+
More

A Bunch Of Celebrities Recorded A Song To Raise Money For Ebola. Meet One Who Said, 'No Thanks.'

In November 2014, singer-songwriter Bob Geldof recorded a revamped version of Band Aid's "Do They Know It's Christmas?" with a bunch of celebrities like Bono, Seal, Chris Martin from Coldplay, Sinéad O'Connor, and One Direction to raise money to fight the Ebola crisis.

Look at all these happy celebrities!

But there's one celeb who turned down the offer. Meet Fuse ODG.


Fuse ODG is an English musician of Ghanaian decent who's had some pretty successful hits over in the U.K. He's also the founding member of TINA, which stands for This Is New Africa, a movement aimed at rebuilding, empowering, and showing the beautiful sides of Africa. When it came time to put together celebrities for the Band Aid video, Geldof reached out to Fuse ODG, thinking it would be a perfect fit.

Fuse ODG almost jumped at the chance to be part of Band Aid, until he heard these lyrics...



Uh. Bono? The people of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea know what Christmas is, but since most of them are Muslim they probably don't care.

But that's a lot better than the original 1984 lyrics...





Ah yes, be thankful someone else is dying tonight and not you! Thank goodness they took that line out. Yikes. The 2014 version of "Do They Know It's Christmas?" has been extremely successful since its release, with over a million views in a few days and over a million dollars raised for the Ebola crisis. Fuse penned an op-ed for The Guardian titled "Why I Had to Turn Down Band Aid," and four quotes really stuck out to me.

Here's what Fuse had to say about "Do They Know It's Christmas?":

But it wasn't just the lyrics that made the project so cringeworthy. For some reason, the music video opens with a clip of a half-clothed woman (who appears to be near death or possibly dead) being carried from her home by men in hazmat suits. What a way to start a music video, huh?

Fuse on how we talk about the Ebola crisis and its victims:

I really appreciate that Fuse stressed in his article that the intentions of Band Aid were no doubt good and that we have to be careful about the way we talk about the people of Africa and those who are affected by Ebola. Africa is not a monolith where everyone is starving and living in poverty, and efforts that frame this rich continent as such do more harm than good.

A size 21 Nike shoe made for Tacko Fall.

A local reporter at Hometown Life shared a unique and heartfelt story on March 16 about a mother struggling to find shoes that fit her 14-year-old son. The story resonated with parents everywhere; now, her son is getting the help he desperately needs. It's a wonderful example of people helping a family that thought they had nowhere to turn.

When Eric Kilburn Jr. was born, his mother, Rebecca’s OBGYN, told her that he had the “biggest feet I’ve ever seen in my life. Do not go out and buy baby shoes because they’re not gonna fit,’” Rebecca told Today.com. Fourteen years later, it’s almost impossible to find shoes that fit the 6’10” freshman—he needs a size 23.

Keep ReadingShow less
Joy

10 things that made us smile this week

Did someone order some mood-boosting serotonin?

Upworthy's weekly roundup of joy

Spring has sprung, y'all! Officially on paper, at least. It's still flippin' cold and brown where I live, but we can see the daffodils stretching their way out of the ground and it won't be long before everything bursts into bloom.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "Earth laughs in flowers." That feels true, doesn't it? These early days of spring are a bit like preparing to watch your favorite comedy, snuggled up on the couch with your people (or your cat), nummy snacks and comfy pants, smiling in anticipation because you know you're about to have some big laughs.

Hopefully, that's also how you feel jumping into these weekly roundups of joy, knowing you're about to get hit with some mood-boosting serotonin and cant-help-but-smile goodness. (That's how I feel each week pulling these lists together–it's like a little weekly smile therapy.)

Keep ReadingShow less

A Korean mother and her son

A recently posted story on Reddit shows a mother confidently standing up for her family after being bullied by a teacher for her culture. Reddit user Flowergardens0 posted the story to the AITA forum, where people ask whether they are wrong in a specific situation.

Over 5,600 people commented on the story, and an overwhelming majority thought the mother was right. Here’s what went down:

“I (34F) have a (5M) son who attends preschool. A few hours after I picked him up from school today, I got a phone call from his teacher,” Flowergardens0 wrote. “She made absolutely no effort to sound kind when she, in an extremely rude and annoyed tone, told me to stop packing my son such ‘disgusting and inappropriate’ lunches."

Keep ReadingShow less

Grandpa, dad and son take a funny photo.

What’s brown and sticky? A stick.

How do you get a country girl’s attention? A tractor.

My wife asked me to stop singing “Wonderwall” to her. I said maybe…

Dad jokes tend to be simple, inoffensive attempts at humor that are often puns and never funny. Except, of course, to the dad who tells them. But he usually gets more of a kick out of the embarrassment it caused his children than the joke itself.

According to a new essay, that’s the exact point.

Keep ReadingShow less

Dog does the 'pick a card' challenge and it's adorable.

There are a few kinds of dog parents: ones that only have outside dogs, those who have inside dogs but they're absolutely not allowed on the furniture and dog parents who treat their dog as if they birthed them themselves and give them every luxury invented for four-legged fur children.

Clearly, people are going to have feelings one way or the other about dogs and their place within a household, but I think everyone can agree that seeing a dog be pampered will always be adorable. Opie the Pit Bully is one of those lucky doggos who wound up living in the lap of luxury, and the pooch got to do a "pick a card" day to showcase that his owner loves him the mostest.

In a video uploaded to TikTok by Opie's owner because...ya know, opposable thumbs and all…Opie is faced with two cards that he can't read: 1) because he's a dog, and 2) because the cards are facing toward the camera. That doesn't stop the sweet puppers from playing along, though.

Keep ReadingShow less
Photo by David Cadenas on Unsplash

What we imagine the look on Mr/ Pickles' face to be after becoming a dad.

It’s been an exciting time for a couple of tortoises at the Houston Zoo—and really, for tortoises everywhere.

The zoo announced on its blog that their oldest resident, Mr. Pickles, a 90-year-old radiated tortoise, and his 53-year-old companion Mrs. Pickles (that’s quite an age gap there sir, but no judgment) recently welcomed three new hatchlings.

Just when you thought things couldn’t get any better, here are the new baby names: Dill, Gherkin and Jalapeño.

Clearly, Jalepeño is the spicy one of the bunch.

While this news is certainly momentous for Mr. and Mrs. Pickles, it’s also a huge achievement for the entire species, which is currently critically endangered.
Keep ReadingShow less