7 December 2004
Well, Do They?
A number of years ago - twenty, to be precise - two girls, aged seven and ten, in a leafy bit of West London, gathered around the radio at five to seven on a Sunday evening, with a torn bit of paper clutched in their mucky little hands.The paper - tattered and ripped because it had been squabbled over for several weeks - contained the lyrics to a very special song, one which was recorded by a whole handful of contemporary artists, all with terrible hair and dubious singing ability.
The lyrics were printed - as lyrics frequently were, back then - in the pages of top pop magazine Smash Hits, which in those days didn't bother with Pop Idol Runner Up interviews and Behind The Scenes Of The Latest Busted Video features, but concentrated instead on the important things, the essentials.
Namely:
a) pull-out giant posters of Morten Harket/John Taylor/Madonna/Jon Bon Jovi and
b) printed lyrics to most of the songs in the top forty at the time.
Young girls (mostly) aged 7-10 (mostly) would carefully cut the lyrics out of the magazine with blunted scissors, frequently forcing an agonising decision over whether to cut out Rio or, on the reverse, something by Donna Summer. Choices, choices. These lyrics would be pasted lovingly into scrapbooks (mostly) so that the listener at home could warble along when the song came on the radio (as well as pressing record and play on the tape deck, of course).
And so it was that two young girls in a leafy bit of West London fought over the lyrics to a specific song in front of the radio just before seven, as Bruno Brookes (or whoever it was at the time) wibbled on about the countdown from ten to two, and then sang along (girls, not Bruno) together to the next song he played.
The song which was played on Radio 1 at five to seven on that Sunday night, twenty years ago, was at number one in the UK charts, and stayed there for a good number of weeks. Over the years, it has become a staple of Now-That's-What-I-Call-Crimbo compliation albums, not to mention being played to death in muzak form in shops nationwide from about August onwards.
This year, a group of record company execs young artists of the noughties decided it was time for a new version, to celebrate twenty years since its initial release.
To say that the new version is poor is a bit of an understatement. To say that it is piss-poor is a little unfair to urine, which is alright really, in a bodily function sort of way, and not that offensive unless it's thrown over you by a tramp or loony, and even then, some people might actually enjoy it...which is more than can probably be said for the new version of this song, which is, frankly, bollocks.
However, having said that - and however cynical you may be about the motivations of the artists involved - it's important to remember that it's for a good cause, intentions, charity, well-meaning, blah blah blah.
Their version of the song, however, is shocking.
With that in mind, two older girls, aged twenty-seven and thirty, in random IM conversation on day in December, realised that however bad they were, they couldn't possibly do worse.
And so, with lyric sheet (well, web page) in front of them, the two girls (well, women, strictly speaking) gathered around their computer screens one December evening, in two different leafy areas of London, with an mp3 recorder and a couple of telephones, and a midi version of the song, and let rip, complete with giggles, appalling harmonies, bossiness, burps, technological challenges, wobbly vocals and a genuine Bono moment in the middle. No dodgy rap in the middle though, you'll be happy to hear, and for that reason only in our opinion it nudges slightly ahead of the recent re-release.
And so, to the question posed by this song, Do They Know It's Christmas? the answer must surely be "well, yes, I think they're *well* aware, actually - they're hungry, not stupid - or alternatively, they don't care, but after hearing this, I'll bet they wished they didn't. At all."
Ladies and Gentlemen, for a limited time only:
Meg and Anna: Do They Know 'Tis Christmas?