Gin night ruined by my son?

[Becc91]

So my DS came back from Bristol Uni (with a mullet no less 😣) and told me off in front of my girl friends - all for singing Do They Know It's Christmas?
Apparently one term of a politics degree makes him qualified to tell me what I can and can't sing in my own home after a few gins. Feeling quite hurt and embarrassed as this all happened in front of my friends.

I don't see what I've done wrong but I don't want to be ignorant, is it just me??
Opinions wanted , thanks xx and merry christmas

They probably assumed listeners would understand what they meant. Why would they thank God for Africans starving?

OP, the song is shite, but your son's behaviour is even worse.

I can't stand people who decide what people can and can't say, listen to, watch because they've decided it's not politically correct enough.

They can choose what they say, sing, listen to, read and watch. They don't get to dictate to other people.

I don't know where some people get off and I think for a lot of people-it's less that they give a shit about what's allegedly wrong with the thing as it is about being able to tell someone off for it.

Is the song perfect? No-it's utter shite and the worst Christmas song in existence. But it was written to generate donations and it did that and many people find it catchy and like the song. And they shouldn't be policed for liking a damn song and singing along to it. FFS.

I think the intellect of listeners back then must have been higher than it is right now.

They didn't need to thank god for the Africans starving.

They didn't. They paraphrased "there but for the grace of God".

It's easy to pick holes in decades down the line, but the intention was to raise funds urgently because people were starving to death en masse.
I wonder what mullet-boy has done to help people - berated his mum and make a tiktok?

@LoremIpsumCici That's Live Aid. Completely different atmosphere (due to all sorts of reasons) to the actual video when he sings it. Watch the video. Listen to him sing it in the video.

I think it's clear the type of people defending the shit song with unpleasant lyrics would fall in the middle of a venn diagram where all the circles that overlap in the middle are; loves shit pop songs enough to defend them, therefore probably lack good music taste, think they are more intelligent than people who don't agree with them, think they still have ultimate authority over their adult children, think insulting their children's hairstyles and telling them to shut up and sit down is acceptable and will end up lonely in a nursing home because their children won't want want to visit them due to their delightful behaviour.

Perhaps they can pass their days drinking gin and screeching Bonos poor offerings together to entertain themselves when their children don't visit.

@SparklyTurtle they really didn't mean to infer that we should thank god people in africa are starving, full stop. What a daft suggestion. It was a song written quickly, and I'll bet not one person listening at the time thought as much. We did all have quite long attention spans back then though, so could get nuance in a line of text. Not sure we're as good at that now (and I speak for myself here as well in case you think I'm dissing the younger generation. I really do think we're all a bit crap at extracting meaning these days and have lost some comprehension skills along the way).

@SparklyTurtle how much do you know about the famine in Ethiopia in the early 80s out of interest?

I tend to agree that long-term, that particular model of aid has not necessarily proved helpful.
But the motivation at the time to help in an absolutely appalling large-scale human catastrophe, was pretty genuine.

lol @SparklyTurtle I actually don't like the song at all, never did, hate gin too😉. Love the way you dismiss us as a homogeneous group.

I am simply giving context. Like most things in the past, looking through a 2024 lens, it's easy to say it's racist yada yada yada. Without understanding and looking at the context, pretty much everything in the past can be interpreted to be crap.

Plus insulting the hairstyle is contextual in the OP, because it's a classic cut from the 80s. Irony.

It was a song written in the 1980s to generate donations to help out in a crisis.

Is it a perfect song with perfect lyrics? No, of course not.

I can't stand the song, but I'm not going to jump aboard my high horse and berate others who do like it.

If you don't like a song, guess what? You're free to not listen to it. What you're not free to do is demand no one else listens to it, too.

FFS.

I would argue that the song was actually quite successful at its objective: a catchy Christmas song intended to maximise sales. Sufficiently catchy in fact that it’s gone on to become a long term Christmas classic with the associated annual royalties.

The chorus is recognisable and festive. That will be the part that is sung along to at Christmas parties, not the darker verses.

Exactly. Before the woke tendency to police language, eagerly searching for minor imperfections to scream “racist!” at, people saw the whole picture. It’s self-evident that a song raising many for starving people is not suggesting, well at least it’s not us.

Geldof only got the idea in early November and had to get everything organised and the song written and ready by December.

They had no internet back then, they weren’t geography teachers or international development experts. They were just pop musicians making a popular song, which they did. It’s totally unreasonable for some posters to be pulling apart the imperfect lyrics, given the circumstances.

The song had to hit the right emotional notes, and inspire people to buy it. The smug mentions upthread about complex political causes of famine are completely unhelpful and simply make people think donating is hopeless and pointless.

The message had to be simplistic, digestible, sound good, and be wholly in line with the basic message of donate money = the way to help. Remember that the main buyers of music were young people so there is no room for detailed socio-economic theorising.

On the “sound good” note, Midge Ure said the lyric was originally Ethiopia but it had too many syllables so changed to Africa. It’s artistic license. No one would have bought it if it sounded shit. They weren’t expecting the song to be a geography lesson.

Regardless of anyone's opinion on the song, I struggle to believe some listeners genuinely believe Bono is thanking God that Africans are starving.

JHC. 🙄🫨

And this thread reminds me so much why I don’t like Wokism. Taking something that was done for the best of intentions and making it seem seedy and wrong.

@WishinAndHopin

Yes, artistic license is also why it's "feed the world" and not "feed Africa" in the chorus as it does not scan.

They had no internet back then, they weren’t geography teachers or international development experts

😂
Defend the indefensible

This is the only response needed!

That's saying the same thing no? Given that the point of the tune was starving people.

Join the OMD fans - we bop along to songs about Hiroshima and the end of the universe.

edited because auto correct can’t spell 80s band names

Defend the indefensible

Aye, raising money for a famine. Those cunts. Indefensible indeed, how could they not have kept the sensibilities of the 2024 uberwoke front and centre instead of some random starving Ethopians?

You sound unwell

Woke was a word invented by black people to make them aware of injustice and to encourage being 'switched on' for issues that impacted them.

@kerstina Honest question, were you aware of that?

As with anything created by black people (or working class people ) , it was discredited, demonised and its meaning flipped and corrupted so now it means something completely different - pretty much anything that sits outside of the radicalised Farage / Musk worldview is 'now leftist woke mind virus'.

Ridiculous! 😂