by Nicole Lampert, Telegraph (Photo: Wikimedia Creative Commons)
The singer’s newest track sparked a vicious backlash that is impacting his career, but friends say it was never going to make him back down
Boy George doesn’t mind the odd scrap. Some former friends might even say he rather enjoys them. Whether it’s JK Rowling, Madonna, George Michael or his former bandmate and lover Jon Moss, the list of those scratched by George’s unsheathed talons is long.
So when he waded into the feverish debate over the Israel-Hamas conflict with a song beginning “You say genocide, I say war,” he knew it might attract the ire of those waging a propaganda war against the Jewish state.
He wrote the song after visiting the London exhibition on the slaughter that took place on October 7, 2023, at the Nova music festival. He was taken around the exhibition by survivor May Hayat, who witnessed the murder of her best friend. He told May, as he hugged her, that he would write a song about what he had seen, what he believed.
Within days, he hadn’t just written the song; he’d also recorded a version with the help of AI. If the title, We Will Dance Again, was ambiguous, the chorus – “But if you’re ever confused / I stand with the Jews” – was less so.
When he posted it on his social media channels on July 26 with the Hebrew word “shalom” (“peace”), the backlash was instant – and vicious.
“Nazi”, “sociopath” and “genocidal freak” were some of the printable responses. Martyn Ware, of Human League and Heaven 17, denounced George, despite being an “old friend”, for producing what he described as an “overtly pro-genocide, anti-Palestinian piece of musical propaganda”.