At this special time, when Simon Cowell is busy manipulating the charts and E4 gives us it’s yearly run down of which plasticine pop marketed it’s way to the nations hearts. I think it’s time we made a stand against the vacuous and dictatorial nature of modern music. I don’t want to be told to go and re-buy a poorly charting teen queen hit (not when I only bought the Miley Cyrus original 10 months ago) I don’t what to look back at the Christmas chart and see once again that a multi-million pound talent show managed to produce another version.. It seems that every new artist propelled from the loving yet fleeting embrace of a talent show to be devoured by the celebrity obsessed media, releases a version rather than a song. The charts have become infested with versions. Have 50 years of musical evolution really come to this? That is why we need a revolution. We need to take a stand and knock that man Cowell and his puppet master ideals from the number one spot. No longer will we see our beloved Christmas number one supplanted by the behemoth that is x-factor. That is why, we need some thing that embodies the spirit of revolution. The spirit of musical freedom. The spirit of Christmas. We need Sir Cliff.
Christmas conjures up a plethora of images and feelings: Santa, sleigh bells, snow and Sir Cliff. From the time we were all very young we knew of these cherished festive ideals. With the song ‘Mistletoe and wine’ Cliff managed to encapsulate everything that is great about Christmas. Even if you had the pleasure of hearing the song on a balmy late summers evening you would undoubtedly be transported to the Christmases of your formative years. What Cliff manages to do is in one foul swoop, is supply us with a much needed nostalgia fix. He reminds us of a joyful time from our youth. Just look at the imagery in the song. A snowy evening, ‘fingers numb, faces aglow’. Now, that is surely in keeping with the traditional idea of Christmas (although I will concede that the line ‘hours for the taking/just follow the master’ are a little sinister. However, if you add in the chorus of Metallica – Master of Puppets it does make quite a tune. Now there’s a duet I would kill to see!) The song (and accompanying video) speak of a lost age when men could wear knitted jumpers and give gifts to unknown children without being hounded by tabloids. A bygone era, when we could throw logs on the fire without worrying about the carbon emissions. Now that’s the Christmas that I want to remember. That’s why we need Cliff more than ever.
In the song Saviours day, Cliff also addresses the true meaning of Christmas with his traditional religious message. In recent years Christmas has become divorced from religion, superseded by wanton consumerism. What Cliff has managed to do is remind us of the true meaning of Christmas. He is the religious anchor on our consumerist oil tanker. Without Cliff we would drift away completely, eventually running adrift on the rocks of debt, wondering what all the spending was for in the first place. Cliff needs to be number one.
You may say it is sanctimonious claptrap aimed at the post war baby boomers. You may also argue that his songs have no depth, they’re not cutting enough. One may even argue that his songs are out of step with modern music, old fashioned even. You would, of course, be wholly wrong. He is responsible for the finest punk record of all time in ‘the Millennium prayer’. Cliff took a sacred religious prayer and melded it to the tune of our finest drinking anthem, Auld Langs Syne. Now that is surely the most anti-establishment thing any artist has ever done (he was also responsible for the first ‘mash-up’ beating 2many djs by 4 years).
It is clear that Sir Cliff IS Christmas. Cliff was a central part of all of our Christmas memories (Just imagine how distraught you would be if you discovered that Cliff wasn’t real instead of Santa). If we really want to halt the X-factor juggernaut then unite behind Cliff and get him back to where he belongs. We need you Sir Cliff.
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