Band Aid - Do They Know It's Xmas

[Avondklok]

Everyone loves to hate this now, but it's not so far off 40 years old!!!! And everyone meant well. I was a teenager back then and to see everyone join together in a way never seen before at that point was just marvellous. Ditto Bandaid that followed. I hate that it gets so slagged off these days, though I do understand the arguments.

It does make me laugh when people try to claim some sort of underlying meaning to the shit lyrics.

They were bashed out in 2 minutes. There is no hidden depth to it.

MillieVanilla I remember "The Little Boy That Santa Claus Forgot", such a depressing little song! The last lines, I think, are supposed to explain why he is without presents:"I'm so sorry for that laddie, He hasn't got a daddy...."

@Dogchatname

I was a teen when 'Do they know it's Christmas' came out. It highlighted to me the heart-breaking situation in Ethiopia at the time, it was powerful in that regard.

Tune was good, lyrics were not the best but ok, wasn't my favourite song but I'll hum along if I hear it. I doubt we'll be hearing it for much longer though, as it appears to offend.

I cannot imagine how long it would take to write today, months probably, as every single utterance, inflection and meaning has to be micro examined lest offense be caused to someone somewhere.

Wonder which of my childhood memories is next to be picked apart and crushed by the Ministry of Woke? It was Only Fools and Horses the other day.

Pfft. That's all I have to say

I agree with you.

What irritates me is the reduction of Africa, an entire continent to the image of starving weans and barren plains.

Where nothing ever grows etc is just inaccurate when you're talking about Africa.

I don't think it should be banned but it's a song that did more harm than good. Raising money is good in the short term but portraying Africa as a big limp of helpless need is damaging and ignorant.

Maybe there should be a Christmas song about reparations for slavery next year, that would be true Christmas spirit.

Especially as our Christmas traditions are mainly Victorian and that era was massively boosted by the pay offs slave owners got when slavery was abolished. They put dirty money into our railways, big halls and museums, country houses etc.

I watched the video properly for the first time yesterday - about 3 women (Bananarama?) appear. That's annoyed me more than anything. So many amazing 80's female singers and yet it's all men!!

@ChristmasBubble

Tonight thank god it's them instead of you is a paraphrasing of there but for the grace of god go I. It could have been any of us is the point of that lyric. Famine happened to this particular group of people but it could have happened to me. I just got lucky.

I think that's the best lyric in it. I think it's the very opposite of othering.

A green! That is always how I took that lyric.

I was 13 when the single came out - remember going into town with my friends to buy it from Woolworths.
It raised a lot of money - I also remember watching the news with the reports from Ethiopia about the famine which was truly shocking!
The song was rushed out but was just massive at the time with all the big name bands, groups and singers which to a teenager in the 80's was amazing.

What really spoilt it for me though was the revelation years later that most of them spent the day it was recorded snorting coke together 🙁

@DemolitionBarbie

" I don't think it should be banned but it's a song that did more harm than good. Raising money is good in the short term but portraying Africa as a big limp of helpless need is damaging and ignorant."

WTAF
Quantify this bullshit comment.

Yes those fatcat bastards shouldn't have tried to help anyone. Perhaps they wouldn't have bothered if they had known that future snowflakes might be mildly offended by some of the lyrics of a song that was written in haste with the sole intention of saving peoples lives.

[quote Thereshegoesagain]@DemolitionBarbie

" I don't think it should be banned but it's a song that did more harm than good. Raising money is good in the short term but portraying Africa as a big limp of helpless need is damaging and ignorant."

WTAF
Quantify this bullshit comment.[/quote]
How about the fact that the money raised from the original song was hopelessy mismanaged and a great deal ended up in the hands of the Mengistu regime?

And it's true that the lyrics are generalising the fuck out of an entire continent.

How about this @UrAWizHarry?

Farm Africa, which, like Live Aid, marks its 30th anniversary in 2015, works with communities in east Africa, pioneering techniques that boost harvests, reduce poverty, sustain natural resources and help end the need for aid.

Liz Dobson, head of programme funding, says it received some of the cash raised and has no doubt it made a real difference. “Live Aid brought the plight of communities affected by severe drought in eastern Africa to the world’s attention. Funds raised by Live Aid addressed not only short-term emergency response efforts but were also directed towards sustainable development programmes by organisations including Farm Africa that have had a long-term impact in helping build a prosperous rural Africa. With support from the Band Aid Charitable Trust, Farm Africa has been able to invest in reducing poverty permanently for smallholder farmers, including the poorest of the poor, by helping them to build sustainable livelihoods. By focusing on simple long-term solutions such as more effective farming techniques and improving farmers’ access to local markets, Farm Africa has used funding from Band Aid to help Africa’s families feed themselves, for the long term.

“Since 2000 Farm Africa has received grants worth over £550,000 from Band Aid that have supported our work with Ethiopian pastoralist communities to develop sustainable livelihoods; our programmes empowering Ethiopian women through goat breeding and other livelihoods, access to savings and credit and legal advice; and our work in South Sudan (then still part of Sudan) to support the recovery and development of rural communities.” She adds: “We remain true to our founding belief that small-scale agriculture is the key to ending hunger and poverty in rural Africa and that, with the right support, Africa can feed itself.”

@Avondklok

Everyone loves to hate this now, but it's not so far off 40 years old!!!! And everyone meant well. I was a teenager back then and to see everyone join together in a way never seen before at that point was just marvellous. Ditto Bandaid that followed. I hate that it gets so slagged off these days, though I do understand the arguments.

Yeah, me too. I thought this was going to be yet another 'bashing' thread. I haven't read all the posts & don't intend to. I just wanted to say you're not alone x

@VinylDetective

How about this *@UrAWizHarry*?

Farm Africa, which, like Live Aid, marks its 30th anniversary in 2015, works with communities in east Africa, pioneering techniques that boost harvests, reduce poverty, sustain natural resources and help end the need for aid.

Liz Dobson, head of programme funding, says it received some of the cash raised and has no doubt it made a real difference. “Live Aid brought the plight of communities affected by severe drought in eastern Africa to the world’s attention. Funds raised by Live Aid addressed not only short-term emergency response efforts but were also directed towards sustainable development programmes by organisations including Farm Africa that have had a long-term impact in helping build a prosperous rural Africa. With support from the Band Aid Charitable Trust, Farm Africa has been able to invest in reducing poverty permanently for smallholder farmers, including the poorest of the poor, by helping them to build sustainable livelihoods. By focusing on simple long-term solutions such as more effective farming techniques and improving farmers’ access to local markets, Farm Africa has used funding from Band Aid to help Africa’s families feed themselves, for the long term.

“Since 2000 Farm Africa has received grants worth over £550,000 from Band Aid that have supported our work with Ethiopian pastoralist communities to develop sustainable livelihoods; our programmes empowering Ethiopian women through goat breeding and other livelihoods, access to savings and credit and legal advice; and our work in South Sudan (then still part of Sudan) to support the recovery and development of rural communities.” She adds: “We remain true to our founding belief that small-scale agriculture is the key to ending hunger and poverty in rural Africa and that, with the right support, Africa can feed itself.”

Your point is?

I didn't say all the money was misused. It's an absolute fact that money from the original single was directly funding an oppressive regime.

"The Ethiopian dictator, Mengistu, until then deadlocked in the war, was using the money the west gave him to buy sophisticated weapons from the Russians, and was now able to efficiently and viciously crush the opposition. Ethiopia, then the third poorest country in the world, suddenly had the largest, best equipped army on the African continent.
By this time we had all seen the pictures and TV footage of Bob Geldof, the figurehead of Live Aid, bear hugging and playfully punching Mengistu in the arm as he literally handed over the funding for this slaughter. It was on TV now alright, but as an endless, relentless reel of heroic Bob Geldof highlights. "

If you want to ignore that, by all means.

@Shaniac

Its offensive because "do they know its Christmas time at all?"... Well for part of the continent they dont celebrate it at all, and also being from a country in africa does not make you ignorant to dates. If they celebrate Christmas then they bloody know when its celebrated.

The idea is that they don't have what we have , which I think is obvious.

It does make me laugh when people try to claim some sort of underlying meaning to the shit lyrics.

They were bashed out in 2 minutes. There is no hidden depth to it.

I didn't mean there was some underlying meaning to the lyrics fgs, but surely you can understand that something like "Well tonight thank God it's them instead of you" isn't "horrible" as a few pps have posted and that when they sing "Africa" they aren't meaning the entire continent - people need to use their brain cells.

@UrAWizHarry

It does make me laugh when people try to claim some sort of underlying meaning to the shit lyrics.

They were bashed out in 2 minutes. There is no hidden depth to it.

Those bloody bastards Midge Ure and Bob Geldof, bashing out a pop song in two minutes to try to help people who were starving to death at that very moment. Can’t imagine why they didn’t spend weeks carefully honing their words the level of accuracy that would be appropriate for an academic paper. Wouldn’t have helped any of those starving people of course, but at least it would have stood up to the scrutiny of future generations.

@UrAWizHarry

It does make me laugh when people try to claim some sort of underlying meaning to the shit lyrics.

They were bashed out in 2 minutes. There is no hidden depth to it.

It makes me laugh that you think people who write for a living and have honed their skills since being a teen couldn't bash out something meaningful in two minutes for a 3 minute song.

And clearly there was so much hidden depth to the lyrics (as witnessed on this thread), that certain people thought they were being mean with lyrics like "thank god it's them instead of you". The song may not be as challenging as the Met line by Betjeman, and it may not take as long to write that as anything by Peter Gabriel. But it had enough meaning for people to want to hear it again and again, the money from it has saved many people.

And please that stuff about Mengistu? First time ever something like that was ever done, there were bound to be mistakes. Are we still giving money to organisations in Ethiopia to buy weapons or have we learned from our mistakes. If it's the latter, ultimately the 2 minute bashed out non-PC song has done good.

I also love Baby it's cold outside. As per Ray Charles and Betty Carter so there!

@Faultymain5 to be fair, where people here thought that “thank god it’s them...” was mean, it was less because of a complex, layered lyric and more a Dunning-Kruger situation.