Many of the people on this forum write songs and then follow up with a video to add an additional sensory dimension to the song's experience. As creative people, we search for inspiration wherever we can find it.

I thought the following example was not only an excellent song from a song writer's perspective... but the person who made the accompanying video did an excellent job of capturing the songwriter's imagery and of making it visual... in a very emotionally impactful way.

Music and video are somewhat unique in that they both seem to offer direct access to our emotions, circumventing most of the filters we have in place. I'd be curious to hear your observations about the song and the video.



PS, I don't share the song writers opinions on religion, but I think he did a pretty good job of expressing "the standard objections" (to use his own words)

Pat,

That is spectacular!!! Whether one agrees with his views or not, the songwriting is first class as too is the video production. I was completely engaged for all 7+ minutes.

It's also good to hear the Australian perspective of "Christmas in the sun". Seems that while the rest of the world dreams about a white Christmas, ours is often a white-hot one.

Thanks for posting this. Really enjoyed it.
Noel

Creative, creative, creative.

I really liked Noel's comments about 'Christmas in the sun' and 'ours is often a white-hot one'. After the last few days here we know exactly what he means.

Although another person's perspective, told in a down to earth way, I thoroughly enjoyed the presentation.

Noel, I'm glad to hear that you enjoyed this... I was thinking specifically of you when I posted it.

Quite the well done song and video. Pretty dang amazing actually.

Warning : This is just my opinion.

If I take out the lyrics and video, the song, actually has a pretty melancholy feel to it for me. I found this to be interesting when incorporating the other two.

Now, adding the lyrics, I found the main message to be pretty great and really well written. However, I think it would have had more class had it gotten that message across without being condescending to people who believe otherwise.

Adding the video, gave me a happier perspective than the song alone would have given me. Perhaps my own thoughts are too dark, and this gives you a bit more of a forced perspective of opinion?

So overall, I think the song and video were really well done. There are some pretty great things going on there lyrically!

I think had parts of it not gone to the condescending I would have been blown away.

To be clear, it's not that I think people need to believe this way or that. I'm just not a fan of people "packaging" it this way. You can disagree with integrity. I could say more on that, but I fear it would hijack the thread. So, there it shall stay.

As always Pat, you post something that makes me think. I really enjoyed this! It gave me a perspective that I wouldn't have been thinking about today otherwise! Video, truly impacts perception. I will be thinking about this a lot now Thank you!

I absolutely love this song. Tim Minchin's songs more often than not are a sharp stick-in-the-eye to Xtianity. This song is so cool in expressing a different true meaning of Xmas with a less sharp stick.

I agree wholoehearted, Caaron! I don't particularly like my opinions being fed to me. And I find it interesting that people who object to evangelism from other points of view tend to be evangelistic of their own point of view.

There are presentations that make an honest effort to appeal to the audience's common humanity, and there are presentations that make an appeal to an audience's specific bias. This is the second type of presentation.

Nevertheless, I admit that the whole idea behind freedom of speech is to make it possible for people to evangelize their various points of view, and I think both the song writer and the video creator did an exceptionally good job of presenting their message.

“Art is anything you can get away with.”

Marshall McLuhan

I am eagerly awaiting his follow-up to this song, you know, the one about Muhammad.


Oops....did I write that out loud?