One of the most talked-about songs in Australia last year has been nominated for the 2017 APRA Song of the Year award.
Comedian and composer Tim Minchin’s Come Home (Cardinal Pell) was released as a charity single in February last year, with proceeds going towards survivors of child sexual abuse in Catholic institutions. The money raised allowed the survivors to fly to Rome to observe Cardinal George Pell giving video evidence to Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sexual Abuse.
In a video released by APRA, Minchin responded to the nomination, talking about why he wrote the song and how he recorded and released it in the space of three days:
It’s nominated for Song of the Year alongside Amy Shark and M-Phazes’s Adore, Julia Jacklin’s Pool Party, D.D Dumbo’s Satan, and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ Skeleton Key. The award will be presented in Sydney on Monday April 3.
Minchin’s song has proven to be as controversial as it was popular, with lyrics calling Pell “scum” drawing the ire of conservative commentators such as Andrew Bolt.
Minchin sings: “I want to be transparent here, George: I’m not the greatest fan of your religion, and I personally believe that those who cover up abuse should go to prison. But your ethical hypocrisy, your intellectual vacuity and your arrogance don’t bother me as much as the fact that you have turned out to be such a goddamn coward.”
You can see hear the full song below.
Finally, a comic songwriter for the liberal elite. Tim Minchin you are my hero.
Just heard your song this morning and it is the greatest song that I have ever heard, Any one who does paedophile activities should be goaled don’t matter who they are even the prime minster of our country. Do the crime Do the time…..
Thank the Goddess for you Tim Minchin – the abomination of the church hiding pedophilia and now knowing that 4400 peoples lives have been damaged for ever and they are just the ones that have come forward – the duty of all artists is to reflect society and you have done this – even if you don’t win the award you have already won – thank you for your wonderfulness
Congratulations Tim Minchin for your APRA nomination.The song is fantastic, and the music so catchy and clever, of course you are a genius, so what else would anyone expect. I have no involvement in any of the church nonsense, but I feel so sad for the victims of the whole ghastly story. Thank you for your very big contribution in raising the money, a wonderful gesture.
“I’ll be buggered if I come home.” said Pell Mell…
This really is a superb song – an incisive skewering of Pell, who well and truly deserves it, set to a jaunty tune. It always gives me goose bumps – the righteous anger, distilled by Tim in such a short time, giving voice to those who have suffered so much.
It deserves to win as a good song for a damn good cause.
Thanks Tim and co. Willful blindness is perhaps the most generous description of Pell’s conduct. It is a great relief to have this topic out there and the under sooooooooooo much public scrutiny.
Or Argus Tuft,
He may simply consider that with the target of the song being specifically involved in the Catholic Church situation, that the directly related victims should be the ones receive the proceeds of the song.
Why should the victims of child abusing Catholic clergy receive all the proceeds? What about the hundreds of other victims who suffered at the hands of the Anglican, Congregational and Salvation Army “men of god” also be recognised? I’m sure that TM being a product of Perth’s prostegious Christ Church Grammar has nothing to do with it.
Sorry Argus, CCGS is Anglican. So your ironic rhetorical comment is in fact entirely true.
And if you were to listen to TM’s Pope Song, I think you would find that he holds no allegiances to Catholicism at all.
K, I think you missed my point. I am well aware that CCGS is Anglican.
Yep, missed the point of your last sentence entirely. Still missing it.
Yes K, you certainly are still missing it. However, whether you realise or not you contributed further evidence, that is the Pope Song, in support of Argus’ simple argument.
I believe Minchin is a prophet. His gifts seem endless, and endlessly diverse.
I, without an ounce of reservation, support him using his gifts to keep any individual, group or institution from evading transparency, accountability and legal responibility with regard to any investigation of any crime against any child anywhere in Australia, anytime.
However, I would welcome Minchin using his platform to highlight some other groups and individuals at least equally as morally repugnant as Pell.
I wasn’t aware of Minchin’s Anglican heritage but as an admirer with a Catholic heritage I have recognised for years his unapologetic anti-Catholicism. I have no general objection to this position although many specific details and ideas along the way may often have been highly objectionable.
If I have understood correctly, Argus is drawing attention to the ‘big picture’ – that is that the Commission has highlighted some, by no means all, institutions and individuals who have been complicit, guilty of crimes against children. The Catholic Church, Pell, the present Pope and many past, clergy, religious institutes and individual nuns and brothers, and many individuals working within various Catholic institutions have brutalised children for decades.
Other institutions, both secular and religious, have brutalised children for decades.
Pell is a most deseving subject of contempt, scorn, anger, derision, repulsion – preferably expressed vehemently and most frequently.
I will never, simply can never stop listening to those people suffering due to Pell’s past and present actions and choices whether criminal or not. In an ideal world we would have the capacity to fully inform ourselves on every ‘story’ and therefore be able to see and listen to every victim, survivor, sufferer.
That is not the case and the predictable consequence is a system of haves-and- have- nots, us and them thinking which can be used to validate the notion that suffering is a competition and therefore some people are more or less deserving than others.
Back to Pell and the Catholic Church. They are targets because they fucking should be. Endlessly. But I want to hear more stories. I have no intention of closing myself off to already heard stories which must be heard as often as they need to be told.
Minchin, all of us, must take some moments to put Pell aside – not away but aside.
And yes, the Anglican Church could do with some Minchin attention. We could broaden things out and look at what’s being preached and taught to children with regard to the role of girls and women in families and societal institutions. On fundamental philosophical questions the Sydney Anglican Diocese makes the Pell -constructed Catholic Diocese of Sydney look centre – progressive.
And please can we as a community take a look at the beliefs and practices of the Salvation Army. Past, present and future. This institution works primarily with people who live with almost overwhelming disadvantage and have few, if any, options for addressing their needs. Many, many clients of Salvation Army services have been wards of the state and as such committed to those same institutions that the Commission has been investigating.
The Australian Catholic and Anglican Churches have rightly lost any entitlement to the unquestioning trust and approval of Australians. Outright hostility is not uncommon and Minchin being nominated for this award is indicative of mainstream criticism of powerful churchmen. Very good.
But the Salvation Army has not been subject to the same level of interrogation. Aside from findings of the Commission with regard to past practices and criminality I can not think of one public conversation on any platform, mainstream or otherwise, where the Salvation Army and the services they allegedly provide are discussed and critiqued. There is a blanket refusal within the broder community to demand the same standards of accountability from the Salvation Army that we have just begun to demand from some other institutions.
Consequently, any change to the Salvation Army’s principles and practices has been rare, minimal and lacking in substance.
Aside from a few delusional zealots, the Australian population is of one voice when talking about Pell. We see him and will never let him out of our sights.
But we’ve got lazy and complacent and we have made choices that mean for some institutions it is just too easy to keep on keeping on. And it is just too easy for most of us to ignore that people are being forced to eat their own vomit, figuratively of course, by an alleged living saint. Every day.
As one of the men who went to Rome with the assistance of this song, I am rather well placed to reply to you. The Royal Commission itself has found that of the religious sex crimes numbers that they have been informed of, a VAST MAJORITY were perpetrated by Catholic clergy. Approximately 65%, if I remember one statistic of hundreds that the RC has officially released, of reported clergy sex crimes in Australia have been Catholic in their connection. So it was vital that Cardinal Pell be confronted for the sheer volumes of crimes that he ignored as he was climbing the corporate ladder of the church over the decades. As he raced off to Rome in the hope of being out of reach of Australian victims and legal accountability, the victims spoke out loudly that they wanted the RC to pursue him to his lair. This is where Tim and his lovely ditty came forward and assisted our cause. The so called ‘other’ victims as you call them, have not had to publicly pursue their sex crime perpetrators to the other side of the globe as much as the victims of Catholic sex criminals. And when you do look at the numbers involved, then I hope you are as alarmed as Tim was. I hope that helps.
Because this song was specificly related to Cardinal Pell and specifically the abuses he may have known about, the money raised went to getting the victims to go to rome so they could sit there while he gave his statement. That’s why those victims got the proceeds, it was specifically about them and what they went through and their specific legal case.