Funk dat Choir

Click here to watch some very smug people from Birmingham smirk at each other for being so very clever. It's the Complaints Choir of Birmingham, and they do precisely what you might expect - complain, in song. Yet this seems to be a decent idea half-baked and poured with such a degree of self-satisfaction that it's unbearable to watch from start to finish.

Smug 1

Smug 2

Smug 3

This man has just realised how smug his friends are:

Firstly, no actual effort to sing properly. This would have hiked up the credibility of such a concept. Instead, this becomes a lazy parody. 'Look at us! We're infusing the mundane into something highbrow!'

Secondly, no effort to write a decent tune nor write decent words through which to articulate the complaints.

Thirdly, even the complaints themselves are woolly. One song covers bus conductors, general PC crashes (the computer, not the police), general rubbish about Birmingham not being as nice as it used to be. Newsflash: it was never nice to begin with.

All of this drenched in the kind of ironic knowing wink which tells me these people find themselves hilarious for such an ironic gesture!

What about a seriously, well-crafted hymn opposing a piece of planning permission? Something specific, with real themes, real concerns? None of this "the traffic's always terrible"-style bullshit.

Here's how they could have done it, and I know which I prefer. Man, funk dat.

This is how I feel: