The damning evidence has been languishing on YouTube for a week, but it’s now making the rounds properly: As NME reports, Coldplay, now the most streamed band ever, has a new Australian-themed Christmas song called “Christmas With The Kangaroos.” The U.K. pop-rock giants unveiled this sordid thing, of course, on their Australian tour. In a live video, frontman Chris Martin, who performs the song solo with an acoustic guitar, explained it away as such: “Coming to Australia is such a treat, so it’s time we wrote a song specifically for Australia, so this is it.”
The logic seems to be: “We’ve toured here a bunch, so we’re pretty much obliged to write a ghastly song tokenizing your culture.” Thus, “We’ve got barbies, we’ve got beer / Santa wishes he lived here.” Looking forward to “The Night Before Christmas (In Indianapolis)” or whatever comes next. Watch the video, and follow along with most of the lyrics, which are listed below.
Well have you ever stopped to wonder, How they do Christmas there down under?
How do they make Christmas nice,
When they ain’t got no snow and ice?
What about poor Santa’s sleigh? He has to come from fucking miles away.
And what about poor Mick Dundee?
He ain’t got no Christmas tree.
Well they say, Christmas here is much more fun,
We got surf and we got sun.
Christmas is sweet as a peach,
Open presents on the beach.
We got barbies, we got beer,
Santa wishes he lived here.
Loads of laughter, loads of booze,
Christmas With The Kangaroos.
