There wont be snow in Africa this Xmas

Christmas remarkably starts earlier each and every year; largely the motivation is maximizing commercialization of the holiday, which is unfortunate, but actually this really doesn’t bother me as much as it does some others. For me anyways, Christmas doesn’t start until I hear a certain song. Christmas starts for me the moment I hear Band-Aid’s ‘Do they know its Christmas?’. Quite possibly one of my favorite songs of all time, and definitely by and far the best Christmas tune of all time, sharing the title with Bing Crosby’s duet with David Bowie for ‘Little Drummer Boy’. Pah-rum-pa-pum-pum. And please, don’t even argue about these not being the best Christmas songs, cuz Ill kick you in the teeth.

Now I don’t know if you’ve heard, but it’s the 20th anniversary of Band-aid, and to commemorate and jump start continued charity, Sir Bob Geldof is re-releasing the song he wrote, rerecording to current day and using new artists. I don’t know about this, Im extremely dubious. Granted I haven’t heard it yet, this new, er song… it gets released in the next few days here… but I don’t know how it could possibly live up to the first one. What if they fail and just take the hatchet to it? The first one is legendary, like. Go back to 1984, and you take a young selection of artists, all in their prime or entering it and mix with living icons; the list reads out like the Yankees murderer’s row: young Boy George, young Phil Collins, young Sting, young Bono, pre-gay George Michael, hotter than the sun Duran Duran, legend David Bowie, legend Paul McCartney, hotter than the sun Eurythmics, and legend Kool and the Gang… like how can you possibly go wrong. And topping it off with sugar, there’s Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Bananarama , like dang. Spandau Ballet and Human League was there too… just for good measure (not to diminish their impact, but I think they needed the last few just to fill up the recording room). And lets not forget one important thing, the first one was not at all contrived (like, say, We are the World), this song was recorded in one day, over a 24 hour period, and they managed to capture lightning in a bottle. At any rate, the new version has some big pants to fill. In my opinion, there hasn’t been a memorable cover of any song in the last few decades, save Faith No More’s rendition of Lionel Ritchies ‘Easy (Like Sunday Morning)’, and that only worked because it came out of left field, and was totally unexpected.

There are not many things I am passionate about, but this Christmas song is one of them. I hope they don’t screw it up.