God Only Knows: not quite a perfect day as BBC sings its own praises

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/oct/08/god-only-knows-bbc-music

Version 0 of 1.

“For the first time ever,” offered the excited BBC1 announcer, “the BBC is coming together to enjoy a truly unique impossible performance.”

He presumably meant it was the first time ever that the BBC was broadcasting something simultaneously across virtually its entire network: the “impossible performance” of The Beach Boys’ God Only Knows was a pretty transparent attempt to reboot the famous 1997 film of stars singing Perfect Day.

It was certainly every bit as star studded: so star-studded that the journalist equipped with the extensively detailed information the BBC provided (“Elton John, international award-winning performer,” it offered, for the benefit of anyone who might have otherwise thought that the guy in the specs was Elton John who works on the tills in Sainbury’s) could deduce that poor old Jake Bugg had been relegated to going “la la la” a minute or so in.

But it was studded with a slightly different kind of star. Perfect Day stuck with artists of a certain vintage – there were virtually no representatives of Britpop, only Westlife from the pop world, while dance fans had to make do with M-People’s Heather Small. This time around, it felt moderately younger: Pharrell Williams was there, so was Lorde, One Direction and Sam Smith.

It was also noticeably different in tone. Perfect Day was relatively low key, or at least as low key as a film featuring Heather Small and Tom Jones engaged in a protracted attempt to deafen each other could be. God Only Knows was grandiose, an act of showboating, packed with CGI special effects. The song’s author, Brian Wilson, performed with a tiger on top of his piano, which momentarily lent proceedings a more disconcerting air than was intended, given that Brian Wilson performed wearing his standard latterday expression, the one that suggests he isn’t entirely certain what’s going on, but is pretty sure he doesn’t like it.

God Only Knows is an astonishingly beautiful song. You could argue all night over whether it’s more beautiful than Perfect Day, but it’s certainly less ambiguous. On the plus side, that means that this time around, no one can snarkily point out that the BBC appears to be advertising the breadth of its music coverage using a song regularly read as a love letter to heroin, but on the downside, it offers no room for the kind of intriguing interpretation of the lyrics given by Suede’s Brett Anderson 17 years ago, who gloomily intoned the line “you’re going to reap just what you sow” with his head turned away from the camera, like a man who’d unilaterally decided to issue a dire warning in the middle of a celebration.

There’s clearly something a little self-aggrandising about the BBC getting a raft of stars to sing an unambiguous song of undying devotion apparently to the corporation itself - you rather imagine the Daily Mail doing its nut the minute the press release landed in its offices – but for all the hubris, there’s a grain of truth in its message.

You could, if you wished, level a lot of criticism at the BBC’s music coverage, particularly of pop on TV: it’s too white, it’s too male, it’s obsessed with the past at the expense of the present, it’s a little too obviously aimed at the fortysomething dad slumped on the sofa, a couple of glasses of wine to the good on a Friday night.

But the question of where music TV in Britain would be if BBC4 weren’t pumping out the documentaries is an intriguing one, and the answer is probably: almost non-existent. So perhaps we should forgive them three minutes of self-congratulation, particularly when it’s raising money for charity.