“There is fashion, there is fad
Some is good, some is bad
And the joke rather sad,
That it’s all just a little bit of history repeating”
— Propellerheads ft. Miss Shirley Bassey (1997)
2024 then. To paraphrase Sinatra, it was a very strange year. From the brutal to the bonkers, the savage jaw of ’24 was filled with a sea of stories that captured the world’s attention.
A lot happened, though much of it was either scarily inevitable or really rather sad — ever increasing bloodshed in Ukraine and the Middle East, and the return of the Orange Ogre in the White House? Whoever the joke’s on it’s, in the convicted felon’s limited parlance, nasty! At least the clapped-out Tories were given a humungous heave-ho in Westminster. And not before time.
Sticking with Blighty, for those of a certain vintage, some of it was rather good, surprisingly — John Cleese’s classic Fawlty Towers reopened in an acclaimed stage production in London’s West End to packed houses every night, and the formidable farce will head to its fictional setting in Torquay as part of a UK tour in 2016. I’m tempted to tweet Cleese and tell him to get off my land, but in 2024 I, like zillions of others, stopped posting on megalomanic* Musk’s Twitter, or X, or whatever he’s calling it this week.
On a poignantly related note, an actor of much repute, Timothy West, was born the day after my English grandmother’s birthday and died in November the day after my Greek gran’s birthday, leaving behind Prunella Scales, who played Basil Fawlty’s wife Sybil, as his frail 90-something widow.
West had managed the soap double crown of appearing in both EastEnders and Coronation Street, and it’s fair to say Corrie’s Christmas Day spesh somehow managed to outshine an outsized Doctor Who, and ended with long-serving Gail Platt character disappearing into the sunset, leaving her family behind for a new life on (gasp) the French Riviera. Will I be popping in for a cuppa? Ah, now there’s a question.
Musically, Bill Ryder-Jones, Father John Misty, John Grant, The Last Dinner Party, Leyla McCalla, and St. Vincent released some quite wonderful work, Billie Eilish proved she does have the range, while old hands the Cure, The The, and Pet Shop Boys put out their best albums in aeons (ok, the Cure put out their only album in aeons), with Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe only denied a No. 1 by the ubiquitous Taylor Swift.
Moreover, in terms of CD sales (the silver five-incher is still the UK’s biggest selling physical format, thank you overpriced vinyl fetishists) the duo scored the 24th best selling LP of the year. In the era of mass streaming and record labels desperate to dump the price-capped format, that’s an arguably middling slightly niche achievement, but to shine a perspective light on Nonetheless, it’s the first time they’ve made the Top 30 year-end rankings since 1988’s Introspective made the same position thirty-six long years ago.
Ah yes, the eighties. Remember them?
As Smash Hits would exclaim, they’re back, back, BACK! And to hammer home the point, on 25 November 2024 outgoing BBC Radio 2 DJ Zoe Ball was audibly overcome with emotion as she was given the ‘honour’ of premiering a reimagined Do They Know It’s Christmas? on her morning show for Aunty Beeb.
With zero coincidence, the date happened to be the 40th anniversary of, like it or loathe it, the recording of one of the most successful songs in the history of the British charts.
Yet, in one of the more surprising events of the year just past, Trevor Horn’s new trumpeted Ultimate Mix was an unmitigated disaster commercially and artistically, a pertinent reminder to not believe the hype.
As I write this in the new dawn of 2025, how is it that the song that Band Aid famously managed to keep in its place four decades ago —
Wham!’s hardy perennial Last Christmas — has just spent another three weeks in the top spot yet the most famous charity record of all time which can uniquely boast the combined talents of past and present megastars like David Bowie, George Michael, Robbie Williams, Sting and Harry Styles, plus members of The Beatles, Blur, Coldplay, Duran Duran, Queen, Radiohead, and U2 floundered?
With the help of one or two key personnel that were included in the original release in 1984, I’ll be exploring the highs and lows of one damn song in part two, and until then I’d like to wish you a very merry Christmas.
Because it’s no coincidence that Christmas in Ethiopia follows the Orthodox calendar, which means celebrations start on January 7. And as a half-Greek it means that for my brethren December may be magic but the new year is where it’s at.
Steve Pafford
*Did you know that Musk backwards is Skum? You do now…
