Last year, I compiled a playlist of Christmas songs I remember enjoying when I was young. I remember loving "Christmas Is The Time to Say I Love You" by Billy Squier and "Father Christmas" by The Kinks and "Christmas Wrapping" by The Waitresses.
Seeing Love Actually inspired me to add a few more to it this year "Christmas Is All Around" and "All I Want For Christmas Is You," making it a total of 15 Songs of the Season.
While I usually only play these songs at this time of year, as Santas and reindeer don't hold up too well in July, there is one song I absolutely love whenever I hear it, and I could very well play it year round.
This song is the 1984 version of Do They Know It's Christmas as sung by members of the British pop royalty at that time: Simon LeBon, Boy George, George Michael, Bono. It's amazing what your memories will do to a song. Even when I was 8 years old, I understood that this song was part of something really big. I felt I was watching a part of history being made. Live Aid the next year was completely unbelievable in my young, impressionable mind.
But anyways, the song itself is just so upbeat and beautiful, it's like a modern day Silent Night or Joy to the World for me. And the request for charity, spoken smack dab in the middle of the decade of decadence is a very realistic one. It asks people to not give up everything they own, but to at least reflect about where they are in life that holiday season and realize and be thankful that they are in fact quite lucky compared with others in other parts of the world.
They recently remade the song to celebrate its 20th anniversary and for the Live 8 festivals which were held last year to support the idea behind the world debt-reducing Jubilee 2000 initiative. While the proceeds for that single and video went to charity as well, I stand by my belief that the original in all its cheery, teased out bleached hair glory is the better of the two.
Here's the video for my favorite Christmas song ever. Enjoy it, and I hope you enjoy the time you spend with your loved ones this holiday season!
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3 comments:
and you know at the same time I was laughing at all the fashions I thought "if I could have a beer with anyone, it would be Bob Geldof." I cracked up when I saw Paul young though cause Mark and I went to this 80's concert and he was there and he was doing his songs and in his last song, for like 10 minutes he was on the floor singing "every-time-you-go.........away......you....take....a....piece....of.....me.....with....you...everty....time...you...go etc. We were screaming "well f'ing go away for god's sake!!!!"
Hey I downloaded a really good Noel Gallagher version of Merry Christmas. It was so good!!!
ah, I had that version of Merry Christmas sung by Noel too, now it won't work!!
Any idea where I can get a working copy?
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