So I’m writing a letter. And I’m listening to the Barenaked Ladies’ Barenaked for the Holidays<\/i>. And I’m up to the eighth track, a cover of “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”–the charity Christmas song done back in the 80s to raise money for starving children in sub-Sarahan Africa.<\/p>\n
I hate this song. I despise<\/i> this song.<\/p>\n
Not the Barenaked Ladies’ version specifically. Actually, I think they do a very nice take on it.<\/p>\n
It’s the message of the song that just gets me the wrong way. The first stanza is fine, about how Christmas charity should extend around the world. But then when the lyrics start babbling about “the only water flowing is the bitter sting of tears” from the starving kids and “well, tonight, thank god it’s them instead of you” and the chorus of “let them know it’s Christmas time again” I have to wonder at just what Bob Geldof was trying to say twenty years ago. If children are starving and dehydrated, telling them it’s Christmas time isn’t going to really help them.<\/p>\n
I despise this song.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So I’m writing a letter. And I’m listening to the Barenaked Ladies’ Barenaked for the Holidays. And I’m up to the eighth track, a cover of “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”–the charity Christmas song done back in the 80s to raise money for starving children in sub-Sarahan Africa. I hate this song. I despise thisContinue reading “On a Christmas Song I Despise”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[891,64],"class_list":["post-928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","tag-barenaked-ladies","tag-christmas","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/928\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}