Track of the week 24/12/17
I can’t believe I haven’t done a Christmas track of the week before, but I haven’t, so it has to be this.
This for me is, and always will be, the iconic Christmas tune.
It was first released in December ’84, when I would have been in what is now Year 11. Watch the video, it is, quite simply, a collection of my musical heroes from when I grew up.
But its not that. Its the sentiment. It’s the message. It hammers it home:
Tonight thank God its them, instead of you
A more brutal, honest and true lyric has never been sung.
And it was borne out of genuine altruist. Bob Geldof and Midge Ure saw those dreadful images on the news of famine in Ethiopia and they did something about it.
In the world before Twitter and FaceBook and SnapChat they bought the plight of those poor people into our consciousness, they spawned a whole new “charitable industry”, they raised millions, they changed the way we look at the world. The world is wonderful place: embrace it, enjoy it, live it, but its not a perfect place and, outside your window, there’s a a world of dread and fear.
And, to top it all, a great sing-a-long tune as well
Merry Christmas