— Vici MacDonald
On the last Sunday of November, 1984, about forty mostly British and Irish pop stars gathered at a recording studio in Notting Hill, London to hastily record a single for the Christmas market to benefit victims of the appalling famine in Ethiopia. Band Aid was to be a coming together of UK music royalty and seemingly everyone on it was at peak popularity and worldwide fame. The resultant "Do They Know It's Christmas?" was an instant success, triumphing in one of the most hotly contested seasonal number one showdowns ever. The holiday having already come and gone, it nevertheless topped the charts in Canada for the first two weeks of January '85. Though I liked the record (and still do to this day in spite of the many legit criticisms leveled against it), the real delight was the video. I was just seven but I could already identify plenty of the central figures involved. Well, vaguely recognize at least. I probably knew Sting and Phil Collins and was aware of the lead singers of Duran Duran and Wham! Okay, that's almost all of 'em but I did begin spotting others when I would see the video every year from that point on. (Oddly, the individual I took longest to pick out was a thin and sullen Paul Weller, by far my favourite of the lot) But there was one more figure who I definitely would have known right away: Boy George, probably the most recognizable pop star in the world.
But it seems this wasn't the same Boy George. His brief solo vocal on "Do They Know It's Christmas?" — "and in our world of plenty, we can spread a smile of joy / throw your arms around the world at Christmas time" — comes nearly two months after the release of "The War Song", a chronological fact that I've been having difficulty squaring over the last several days. Band Aid was, as I already stated above, a convergence of everyone who was anyone (and Marilyn) in the British music scene, not a bunch of also-ran's and has been's (especially Marilyn) headed for the dumper. For that's what "The War Song" did to Culture Club's momentum.
Or perhaps not. Though disinterested in the "trite" lyrics, the tune is catchy enough to warrant a SOTF from Vici MacDonald and, not being simply a critical favourite, it quickly shot to number two on the charts, just missing out on the top spot by Stevie Wonder's monster syrup-fest "I Just Called to Say I Love You" (in what was, I must say, a pretty loaded top ten). While it did fade away almost as quickly, spending just two more weeks in the charts' top quadrant, it was hardly the career-stalling disaster that plagued ABC two years earlier with their brave reinvention "That Was Then but This Is Now". "The War Song" proved yet another hit single in several other countries and likely the last Club single to be familiar enough with the public that many a neighbour's budgie or weird bloke downstairs may have hummed along with it.
Yet the bloom was off and though the single sold it has been described by Boy George as the song that "ruined" his career. Reappraisal has led to it being described as naff which is apt considering the chorus. I've always suspected, however, that they probably knew it was ludicrous as well, which doesn't suddenly make it a brilliant record but does help explain their intent. Consciously singing about how "war, war is stupid / and people are stupid" and knowing the banality behind it gives Boy and Jon Moss and the other two an excuse but thinking that they had something profound to say with these words just makes it all seem pathetic — and I like to think that we're still a ways away from Boy George sinking that low.
How do I know? Well, I don't really. But common sense tells me that if I was able to gauge the lame juvenailia of my teenage poetry with some accuracy — at least some of the time —then a quartet of towering pop stars must have at least a similar filer. More importantly, I reckon that "The War Song" is a response to the group that had stolen most of their thunder over the previous year and one who also wasn't shy about exposing blunt but basic sentiments to the masses. Frankie Goes to Hollywood first hit the charts with the sexually explicit "Relax" and followed that up with taking a shot at the arms race in "Two Tribes". Both were absolutely massive singles in the UK and may have made groups like Culture Club look passe. Probably not keen on getting into raunchiness — Boy George having said famously that he wasn't "really all that keen on sex" — it fell to Reagan and Chernenko and the threat of nuclear war as a topic for Boy George to grapple with. Though the record itself is superb, the lyrics in "Two Tribes" are hardly loaded with high level ideas. Holly Johnson's delivery of "when two tribes go to war" is powerful but it reads poorly, particularly followed by "a point is all that you can score". So, war is like sport, huh? Wow, I guess all those field marshals and generals in the First World War were correct and good on Frankie to restate some seventy-year-old sentiments.
The point is not to bash "Two Tribes", just to put "The War Song" in context. Boy George was a vastly superior lyricist to Johnson or Mark O'Toole (or Nasher or whoever handled works for Frankie) and this trite simplicity was a low hanging fruit that he should have avoided. But when you go from tabloid stars and teen idols to being asked to sing on the Band Aid single, you might feel like you've been neutered. Of course that brings us right back to the whole thing about my screwed up chronology and that, ultimately, this record really didn't kill off their careers or any of that nonsense. It was a misstep that they could have corrected going forward but they chose not to. Just be more like Frankie Goes to Hollywood and you'll never screw things up.
~~~~~
Also Reviewed This Fortnight
Prince & The Revolution: "Purple Rain"
MacDonald admits that she's "unconvinced" by the latest from the Purple Perv and I'm right with her (although it is possible she became convinced at some point over the last thirty-five years). Having always liked everything about Prince except for the bulk of his music, "Purple Rain" is especially troublesome for us few skeptics out there. Where "1999" and "When Does Cry" and "Raspberry Beret" usually sound better in my head (and, thus, give me the false impression that they're better than they are), this, the title track from his breakthrough '84 album, is as underwhelming and over-long in my imagination as it is in reality. What does everyone else on Earth see in it? Okay, it's heartfelt but it's not quite poignant and the dull faces on the concert goers in the video says it all (not to mention an awfully awkward peck on the cheek he gives to an annoyed-looking Wendy Melvoin). I guess it must work as an album closer and it's better than virtually every other single on offer here but, as classics go, not up to much.
On the last Sunday of November, 1984, about forty mostly British and Irish pop stars gathered at a recording studio in Notting Hill, London to hastily record a single for the Christmas market to benefit victims of the appalling famine in Ethiopia. Band Aid was to be a coming together of UK music royalty and seemingly everyone on it was at peak popularity and worldwide fame. The resultant "Do They Know It's Christmas?" was an instant success, triumphing in one of the most hotly contested seasonal number one showdowns ever. The holiday having already come and gone, it nevertheless topped the charts in Canada for the first two weeks of January '85. Though I liked the record (and still do to this day in spite of the many legit criticisms leveled against it), the real delight was the video. I was just seven but I could already identify plenty of the central figures involved. Well, vaguely recognize at least. I probably knew Sting and Phil Collins and was aware of the lead singers of Duran Duran and Wham! Okay, that's almost all of 'em but I did begin spotting others when I would see the video every year from that point on. (Oddly, the individual I took longest to pick out was a thin and sullen Paul Weller, by far my favourite of the lot) But there was one more figure who I definitely would have known right away: Boy George, probably the most recognizable pop star in the world.
But it seems this wasn't the same Boy George. His brief solo vocal on "Do They Know It's Christmas?" — "and in our world of plenty, we can spread a smile of joy / throw your arms around the world at Christmas time" — comes nearly two months after the release of "The War Song", a chronological fact that I've been having difficulty squaring over the last several days. Band Aid was, as I already stated above, a convergence of everyone who was anyone (and Marilyn) in the British music scene, not a bunch of also-ran's and has been's (especially Marilyn) headed for the dumper. For that's what "The War Song" did to Culture Club's momentum.
Or perhaps not. Though disinterested in the "trite" lyrics, the tune is catchy enough to warrant a SOTF from Vici MacDonald and, not being simply a critical favourite, it quickly shot to number two on the charts, just missing out on the top spot by Stevie Wonder's monster syrup-fest "I Just Called to Say I Love You" (in what was, I must say, a pretty loaded top ten). While it did fade away almost as quickly, spending just two more weeks in the charts' top quadrant, it was hardly the career-stalling disaster that plagued ABC two years earlier with their brave reinvention "That Was Then but This Is Now". "The War Song" proved yet another hit single in several other countries and likely the last Club single to be familiar enough with the public that many a neighbour's budgie or weird bloke downstairs may have hummed along with it.
Yet the bloom was off and though the single sold it has been described by Boy George as the song that "ruined" his career. Reappraisal has led to it being described as naff which is apt considering the chorus. I've always suspected, however, that they probably knew it was ludicrous as well, which doesn't suddenly make it a brilliant record but does help explain their intent. Consciously singing about how "war, war is stupid / and people are stupid" and knowing the banality behind it gives Boy and Jon Moss and the other two an excuse but thinking that they had something profound to say with these words just makes it all seem pathetic — and I like to think that we're still a ways away from Boy George sinking that low.
How do I know? Well, I don't really. But common sense tells me that if I was able to gauge the lame juvenailia of my teenage poetry with some accuracy — at least some of the time —then a quartet of towering pop stars must have at least a similar filer. More importantly, I reckon that "The War Song" is a response to the group that had stolen most of their thunder over the previous year and one who also wasn't shy about exposing blunt but basic sentiments to the masses. Frankie Goes to Hollywood first hit the charts with the sexually explicit "Relax" and followed that up with taking a shot at the arms race in "Two Tribes". Both were absolutely massive singles in the UK and may have made groups like Culture Club look passe. Probably not keen on getting into raunchiness — Boy George having said famously that he wasn't "really all that keen on sex" — it fell to Reagan and Chernenko and the threat of nuclear war as a topic for Boy George to grapple with. Though the record itself is superb, the lyrics in "Two Tribes" are hardly loaded with high level ideas. Holly Johnson's delivery of "when two tribes go to war" is powerful but it reads poorly, particularly followed by "a point is all that you can score". So, war is like sport, huh? Wow, I guess all those field marshals and generals in the First World War were correct and good on Frankie to restate some seventy-year-old sentiments.
The point is not to bash "Two Tribes", just to put "The War Song" in context. Boy George was a vastly superior lyricist to Johnson or Mark O'Toole (or Nasher or whoever handled works for Frankie) and this trite simplicity was a low hanging fruit that he should have avoided. But when you go from tabloid stars and teen idols to being asked to sing on the Band Aid single, you might feel like you've been neutered. Of course that brings us right back to the whole thing about my screwed up chronology and that, ultimately, this record really didn't kill off their careers or any of that nonsense. It was a misstep that they could have corrected going forward but they chose not to. Just be more like Frankie Goes to Hollywood and you'll never screw things up.
~~~~~
Also Reviewed This Fortnight
Prince & The Revolution: "Purple Rain"
MacDonald admits that she's "unconvinced" by the latest from the Purple Perv and I'm right with her (although it is possible she became convinced at some point over the last thirty-five years). Having always liked everything about Prince except for the bulk of his music, "Purple Rain" is especially troublesome for us few skeptics out there. Where "1999" and "When Does Cry" and "Raspberry Beret" usually sound better in my head (and, thus, give me the false impression that they're better than they are), this, the title track from his breakthrough '84 album, is as underwhelming and over-long in my imagination as it is in reality. What does everyone else on Earth see in it? Okay, it's heartfelt but it's not quite poignant and the dull faces on the concert goers in the video says it all (not to mention an awfully awkward peck on the cheek he gives to an annoyed-looking Wendy Melvoin). I guess it must work as an album closer and it's better than virtually every other single on offer here but, as classics go, not up to much.
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