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"Do They Know It's Christmas?" is back for its 40th anniversary with a new version incorporating old versions. I could look it up, but can't be bothered. I think that's basically it. But the song is causing some controversy.
Now I am not the biggest fan of the song and have some problems with it and it was written hastily in the back of a cab by people who were doing their best to help out to reports of terrible famine so maybe we can cut it a little slack. But surely the song isn't saying that people in Ethiopia don't know when Christmas is. You could certainly argue that the question is being asked because in the middle of such terrible drought and famine and death the date might well pass unnoticed. I think it's also saying that at their time of greatest need those people were being ignored by the rest of the world and so if they had realised it was Christmas, it would not have seemed that everyone else was observing it and being charitable and kind. It would have appeared it wasn't Christmas even though it was.
I definitely don't think the song is saying that people in Ethiopia do not know what Christmas is or when it is and so Midge Ure and Bob Geldof have chosen a pretty insensitive time to have a go to them about it. The song, I would say, is aimed at the inaction of the world rather than the people who are in the middle of a famine.
Which is not to defend it against all criticism. They should definitely not have said "There won't be snow in Africa this Christmas" as it is both incorrect and a bit glib, but someone on Twitter said that the original line was "There won't be snow in Ethiopia this Christmas" but that the country's name didn't scan. If true it's a lame excuse as it's very easy to make it scan with an additional note and change of stress (as well as getting a nice internal rhyme)- "there won't be snow in Eth-i-oo pia this Christmas". Africa is a big place, really big, so it was silly to lump it all together for sure."Where nothing ever grows, no rain or rivers flow" is again pretty incorrect about Africa as a whole, though pretty accurate about Ethiopia in 1985. "Tonight thank God it's them instead of you" is a pretty harsh and selfish thing to say if taken at face value, easily done as they gave the line to Bono, but Sooz Kempner pointed out this could be read as a bitter satire of our own attitude to this tragedy.
So look, there's some problems in the song for sure and it was written very quickly and for good reason and it raised awareness and money for a population who desperately needed help, so is it churlish to be critical or upset over lyrics that in some cases are being misinterpreted.
A bit, but also even if the song was written in 20 minutes (or whatever) because they needed to get it out fast, there have now been 40 years to rectify the mistakes. It's not Shakespeare, it's not the Bible, it's a pop song and as much as I know people these days seem to hate things from the past being changed because they might offend people from the present, why not just rewrite some of the lines when you're doing a new version. The old version will still be there for people who would be angry about fact checking, but the new version might go down better with its audience.
We can do both here. Bob could admit the song did loads of good but isn't perfect, we can use it as a teachable moment to inform people about the real situation and to think about the way we help each other out in respectful and constructive ways. Let's not have another culture war over something where everyone is just trying to do the right thing. Let's have a culture nice conversation.
