Monthly column on the arts: notes from the Dome

Popular musician Jools Holland, two Millennium Dome organisers, and the Director of the English National Opera had the unenviable task last December of choosing the musical item that would play out the century in the Dome.

The shortlist included rock group Queen's 'We are the Champions' and 'Bohemian Rhapsody'; 'All You Need is Love' (The Beatles); 'Imagine' (John Lennon); 'Millennium' (Robbie Williams); 'Don't Look Back in Anger' (Oasis); 'Disco 2000' (Pulp), and 'It's Only Rock and Roll' (The Rolling Stones). The list made an interesting epitaph for the last 1,000 years, ranging from Robbie Williams's pessimism - 'We got stars directing our fate' and Lennon's bleak homilies - 'Imagine there's no heaven, it's easy if you try', to the music of Queen, described by critic Rosie Lane as 'an optimistic and truly British anthem in every sense'. I suppose that looking at the current headlines - everything from Chechnya to Gary Glitter - I would have to go along with Williams and Lennon, if I didn't have other points of reference. In the end, 'All You Need is Love' filled the vast spaces of the Dome, and as a secular anthem for a secular age it could have been worse. While it was all going on, somebody stole a Cezanne from the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford; there's probably a moral there somewhere.

Religious anthem

On the other hand, Sir Cliff Richard's religious anthem, the Millennium Prayer (the Lord's Prayer set to the tune of Auld Lang Syne), did badly after its run at the Number 1 spot before Christmas. It was an impressive career achievement by a distinguished musician; in December, Cliff was reminding his fans that a Top Ten record in 2000 would mean he'd had Top Ten hits in six decades. He had hoped the record would become 'a millennial anthem for the nation', but it was not to be. Displaced by Westlife at the Christmas Number 1 spot, the Millennium Prayer didn't make the shortlist for the big moment in the Dome.

Rock musician George Michael was vitriolic about the record, garnering valuable press coverage for his comments; it was a vile, bland, exploitative, offensive piece, he spluttered (George should check whether his house is made of glass, in my opinion, before calling the kettle black). Broadcasters vied to produce the least convincing reasons why the record should be denied airtime. Some atheists who industriously promote materialism and humanism in everything they write argued that Christian propaganda abuses the British public, and some media people whose industry has not exactly been harmed by violence and sex denounced some of the words. 'I don't think any of us suspected what an extraordinary controversy it would stir up,' said Cliff. The great British public beat a path to the record shops and kept the record at Number 1 for three weeks.

I have mixed feelings on the issue. Nobody who knows anything of Cliff's work can doubt that he is a great evangelist and ambassador for Christianity in areas many of us will never be able to enter, let alone witness in. But the prospect of pubs full of tipsy revellers bawling out the words of the Lord's Prayer on New Year's Eve wasn't one I relished: if anything is to be trivialised, better it be Westlife.

Words and music

Years ago, someone set the words of 'I know that my Redeemer lives' to 'I love to go a-wandering,' thus uniting possibly the most sublime words imaginable with the most trite tune one can think of. I don't doubt Cliff's motives, or the powerful ministry his record must have had, but I hope it hasn't revived a trend. 'Abide with me', 'Oh Happy Day', and several other Christian hymns have been robbed of their meaning in many secular contexts today. It would be unthinkable for the Lord's Prayer to be carried even a little way along that road. The Millennium Prayer did valuable service for the kingdom, and I'm glad we can now move on.

David Porter

© Evangelicals Now - February 2000
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