Saturday 9 December 2017

Is It Okay To Like Another Rock N Roll Christmas?

If you ask me what my favourite Christmas Songs are, my choices would change depending on the day, the weather or any other number of factors but somewhere in my top ten would be Wizzard's 'I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday', Wham's 'Last Christmas', Mariah Carey's 'All I Want For Christmas is You', Shakin Stevens 'Merry Christmas Everyone' and one other which i would hesitate to mention, 'Another Rock 'n' Roll Christmas'.
The reason for the hesitation would be because the last song was sung by convicted paedophile Gary Glitter and there in lies the dilemma of whether it is okay to listen to it and actually admit to liking it.
Ever since his arrest for possession of child pornography Glitter has been an outcast and his records banished from the TV and radio which is as it should be but pre his arrest, 'Another Rock n Roll Christmas' was as played as much as Slade's and Wizard's festive efforts are now.
Maybe we  shouldn't choose the music on the basis of how pleasant the artist is because it would seriously reduce the amount of music we would listen to as most pop stars are massive jerks.
Michael Jackson is still revered by many and Pete Townshend only recently come off the sex offenders list for accessing child pornography but Jackson and The Who songs have not been taken off the radio playlist and Bill Wyman's sexual relationship with a 13 year old Mandy Smith never saw the Rolling Stones records binned.
It does seem though that with Gary Glitter it is harder to detach him from his music which is strange because musical history is full of artists who have been awful people and 'Another Rock n Roll Christmas' is a great Christmas song but was sung by a truly awful person which puts him and his songs in a grey area.

2 comments:

Liber - Latin for "The Free One" said...
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Liber - Latin for "The Free One" said...
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