Geldof should tell Sheeran to stick his head where the sun don’t shine
Only a fool knocks Bob Geldof. But then what would a shaggy-haired, ginger song machine, who knocks out more records each week than a sausage factory produces chipolatas, know? Ed Sheeran, whose talents do not make up for the downside of a million mimicking buskers wrecking the soundscapes of the world’s streets, squares and subways, has dissed the philanthropic Irishman.
It was a savage put-down, done with nothing more than a flick of a wrist, a wafting away of an irritant fly. Sheeran shared a post by a man called Fuse ODG, whom you may not have come across. I don’t know what his real name is, but then neither, possibly, does he, but what he – a British-Ghanaian rapper – said was that Band Aid was part of “a campaign that dehumanises Africans and destroys our pride and identity in the name of ‘charity’.” The lyrics, he added, reinforce a “white saviour complex”.
It is 40 years since Bob Geldof, moved by a report on the BBC by Michael Buerk on famine in Ethiopia, gathered his pals in the music business to record Do They Know It’s Christmas? It was followed in July 1985, by Live Aid, a multi-venue international concert which raised millions for famine relief in Ethiopia. And the Band Aid Charitable Trust continues to raise funds with, to date, more than £140 million still funding healthcare, educational and food projects, around the world.
But Sheeran doesn’t care for the lyrics of the original song and he doesn’t like being featured in a new, updated, version, Band Aid 40, which, by the way is a hopeless custard of a re-mix. So Sheeran hates it, Fuse ODG hates it and, of course, so does David Lammy. Writing for The Guardian in 2017, our future Foreign Secretary dismissed “guilt trips” that “perpetuate stereotypes” and attacked the idea of “Western celebrities acting as our tour guides to Band Aid Africa”.
And I, too, hate the original lyrics. Of course I do. Lines like, “The greatest gift they’ll get this year is life” and, “The only water flowing/Is the bitter sting of tears” are infantile and clichéd. The answer to the question posed in the song’s very title – Do They Know It’s Christmas? – is a resounding, yes. And, contrary to the assertion made in the song, there is plenty of snow during the winter in Ethiopia, in the Simien Mountains.
So it’s a crass song and its lyrics, so says Abiy Ahmed, current prime minister of Ethiopia, encourage “reductionist and dehumanising narratives”. Indeed, to deal with these criticisms Geldof has released five versions of the song over the years, to consistently update it as a response to the fact that Ethiopia has evolved into a very different country to the one it was in 1984. An awful pudding being the version released this week, which is not worth the finger movements you’ll need to find it on your phone.
But what the critics fail to mention – aside from the vast amounts of money raised – is that most pop songs have dreadful, crass and silly lyrics. Try, for example, to make head or tail of the 1978 Queen song Bicycle Race. “Hot dog, I say cool it man / I don’t wanna be the President of America”. It’s meaningless garbage. But it’s a great song. The words to You’re Beautiful by James Blunt from 2004 are insufferably contradictory. He catches the eye of a girl on the subway, or rather she spots him, possibly because “She could see from my face that I was f—--- high”, so it was probably more curiosity and pity than love, on her behalf. Then he firmly tells us “I’ve got a plan”. But it turns out he has no plan at all as he admits: “I don’t know what to do”. Twenty years on, perhaps he can offer an updated version where he tracks the girl down on Instagram and, on their first date, reassures her that he’s off the drugs.
Of course the context is everything. In the same way that we shouldn’t get in a twist about fat and spotty kids in Roald Dahl books, neither should we fret about the lyrics from an Eighties pop song. When I hear the opening bars of Do They Know It’s Christmas? I think of Christmas, of the cosy, thatched cottage we lived in in Oxfordshire, of wrapping presents in my bedroom with the radio on. And I think of the breathless news on our black and white telly of all those pop stars gathering in that recording studio in London.
And then I recall the excitement and drama of Live Aid, of Phil Collins singing at Wembley then dashing off to Heathrow (in a helicopter piloted by Noel Edmonds – those were the days) to fly and perform at the concert in Philadelphia.
And then all the other terrible and wonderful Christmas songs come on the radio and, casting aside the Scrooge on my shoulder, with the help of our young, excitable sprogs, I’m subsumed into the joy of Yuletide.
Meanwhile, Sheeran is getting exercised about Geldof’s co-writer Midge Ure’s rhyme and scanning fudges. This week, Sir Bob revealed that he had even put a call in to Ed so they can discuss the issue amicably. At the time of writing, there is no word on whether the 33-year-old has replied to the 73-year-old.
Geldof, sometime slaughterman, pea canner and song writer, and full-time campaigner for social justice and peace, should dismiss this pip squeak. “Fock the address”, he famously said on TV during Live Aid, desperate to tell viewers the phone numbers they should call to donate. Which is precisely the sort of unlyrical language he should employ in the direction of Sheeran.