Hey cool kids, you can stick your Rage Against The Machine vs X Factor nonsense. That’s right, sod off with it. Sod right off. Go on, keep sodding off. Sod off further. That’s it. Good. You’ve sodded off.
Right, now that they’ve sodded off, let’s take a look at the best?Christmas songs ever,?because, quite frankly,?neither of this year’s?contenders can even come close to touching our collective hearts in the same way that the three below did.
Great songs, every one of them.
1. Band Aid,?Do They Know It’s Christmas? (1984)
Regardless that Bob Geldof attempted to ruin Christmas by embedding images of starving people covered in flies into the nation’s minds as they?embarked on a third plate of turkey and spuds, this song was very hard to ignore. You had Collins on drums, Boy George dressed like he should be covering someone’s shift in a lauderette, and George Michael‘s macho haircut. Plus, this was probably the moment that Bono introduced himself to the world. Following a short duet with Sting, the then-rather-unknown Irish?singer took the opportunity to feed so much emotion into his one line, that he basically destroyed Paul Young‘s career. Paul was certainly never the same again. Nice one Bono… not.
2. Band Aid II, Do They Know It’s Christmas? (1989)
Granted, they missed a trick by not calling this Seriously, Do They Know It’s Christmas?, but of the three listed versions, it might just be the best one. It’s definitely in the top two. Or three. It’s more upbeat,?but unfortunately?there have been serious doubts raised as to whether these people knew exactly what they were singing about. Dying people. They were singing about dying people. A fact that appears to have flown over Singy-one from Bros‘ sheened hair, as he dicks around outside doing dancing practice. Either way, it’s a brilliant version, with Drummy-one from Bros on Phil Collins duty, Jimmy Somerville taking Boy George’s gay bit at the beginning, and Wet Wet Wet crooning his part like he was a blind Sinatra reading from a braille?autocue. It was a particularly joyous occasion for the three sexy women in Bananarama, who found themselves promoted from part of the chorus first time around, to an actual sentence in one of the verses. Great stuff, only slightly ruined by Michael Buerk‘s rather disappointing rap at the end.
3. Band Aid 20, Do They Know It’s Christmas? (2004)
Thank Christ that Bono came back for this one. For all that was wonderful about Band Aid II – and presumably the'seventeen less successful versions between that one and this one -?Jason Donovan just couldn’t evoke the same growling sincerity of the “But tonight thank God it’s them instead of you!” line. Here, Bono really makes the?exclamation to the heavens count, stretching out the “you” bit through the rest of the song. In fact, tell you what,?how about you tonight thank God for Bono? Seriously, thank him. Thank God for Bono. Although, again, he was so good that he basically destroyed Jamelia‘s singing career. Joining Bono on this rocked-up take on a classic Crimbo song were Chris Martin -?from the band Coldplay,?that it’s both ‘cool’ and ‘uncool’ and ‘completely normal’ to hate?- Paul McCartney, and the hilarious one from The Darkness.?Plus if you look very closely, you’ll spot Daniel Bedingfield going totally berserk, as?well as the rap sensation Dizzee Rascal stepping in to spruce up the Michael Buerk hip hop segment. Beautiful.
This was a guest post by Josh Burt from Interestment, who is dangerously close to being a genius.
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bara says
This is a joke, right? A funny, funny joke.
Chris says
Tell me this is some kind of sick tasteless joke. Lol.
I think Rage should be number one I mean it’s that or a Miley Cyrus cover. It must have been hard choosing one of her songs from her immense back catalogue of material.
If you haven’t heard the clip of RATM on Radio 5 it’s here http://bit.ly/7WCJf4