as they
get: "You hit me once, I hit you back, you gave a kick, I gave a slap, you
smashed a plate over my head, then I set fire to our bed" and so on. I
mean, it's not a relationship I'd want to be in but if it works for them...
except "a kiss with a fist is better than none". That doesn't seem
like a healthy position for anyone to be in. That said, I have seen the
argument that this song isn't about symbiotic domestic abuse but rather a
metaphor for the strength of the narrator and her lover’s passion. Mind you, in
the same paragraph I saw a parallel drawn with Bleeding Love by Leona Lewis,
which possibly undermines the argument.
Bottom line? I wouldn't cancel either of them. I find The
Crystals song more problematic, because of the excusing, acceptance and
desperate celebration of the narrator's position. It feels less like she is an
equal partner in a relationship, more like she has Stockholm syndrome. But it
serves as a cautionary tale, perhaps, and gets people (not least the Cancel
Culture Club jury) talking about these issues. And it's the same for Florence;
I'm not sure I'd want anyone to be joyfully singing along with this, but if
they're thinking about the position someone must be in to feel that a kiss with
a fist is better than none, then the song has done some good work. Possibly.
Which brings us nicely back to the question about art being
unafraid to tackle serious, disturbing issues and make us question our thoughts
on such matters. But does that depend on the ability and maturity of the
audience to appreciate those questions… should casual, throwaway “pop” art be
given the same consideration in that respect as serious literature or fine art?
Is it patronising to draw a line between the two… or necessary, in order to
avoid misinterpretation and offence?
What did JC make of Kiss With A Fist?
Until posed the question by Rol, I hadn’t imagined linking
this to the song by The Crystals.
It’s not one I’d call to be cancelled, primarily as I don’t
think it is concerning itself with domestic violence per se.
Yup, it beings with ‘you hit me once, I hit you back, you
gave me a kick, I gave you a slap, you smashed a plate over my head’ which is
all very horrific sounding.But the next
line, delivered without any sort of pause - ‘then I set fire to our bed’ – is
the key to everything as it confirms the lyrics are very much about imagery.
The use of poetic license makes for a sound defence.
Burning beds are a common metaphor in pop songs, aren’t
they? For all kinds of things…
It’s all put into context by the next verse ‘My black eye
casts no shadow, your red eye sees no blame, your slaps don't stick, your kicks
don't hit, so we remain the same, love sticks, sweat drips, break the lock if
it don’t fit.’
I think of it more as a cartoon love song that could be
accompanied by scenes from ‘Tom and Jerry’ or ‘Itchy and Scratchy’.
Quite – and funnily enough, C made exactly the same
comparison…
Talking of irony, you also mentioned: Florence & The
Machine:Kiss With A Fist.
And I hear this very differently to the Crystals' song.It's over-the-top, it has proper shock value,
it's crazily extreme (I hope!) and it's this which somehow diminishes any
seriousness.It depicts its violence in
a kind of 'Tom & Jerry' way - yes, I can visualise the animation for it
now, the plate smashed to smithereens over the head of someone causing a whirl
of dizzy stars as they fall to the ground with crossed eyes, the bed engulfed
in a cartoon fire, flecks of soot and sparks flying everywhere....It's vicious, visceral...in fact, too
vicious, too visceral, to be truly troubling. Isn't that weird? - perhaps it
should be very troubling, but its unrestrained ferocity, is the key - like a
parody.And it's two-way.Not that I'm condoning two-way violence over
one-way violence but, you know, fair's fair here.I'm fine with this!
Some couples like a bit of rough, eh? And as long as
everyone is consenting… well, it’s a free world, as Kirsty once said.
Although they have the same theme, their intentions are to
be evaluated differently. While Florence & The Machine apparently
addresses a violent relationship that is lived by both partners, The Crystals
sing about domestic violence. Kiss With a Fist is a great and catchy pop song
with an abstruse theme that I can't quite understand, but still tolerate. In He
Hit Me, the partner's violence in the relationship is glorified and celebrated
as proof of love. These ideas counteract pretty much everything women have
fought for in recent decades and should no longer be played, as there is still
too much domestic violence in our society.
Thank you, Walter – a fine summation of the overall feelings
of the committee thus far. Although there’s still one member waiting to have
his say – Swiss Adam from Bagging
Area. And I’ve saved Adam to the end for a good reason. He was the only one
brave enough to tackle the other song that I couldn’t help think about in
regard to this particular subject…
(I tried to find the actual video and the only site that had it in full wanted me to age-verify before they'd let me watch it!)
Before we get onto that little beauty, let’s hear Adam’s
thoughts on today’s principal defendant…
He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss) is a problematic song
and I don't know where I stand on it.
Domestic violence is very bad.
The song is clearly about domestic violence.
It was co- written by Carole King (under Phil Spector's
guidance).
Spector was a very bad person- imprisoned for murdering a
woman and abusive to his wife Ronnie over many years.
It was written by Goffin and King on discovering that their
babysitter- Little Eva, yes, that Little Eva- was regularly beaten up by her
boyfriend and when they asked her why she put up with it, she replied it was
because he loved her so much.
The song's musical backing is wonderfully Spectorian but
also brooding and dark. The Crystals sing so sweetly but sound numbed.
Are the writers, singers and musicians merely documenting
domestic violence? Is there a glorification of it? Does it normalise domestic
violence?
Maybe. Maybe. Probably.
Carole King later said she regretted ever writing the song
and was a survivor of domestic abuse herself.
It's bad news all round.
Maybe it's best if it's seen as a time specific 1960s/ Phil
Spector piece- and treated in the same way that we treat 'art' from the racist
1930s USA or 1940s Germany, something that existed, can be discussed
historically/sociologically but not held up for enjoyment or admiration.
We keep circling back to these overriding questions about
art, its intention, our ability to consider it in context… and the question of
whether everyone will / can do so in the same way. And do we have the right to
censor art – to CANCEL it – just because other people might not be able to
apply the same context and considerations that we do?
Is there even a kind of pseudo-intellectual arrogance in
asking that question? Oh, the dilemma!
Sorry. Carry on, Adam…
Without it though, we'd never have had Spiritualized's She
Kissed Me (And It felt Like A Hit) which is a brilliant inversion of the title
and the song, Jason comparing love and narcotics in a way only he can.
Well, that is clearly a work of genius on all counts. But
what about the elephant in the room, Adam?
The Prodigy's Smack My Bitch Up is also problematic. It was
at the time. I always got a sense that The Prodigy knew it would be, that a
deliberate wind up of left-wing sensibilities was behind it, that it was in
some way 'punk'. Weird in a way because rave (which they came out of) was not
misogynistic, it was very much desexualised in some ways, boys (with long hair)
and girls (with short hair) in baggy clothes dancing to music in a field.
Smack My Bitch Up was a nod to hip hop (which had massive
use of the word bitch all the place) and a shock factor song with an equally
'hey Mum I shocked the kids' video. Even at the time it felt like we should
have moved past that, it was puerile rather than punk.
I always felt that it was a case of arrogant folly. Of
trying too hard to be ‘punk’, crossing the same line that John Lydon did many
years earlier… but because times had moved on, the Prodigy had to try so much
harder to be shocking in the 90s than Johnny Rotten did in the 70s. I’d be
interested to know if the song was written after the success of Breathe and
Firestarter – if, following the triumph of those two discs, the band felt
untouchable… but also felt they had to push the envelope much, much further to maintain
their status. Positioning it as the opening track on Fat of the Land seems an
intentionally button-pushing act of self-belief / over-confidence.
The Beastie Boys weighed in and asked Prodigy not to play it
at the Reading Festival (both were appearing on the same bill) and the Prodigy
obviously said no. Rightly I guess - one artist can’t choose another's setlist.
The Beastie Boys themselves had gone through their own awakening regarding
gender equality and sexism, denouncing their own early sexist singles and their
attitudes and apologising on Sure Shot -
'I want to say a little something that's long overdue
The disrespect to women has got to be through
To all the mothers and the sisters and the wives and friends
I want to offer my love and respect to the end'
The word Bitch has gone around. In the 80s and 90s it became
seen as misogynistic (rightly), a term used by men to demean women. I can't be
the only one who remembers left wing activists chanting 'ditch the bitch' when
protesting against Thatcher. I loathed Thatcher but that ain't right.
In the 90s the word seemed to be used mainly by men who
wanted to appear edgy. Hello Quentin Tarantino (a man so edgy he liberally used
the N- word too, writing scripts full of both words as if it was a personal
mission to see how often he could get actors to say them - one of the most
quoted lines from Reservoir Dogs is, 'Eddie, you keep talking like a bitch, I'm
gonna slap you like a bitch'. He goes similarly off in Pulp Fiction 'why you
trying to fuck him like a bitch?'). Tarantino looked at the world like a 13
year old boy. I think Smack My Bitch Up looks at it the same way.
Interestingly my daughter, a history/ politics graduate,
left wing feminist who wrote a dissertation on 4th wave feminism and beauty
culture, uses the word bitch a lot - in a fairly non- genderised way, sometimes
describing both men and women as 'bitches'- the exact meaning varies, it can be
used to describe those who gossip and talk shit about people but also to
describe people, male or female, who are sneaky, duplicitous or those don't
stand up for themselves. She also uses it in a 'boss bitch' way, celebrating
powerful women (the reclaiming the word thing, using it as a sign of strength
and empowerment). Maybe we're post-bitch now.
I wonder if the current usage of the word comes from the
world of Drag Race and its ilk? Whenever I hear it used in that context,
that’s what I think of. Or maybe Meredith Brooks just changed the world back in 1997 (same year as the Prodigy!)…
Yes, it’s time to let in light and banish shade as the
Cancel Culture Club celebrates Christmas in the best way possible… by giving
Bono a kicking.
Now, yes, I know Bono wasn’t the instigator of Band Aid –
that was Bob and Midge. But I’ve got nothing particularly against Bob or Midge, so I’m going
to credit them with all the good things that can be said about Do They Know
It’s Christmas? while I happily let Bono take the flack for everything else. In doing so, I
hope to set the record straight / rewrite history in staggeringly Trumpian
fashion, because in our world of plenty, I like to spread a smile of joy at
Christmastime.
But it’s not all about me, me, me, is it, Bono? There were
other people in Band Aid, you know. Just as there are other people in the
Cancel Culture Club Committee. So let’s hear from them…
Surely we shouldn’t cancel Band Aid? Let’s start by asking
C, shall we? She can usually find the best in everybody…
'Do They Know It's Christmas?' Oh gawd.For me, it's not so much what's wrong with
it, but what could possibly even be right with it?I can't find a single thing for the latter.Oh, I suppose it had good intentions, but
Christ (sorry, and on your birthday too, Mr Jesus) what a tasteless,
patronising, mawkish, embarrassing, dumbed-down, nauseating load of absolute
drivel of a way to... to "raise awareness"?On the above grounds, I would most definitely
consign it to the landfill of eternal doom along with all the non-biodegradable
crap festive debris, never to be played again.
“The landfill of eternal doom”… ah, C, poetic even in opprobrium.
What about the wonderful John Medd? Surely he’s got
something nice to say?
Do they know...?
A very tired song now. Geldof has consented to so many
lyrical changes over the years that it barely represents the original. Put it
out to pasture; it's done its job now. It's a crying shame the musical
cognoscenti didn't wrap their arms around Gaza with such gusto.
Ooh: little bit of politics. When I first read John’s
comment, I thought he was suggesting a charity record in aid of Paul Gascoigne,
such is my ignorance of world affairs, and I did wonder what poor old Gazza was
crying about now.
Do They Know It's Christmas? is an interesting one. I know
we're not allowed to cancel on the grounds of quality or personal preference…
Actually, I think this series has categorically proven that
it’s impossible to make a decision on cancellation without being biased by
personal preference. And maybe that’s why it’s time to bring it to an end,
worthy experiment though it was. There’s enough negativity out there, and I
always wanted this blog to be a place to celebrate good music, not slag off the
things I don’t like (Bono excepted, of course). Oh, sorry, Martin… I
interrupted you mid-sentence…
…but for clarity let's start by binning all the anniversary
re-treads since, to which the law of diminishing returns most certainly
applies. I'm looking at you, Band Aid 20 and Band Aid 30. They're gone because
they're crap and no-one cares about them.
OK, let’s take a pause to consider this. I have to admit,
until Martin brought them to my attention, I was blissfully unaware of every
Band Aid sequel apart from this one…
Now back in 1989, I had no time for it at all. I mean, it
was produced by Stock, Aitken & Waterman, for god’s sake. So that explains
why Kylie, Jason and Sonia (!) were up front. And Cliff’s on there, of course.
And Marti Pellow’s huge, shit-eating Joker-grin. And bloody Bros! With star
names like Glen Goldsmith, Big Fun, D Mob and and the jam-pumping Technotronic (incorrectly listed
as "Technotronics" on the record sleeve). A gleeful reminder of why
the late 80s really was the nadir of pop music.
But wait, looking back now, I also feel a twinge of
nostalgia in the same way my Mum’s generation might get dewy-eyed about air
raid sirens and gas masks. Look – there’s Jimmy Sommerville. Lisa Stansfield.
Bananarama! Maybe 1989 wasn’t so bad after all… at least there’s no Bono. That
in itself should surely grant Band Aid II a stay of execution. Especially when
compared to…
Looking at the list of contributors, I figured I might like this
a lot more than I did. Apparently Neil Hannon’s on there (somewhere?) and Thom
Yorke’s playing the piano. But you wouldn’t notice, because all I got from the
video was Chris Martin, Dido, Robbie Williams and that bloke from Keane who
looks like a young David Cameron. I quite enjoyed Dizzee Rascal’s bit, but the
true horror was reserved for… the return of Bono. Just when you thought it was
safe to go back in the water, etc. Oh, and there’s a really cringey bit where a
haggard (not faggot - see previous edition) Saint Bob makes all the early noughties pop sensations stand around in
the studio watching old Ethiopian snuff movies with a tear in their eye,
presumably just before Damon Albarn brings them a nice cuppa. (I credit Damon
with that because iffypedia has him down as ‘Tea Boy’ – but that could well be
someone taking the piss.)
We will get back to Martin’s thoughts in a moment, but as he
started me down this particular rabbit hole...
Strangely I feel more ignorant about the pop music of 10
years ago than I do about the pop music of today. Thanks to Sam, I am at least
aware of the bigger names in pop right now (and some of them I’ve even taken a
shine to), but One Direction, Rita Ora and Olly Murs are names I recognise without
any context at all. That’s not to say there aren’t people in this mob who get
royally on my tits – Ed Sheeran for one, and Sam “nicked a Tom Petty tune for
my biggest hit and then tried to deny it” Smith for another. Guy Garvey
delivers his line with customary style though. (But… you see… this is where the
“personal preference” thing starts to bog us down.) I’m not quite sure how Seal
and Sinéad ended up with this lot – presumably they were just walking past the
studio and Bono dragged them in. Yes, the Irish Pope’s here again, although he
changes his infamous line on this version…
And the Christmas bells that ring there are the clanging chimes of doom Well tonight we’re reaching out and touching you
Oh my God, that's even worse. The idea of Bono reaching out and touching me... I feel like I need to bathe in Domestos for a week.
Last year was the 40th anniversary of Band Aid,
but thankfully we were spared another retread… although looking at the biggest
names in British pop at this moment (according to the interweb), I’m pretty
sure we’d just have been made to endure Ed Sheeran* and Coldplay again… perhaps
with added Dua Lipa and Olivia Dean. Maybe Adele, if she wasn’t too busy in
Vegas. Instead, we got this…
…in which they dug up dragged Trevor Horn out of
retirement to mix an “Ultimate Version” of the perennial “Christmas favourite”
which featured the “best bits” of all the Band Aids (but nothing from Band Aid
II – make of that what you will), including a truly horrific moment when all
three Bonos are singing together (original lyrics!) like some multiversal
nightmare. To be fair to him, looking at all three Bonos together like that…
why, he hasn’t changed a bit in 40 years. Yes, he’s still a c___.
*Interesting interjection regarding Ed Sheeran – apparently
he wasn’t happy about his vocals being re-used on the 2014 version because, “a
decade on, my understanding of the narrative associated with this has changed”.
Sheeran cited Ghanaian-English songwriter Fuse ODG as being the one who changed
his mind. Fuse had already turned down the opportunity to take part in the 2004
version because:
"…I recognised the harm initiatives like it inflict on
Africa. While they may generate sympathy and donations, they perpetuate
damaging stereotypes that stifle Africa's economic growth, tourism, and
investment, ultimately costing the continent trillions and destroying its
dignity, pride and identity."
See, I didn’t want this post to be purely about making fun
of Bono. There had to be some serious opinions in here too. That said, I won’t
waste your time with any of the other versions…
LadBaby – Do They Kn… no, I can’t even bring myself to link
to that one
…because I’ve already interrupted Martin far too much today.
Please, Martin, continue. The floor is yours…
So we're just considering the original source material,
Saint Bob et al's 1984 worthiness. Why might it be problematic? I guess there's
more than a touch of white saviour complex to a repeated desire to feed the
world, and in the 40+ years since, numerous African politicos have voiced the
opinion that other sentiments ("It's a world of dread and fear" and
"Where nothing ever grows") have been frankly unhelpful in
characterising a continent. Earlier this month, even Saint Bob declared that he
was both bored and done with Band Aid.
I did go read that interview, for research, and I’m not sure
he quite meant it in the way it was presented in the press. “…I get bored so
easily. In this case that’s mitigated by the effect Band Aid’s still having –
it’s keeping millions of people going – and by the rage I feel when I see
injustice. But, being very honest, often this shit bores me.” Hardly sounds
like he’s washing his hands of it completely.
So it seems like a good time to nix the song, right? But,
but, but... it can't be cancelled. Quite apart from the step change it made in
how people and their entertainers responded to charity, it's a Christmas single
that is every bit as engrained as Slade, Wizzard and Wham. This song is a part
of our generation's Christmas, as much as tinsel and pigs in blankets. And it's
a snapshot of our youth - we can all still remember who sang which lines, can't
we? Most importantly though, it's a song that did, and continues to do, more
good than any subsequent perceived harm - its ledger is very much in the black,
ironic though that might be for a bunch of white saviours....
Ah, well, that’s more like it. I always like to see a
diversity of opinion from the Committee members, and Martin is the first to
find anything really good to say about Band Aid.
But guess who’s coming along to back him up? Only our correspondent
from a land where nothing ever grows, no rain or rivers flow… Take it away,
George!
Band Aid: I lived through that period of the initial release
of the song as a young and immature adult, sneering at the mundane music and
has-been pop stars, and I suspect many of your readers adopted a similar pose.
But for a single record to raise so much money, and help publicise such an
appalling situation is quite remarkable, and to complain about the well-meant
lyric is beyond churlishness. So I am firmly against cancelling.
To follow George, how about someone who rarely comes down on
the same side of the fence as him? Ernie? Are you ready to throw your arms
around George the world this Christmastime?
Band Aid - as long as all the money raised is still going to
good causes, I can put up with the patronising drivel (and even B*n*) because
we are the ones who make a brighter day.
You do know that’s a lyric from We Are The World, don’t you,
Ernie? I mean, don’t even start us on that one…
Going back to Saint Bob (who also co-wrote the above
“classic”), he did apparently admit to an Australian newspaper that he was
"responsible for two of the worst songs in history"… so fair play to
him for that at least.
What about Charity Chic? Surely he’ll be supportive of a
charidee record? I mean, it’s in his name!
Band Aid?
Patronising and pandered to a large number of egos…
But it did raise millions for starving children, therefore
it should not be banned even if a number of celebs got a freebie visit to
Africa with loads of free publicity.
I’m sure there was an old joke about sending Bono to Africa
– weren’t those people suffering enough? Well tonight, thank God it’s them
instead of YOU. Yada yada yada.
Over to Germany now, where I’m presuming Band Aid was also a
hit (iffypedia doesn’t have the full details, other than to say it was their 17th
best-selling single of 1985)… and in 2014, there was even a
German version, led by the lead singer of Die Toten Hosen…
No Bono in that, so it’s already a step up. Anyway, here’s
Walter…
I must admit that I didn't like the song at the time. It was
too melodramatic for my taste. Especially when I watched the video, in which
every singer tries to pour their deepest feelings into the song (except for
Phil Collins, who does what he does best in the video—play the drums).
Ultimately, this song is about a fundraising appeal, as has been organized
every Christmas season for decades. It is well known that this time, the
trigger was a BBC documentary, which, to my knowledge, was the first to report on
the famine in Ethiopia that claimed the lives of almost half a million people.
So far, so good. Civil war and famine are a thing of the past, and Ethiopia has
become one of the most prosperous countries in Africa.
I did have to fact check that one, Walter. Not to contradict
you, but just for my own knowledge. According to The World Bank…
With about 132.1 million people (2024), Ethiopia is the
second most populous nation in Africa after Nigeria, and one of the
fastest-growing economies in the region, with an estimated 8.1% growth in
FY2023/24. However, it also remains one of the poorest, with a per capita gross
national income of $1,020.
I guess they’re doing better than they were, at least.
When activists now come along and associate this song with
colonialism and white arrogance that has no respect for African culture, I no
longer understand the world. Obviously, you can find something negative and
reprehensible in every good thought and intention.
I’m afraid that’s the world outside our window, Walter –it’s
a world of dread and fear.
Now here’s another clanging chime of doom, straight from
Glasgow to our hearts, it’s the Vinyl Villain himself. Band Aid, JC?
With a very small number of exceptions such as Christmas
Bubblegum Machine by the Sultans of Ping (which gets a pass cos it mentions
Glasgow in the lyrics),I don’t have any
time for any sort of novelty records, be they festive themed, comedy related or
released with the aim of raising funds for one cause or another.Band Aid ticks all three boxes – the middle
one as the lyrics are unintentionally funny while I’ll never stop laughing at
the bit in the video where Bono goes all sanctimonious on us.
I’m jealous that you can still laugh.
I’m therefore not going to waste too much time and energy on
this one.I hate the song and could
easily live without hearing it again while I’m out chasing last minute presents
(which I’ll continue to do as I hate Amazon even more than festive themed
records).
Personally, I hate real shops even more than online
conglomerates. Jeff Bezos wins by pandering to my misanthropy. Which brings us
back to The Manchester Grinch, Swiss Adam. I’ve a feeling he won’t have
anything nice to say about Band Aid either…
Band Aid - a meritless dirge with more plain stupid lines
than most songs have - 'tonight thank God it’s them instead of you', for one,
not to mention asking a mainly Muslim country if they know it’s Christmas at
all. It's just fucking rubbish. I know, charity etc. Still rubbish.
I watched the documentary about the making of it, and it was
entertaining, enlightening even. But it doesn't justify this dreadful song.
Cancel it.
Was Bono in the documentary? (Silly question, I know.) If
someone can edit a version without him in it, I’ll give it a watch.
Which brings us to our final contributor today, SWC from NoBadger Required. And in the interest of equity, I thought it only fair to ask the opinion of a life-long fan of the band U2 and its deific lead singer…
Cancel Band Aid!
This is my third attempt at writing this, the first turned
into a 1000 word rant against Bono and whilst that is never necessarily a bad
thing, most of those 1000 words were me just calling him a gobshite.The second one, was really quite similar, but
with less use of the word gobshite and more use of the word “trumpet”.
OK, I lied. (And yes, I did ask SWC to supply me with his
original drafts, purely for my own enjoyment, but he didn’t comply.) Carry on,
SWC…
Anyway, we should definitely cancel ‘Band Aid’.A song which meant to do good (and probably
did some good) but one that took a heavy dose of salt and rubbed it casually
into the wounds of about two million starving people (or however many people it
was).
I mean, we could just take a look at those involved to know:
a who’s who of the great and good of 80s music who (possibly, allegedly) could
have solved a large amount of the poverty and famine by donating half of what
they all spent on cocaine and that would tell us everything.
But to be fair, we only have to look at the lyrics and then
we realise that the blame for this falls in the hands of Midge Ure and Sir Bob
of Geldof.
Example One:
Where the only water flowing, Is the bitter sting of tears – Sung by Tony Hadley and Sting.
Seriously… I mean what the actually fuck?I get that people are starving I can see
that, I too want to push that fly away from the eyes of that child, but enough
with the emotional blackmail guys.It
gets worse, because here comes Bono...
And the Christmas bells that ring, There are the clanging chimes of doom – Sung by Sting and Bono
The clanging chimes of doom.Well, thanks for that.There are
children dying out there and it’s a humanitarian disaster and we get the point,
Midge, we really do, but the clanging chimes of doom?Really?Actually, I’m not sure even the added presence of Bono can make this any
worse…
Well, tonight thank God it's them, instead of you
Oh.He can.
Just remember, SWC, if you don't like that line, you can always substitute it for the one where Bono reaches out and touches you...
Let’s just dissect that line shall we – well,
tonight, thank, God, its, them, instead, of, you.It’s the ‘them’ that rankles here.I mean serious, Bono, was there not at least
one point when you were in the studio eating canapes with Paul Young when you
didn’t turn around and look at Bob and say “Bob, that line about ‘them’, you
sure about that..?”
Do you know what, SWC…? Loathe as I am to do this, I’m going
to jump in here in Bono’s "defence".
What!?
I know, I know. But in the course of compiling this post,
I’ve read a lot of articles about this song, and I found a couple of different
sources where… erm… it appears Bono claims he didn’t like the lyrics himself.
I’m going to quote from his bestselling book Surrender: 40
Songs One Story, which of course I bought in hardback as soon as it came out. I
mean, I didn’t just dig up the quote from American
Songwriter…
“I had to sing the most troubling line of the whole tune,
‘Tonight thank God it’s them instead of you’. When Bob handed me the lyric, I
said, ‘I’ll sing any line but this one.’ Maybe it’s that thought that got me
here.”
“I told him I didn’t want to sing the line. He said, ‘This
is not about what you want, OK? This is about what these people need.’ I was
too young to say, ‘This is about what you want.’ But it was his show,
and I was happy to be in it. I knew it needed some force, the line. I kind of
did an impersonation of Bruce Springsteen, that was really what was in my
mind.”
Now the cynic in me wants to think that writing this in
2021, Bono was trying to seize control of the narrative after years of
criticism – to shift the blame back onto Bob and away from his exalted self.
Shall we give him the benefit of the doubt? I mean, it is
Christmas… and as to Bob and Midge, the two men in charge of the song’s lyrical
content? Well, we’ve already heard from the one who wants you to give them your
fooking money… so how about a word from the small biting insect?
“The song didn’t matter: the song was secondary, almost
irrelevant.”
That’s from Jim Ure’s autobiography, which has pride of
place on my bookshelf beside 40 Songs.
Back to SWC for one final word…
And there won't be snow in Africa this Christmas time. The greatest gift they'll get this year is life - sung by various people
Now, apart from being geographically stupid, what with
Ethiopia being pretty close to the Equator and there being virtually zero
chance of there ever being snow in Africa at Christmas Time, it’s the second
bit “The Greatest Gift they’ll get this year is life”, that irritates me the
most.I might be wrong, but I’m fairly
sure that if you sat down the parents of a starving child and put two things in
front of them – on the left a new video player and hi-fi stacking system and on
the right – well survival from war, poverty, famine, or generally speaking
‘life’.I’m relatively confident that if
they really thought about it, they would, as Wham, once told via a T-shirt:Choose Life.
I think that’s a pretty good note to end this festive edition on... maybe even a good note to end the series on? I don't know. Let's wait till the New Year and see if I still feel the urge to torpedo any more dodgy old songs... stand by your inboxes just in case.
I thought I’d end with a positive note about
Do They Know It’s Christmas? Here’s why I wouldn’t want to see it cancelled: if
it was, I’d never get to listen to the Richard Cheese version again. And
Christmas would be so much poorer without that…
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