Do any readers still keep up with UK singles chart? Is it still of any interest? It feels like ages since the young people of the nation waited en masse and with keen anticipation to see which artists had sold the most records in any given week. Once upon a time, though, the Number One slot was so coveted and of such significance that accusations of the chart being fixed in order to secure it were not unknown. A notable example is the case of the Sex Pistols' irreverent God Save the Queen allegedly being fraudulently bumped down to Number Two in favour of a Rod Stewart track in 1977, the year of Elizabeth II's Silver Jubilee.
It seems like a fair guess that many who were appalled by Johnny Rotten's lyrics and the antics of the controversy-seeking punk band back in the seventies might be feeling more positive about the current UK Number One single, Wherever You Are. For the uninitiated, this is sung by a choir of the wives and girlfriends of military personnel deployed on the protracted and expensive nation-building exercise in distant Afghanistan, which continues to be marketed to the British population as somehow being connected with our own security here in the UK. The lyrics are drawn from letters between the women and their boyfriends and husbands, and the song came into being via a television programme in which choirmaster Gareth Malone worked to boost the morale and raise the profile of his choir. Along the way, the programme explores the women's vulnerability in the absence of their other halves.
The programme and the song both seem unobjectionable. Neither appear to glorify the open-ended and somewhat opaque nature of the British presence in Afghanistan, and proceeds from the song are directed to charities that do the worthy work of providing financial, social and emotional support for military personnel and their dependants. For as long as this country's governments continue to shovel professional soldiers and airmen into foreign adventures of dubious worth without providing properly for their ongoing welfare, such charities will clearly continue to play an important role.
The public have been provided with an opportunity to understand the women's situation and support their good cause. Hundreds of thousands of people have responded by buying the track, which outsold the rest of the top twelve singles combined. Congratulations all round.
There seems nothing remarkable, then, about any media commentary which praises the efforts of Mr. Malone and his choir. But perhaps it's not surprising that Melanie Phillips, writing in the Daily Mail, could not confine her remarks to a simple expression of admiration for Malone, the singers and those members of the public who have decided to support their work. The tabloid 'paper is relentless in its mission to induce feelings of fear, loathing and scorn in its readers. Not a day may pass without the Mail causing its buyers to splutter indignantly into their morning cornflakes, horrified by some new offence against family values and supposedly venerable British traditions. Common targets of this bile include immigrants, gays, mothers who hold down jobs, the BBC, 'loony left' councils and the mythical 'PC Brigade'.
In her Boxing Day piece about the Military Wives Choir, Phillips picks a much less obvious target at whom to take a swipe. She notes that Wherever You Are has sold six times as many copies as the Number Two single, the début track by X-Factor winners Little Mix. She then uses this piece of information to make a point that seems entirely spurious.
In the imaginary world of Melanie Phillips, it is "inappropriate" and "tasteless" for the pop charts to feature a routine love song in the same week that the soldiers' wives release their charity track. In this imaginary world, all other recording artists should withdraw their material from sale in order to avoid causing offence. In this world, it's not enough simply to feel pleasure that a charity single has massively outsold the other stuff on offer. Instead, one must characterise a gaggle of wannabe pop stars as a vanquished enemy in a ludicrously described battle for the good moral character of the nation.
It seems like a fair guess that many who were appalled by Johnny Rotten's lyrics and the antics of the controversy-seeking punk band back in the seventies might be feeling more positive about the current UK Number One single, Wherever You Are. For the uninitiated, this is sung by a choir of the wives and girlfriends of military personnel deployed on the protracted and expensive nation-building exercise in distant Afghanistan, which continues to be marketed to the British population as somehow being connected with our own security here in the UK. The lyrics are drawn from letters between the women and their boyfriends and husbands, and the song came into being via a television programme in which choirmaster Gareth Malone worked to boost the morale and raise the profile of his choir. Along the way, the programme explores the women's vulnerability in the absence of their other halves.
The programme and the song both seem unobjectionable. Neither appear to glorify the open-ended and somewhat opaque nature of the British presence in Afghanistan, and proceeds from the song are directed to charities that do the worthy work of providing financial, social and emotional support for military personnel and their dependants. For as long as this country's governments continue to shovel professional soldiers and airmen into foreign adventures of dubious worth without providing properly for their ongoing welfare, such charities will clearly continue to play an important role.
The public have been provided with an opportunity to understand the women's situation and support their good cause. Hundreds of thousands of people have responded by buying the track, which outsold the rest of the top twelve singles combined. Congratulations all round.
There seems nothing remarkable, then, about any media commentary which praises the efforts of Mr. Malone and his choir. But perhaps it's not surprising that Melanie Phillips, writing in the Daily Mail, could not confine her remarks to a simple expression of admiration for Malone, the singers and those members of the public who have decided to support their work. The tabloid 'paper is relentless in its mission to induce feelings of fear, loathing and scorn in its readers. Not a day may pass without the Mail causing its buyers to splutter indignantly into their morning cornflakes, horrified by some new offence against family values and supposedly venerable British traditions. Common targets of this bile include immigrants, gays, mothers who hold down jobs, the BBC, 'loony left' councils and the mythical 'PC Brigade'.
In her Boxing Day piece about the Military Wives Choir, Phillips picks a much less obvious target at whom to take a swipe. She notes that Wherever You Are has sold six times as many copies as the Number Two single, the début track by X-Factor winners Little Mix. She then uses this piece of information to make a point that seems entirely spurious.
"Wherever You Are is composed from letters between these wives and their men - Britain’s heroes - as they served on the battlefield. By comparison, Little Mix’s Cannonball - of all titles! - seems quite exquisitely tasteless and inappropriate.
This triumph of The Choir over The X Factor represents the victory of courage over celebrity and endurance over inanity.
The X-Factor song stands for wannabes - however winsome - dazzled by the prospect of fame and money. The Choir’s song stands for courage, patriotism and true, enduring love."Love for the X-Factor is not something you will find expressed here at this is my england. The only time that the TV talent show has had a mention here was in a poem that listed it among the bread-and-circuses items fed to the television watching public in order to keep them docile. But Phillips references the televised singing contest in an extraordinary way. For her, there exists an ideological battle between "courage" and "endurance" on one side and "celebrity" and "inanity" on the other. The singing wives of some servicemen willingly represent the forces of the former. They have consciously taken up arms and have prevailed. You imagined that they just wanted to enjoy the experience of recording a song and raising some money for charity? No, no. Not the case. Knowingly, they became valiant warriors in a fight between qualities-Melanie-Phillips-likes and qualities-Melanie-Phillips-doesn't-like. Their firm intention was to make a statement by trouncing Little Mix, those representatives of everything that the Military Wives Choir avowedly despises. Doubtless, not a single member of this choir of heroines has ever sullied her noble soul by watching the X-Factor on TV, so disgusted are they all by the programme's shoddy values. Phillips doesn't need to interview the choir members to find this out because it's just so obvious to anyone with a shred of decency about them.
In the imaginary world of Melanie Phillips, it is "inappropriate" and "tasteless" for the pop charts to feature a routine love song in the same week that the soldiers' wives release their charity track. In this imaginary world, all other recording artists should withdraw their material from sale in order to avoid causing offence. In this world, it's not enough simply to feel pleasure that a charity single has massively outsold the other stuff on offer. Instead, one must characterise a gaggle of wannabe pop stars as a vanquished enemy in a ludicrously described battle for the good moral character of the nation.
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