A mental health-awareness song might not seem the most festive of recordings – but this low-key and emotive tune is an unexpectedly brilliant, vital Christmas message.
Christmas singles and charity go together like eggnog and vomiting. Charity is the great excuse for oddball, novelty or amateur-hour recordings that would not be given the time of day at any other time but are allowed press coverage and airplay during the festive season when all bets are off and people almost expect gimmicky recordings to climb the charts. After all, there is an argument to be made that all Christmas records are, by default, novelty records that seek to cash in on the season of goodwill and indulgence. It’s unsurprising, then, that charities – good and bad – have sought to attach themselves to these records, following in the footsteps of Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas? in raising money (not as much money, but never mind) for whatever good cause they represent. If you don’t really like the record or see it as something that you’ll ever listen to again, you might still buy it just to show how charitable you are. Some people even make a big show out of buying several copies, though you might wonder why they don’t simply donate the money directly to the charity – they still expect some tangible return on their financial investment, I guess.
The Christmas Charity Record has evolved to the point where the charities themselves are producing the single, rather than simply being the recipients of the profits from a recording. The shift from physical to digital media has made this more practical, as there are no longer the same costs involved in manufacturing or recording songs, making it easier to produce a fundraiser without the possibility of expenses gobbling up all the income – something that was definitely the case with less successful charity records in the past.
The Bearded Fishermen charity is now, as you might expect, an organisation aimed at sea rescue and such, but rather one that is concerned with mental health and suicide prevention. All very laudable and worthy of support. They’ve decided to produce a Christmas single to help raise funds. But it’s not what you might expect. Usually, these recordings are cover versions of well-known songs, aiming at grabbing public attention through familiarity – and they tend to be bloody awful, half-baked versions of the recognisable that are agonisingly unbearable. The Bearded Fishermen have shown rather more ambition and teamed with singer-songwriter Cat Winter (what an appropriate name!) and Lincoln-based musicians to create an original recording that has nothing of the novelty about it.
Winter’s song, Don’t Be Silent Tonight, is a minimalist acoustic ballad in the alt. folk tradition and is unexpectedly brilliant. It’s unquestionably a Christmas record – the opening line is “Christmas time is almost here” and the song goes on to make several seasonal references throughout. But this is a song about holding on to those you love, looking out for each other and being aware of the strains that the expectations of the season – the sort of demands for desperate jollity and socialising that feels like a slap in the face for those facing loneliness, pain and despair. Christmas can be an awful time for many people, and not just those with a bloody-minded determination not to enjoy it. The claim that more people commit suicide at Christmas than at any other time might be an urban myth, but let’s not pretend that this is just the season to be jolly. For a lot of people, Christmas is a painful reminder of loss, a crushing pressure to spend money that you don’t have or a time of family dispute that you’ve managed to avoid all year long.
It’s not that this is a depressing song or a deep-dive into misery – it’s a call to embrace those around you and enjoy life but without the bouncy crassness and cliches of the classic Christmas single, where festive jollity often seems forced and fraudulent. There’s a touch of melancholy behind it but it’s ultimately a song with hope at its heart. As a piece of music, it’s a fine example of less being more. As a message too, come to think about it. We may have gone past the days of the Christmas classic – there is just too much out there and it’s all so bloody hard to wade through, be it good, bad or idiotic. But this deserves to be heard as widely as possible and if there was any justice in the world (spoiler: there isn’t) it would make its way to the upper echelons of the charts.
You can listen to and buy it here:
https://beardedfishermen-media.org/ms_song/dont-be-silent-tonight/
DAVID FLINT
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