I have a favorite Christmas song, it turns out.
"This little pop song has kept hundreds of thousands if not millions of people alive."
Did you know I've never had an official favorite Christmas song? I like Christmas music generally, even "Wonderful Christmastime" by Paul McCartney, but I had never asked myself which Christmas song I liked best. Today that changed, and the answer may not surprise you.
I ride hard for "Do They Know It's Christmas?" it turns out. I did not realize this about myself until I was recounting a story about a fight I had on Twitter many years ago: Someone told me it was racist to suggest that Ethiopians might not know it was Christmas. (And it would be, but I don't think the song is suggesting that.) They took especial offense at Bono's lyric, "Well, tonight thank God it's them insteaaad of you." (They said there was no way to know whether it is meant sincerely or ironically, but it is meant ironically and it is very easy to know this, because the song was recorded to raise money for the people starving in Ethiopia, and it would not make any sense for the guys who wrote it to be thankful that those people were starving.)
The guys who wrote it are Irish rock singer Bob Geldof of the Boomtown Rats and Scottish singer and producer Midge Ure of Ultravox. Geldof would later say, "I am responsible for two of the worst songs in history," meaning "Do They Know…?" and "We Are the World," which he helped put together as a continuation of the same project. But just last month, he told The Conversation, "This little pop song has kept hundreds of thousands if not millions of people alive." And the Ethiopian government official who made it possible to film the documentary that inspired Geldof told the BBC that even though "Do They Know…?" was in some senses "so untrue and so distorted," it had definitely saved lives in his country.
My thing is: It's just a terrific song. It was corny 40 years ago, but the years have rubbed off the gloss and left it with a lovely patina. Bono's line is the highlight—it's a cutting lyric, but he puts some pain in it, instead of sneering—and furthermore, his work with Band Aid led directly to him doing mission work in Africa, which led directly to U2 recording "Where the Streets Have No Name." Man, at 2:40, when the exultant, exuberant "Feed the world" kicks in, that's about as good as it gets. And did you know Phil Collins does the drums? It's cheesy and sentimental, but so is Christmas. (I do not know if the allegations in this piece still hold up; I've read that they overstate the case quite a bit.)
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