There’s a four in the year so that must mean there we’re due another Band Aid record and lo it has been announced this morning that to commemorate its fortieth anniversary Do They Know It’s Christmas is being re-released once more.
However, it’s not a new version this time, but a splicing together of the original track, the Band Aid 20 effort from 2014 and the most recent version, Band Aid 30. The ‘2024 Ultimate Mix’ will be released on November 25, exactly 40 years to the day since the cream of UK pop talent (and Marilyn) gathered at Sarm West studios in Notting Hill to create a pivotal event in music history.
Band Aid - Do they know it's christmas 1984 | HD - Widescreen 16:9 - YouTube
It’s arguably the moment pop found (or rediscovered) its conscience. In the wake of Band Aid came We Are The World, Live Aid, Comic Relief records, Sport Aid records and many many more. After every disaster - and there were a fair few in the late 80s - a charity single would appear, invariably with a video featuring pop stars in the studio clutching their headphones and looking very earnest indeed.
Bob Geldof, who masterminded the original single, is very aware of that today. Band Aid, he says “tells the story not just of unbelievably great generational British talent, but still stands as a rebuke to that period in which it was first heard. The '80s proclaimed that ‘greed is good’. This song says it isn’t. It says it’s stupid.”
The Ultimate mix features bits of all three versions, so we get George Michael, Boy George and Sting from the original, Robbie Williams, Dido and the Sugababes from 2004 and Ed Sheeran, Sam Smith and One Direction from 2014. Chris Martin makes two appearances and Bono, bless him, can be heard three times.
Putting it all together is Trevor Horn, who was Geldof’s first choice as producer back in 1984. In the end, Horn wasn’t available on the day, but instead produced a 12 inch mix.
Interestingly, there’s no mention in all this of the forgotten Do They Know It’s Christmas – the Stock, Aitken and Waterman-produced 1989 Band Aid II version. Featuring a motley crew that included Kylie Minogue, Bros, Cliff Richard, Chris Rea and Sonia, it still reached Number One and became the ninth biggest selling single of that year.
There will no doubt be controversy over the remixed song’s lyrics. The original’s somewhat ridiculous lines about ‘where nothing ever grows/ no rain or river flows’ have long been discarded, but that famous Bono-sung line ‘well tonight thank God it’s them instead of you’ has been replaced by ‘well tonight we’re reaching out and touching you’.
The argument that Band Aid epitomised the ‘white saviour’ mentality (famously the only black artists featured on the original were visiting Americans Kool and The Gang and ex-Shalamar vocalist Jody Watley) and perpetuated negative stereotypes about Africa is a valid one. The counter to that is that the single alone raised $24 million, and with Live Aid, $150 million for famine relief effort in Ethiopia.
A more relevant criticism is that whether doing any charity single is worth it in the era of streaming. The remixed Do They Know It’s Christmas is raising money for the Band Aid Charitable Trust, which supports health and anti poverty initiatives across Africa. A worthy cause, of course. But in an era when most people have fallen out of the habit of purchasing individual tracks, a questionable fundraiser. The Band Aid 30 single lasted just one week at Number One in 2014 and had dropped out of the Top Ten by Christmas. It’ll be interesting to see how this new version performs.
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