10 Songs That Changed Music Forever
4. Band Aid - Do They Know It’s Christmas? (1984)
Written by Ultravox’s Midge Ure and Boomtown Rats singer Bob Geldof following a TV report on the famine in Ethiopia, the Band Aid charity single concept was cobbled together overnight: three weeks after the report’s broadcast, Geldof had the backing of his peers for a Christmas release.
The song itself is mediocre - ‘cheesy’ is the word that springs to mind. However, the circumstances surrounding it are extraordinary, and Geldof’s forthright approach to the project is legendary.
At short notice, Geldof recruited members of U2, Spandau Ballet, Heaven 17, Bananarama, Status Quo, Culture Club, Wham! and Duran Duran alongside Phil Collins, Paul Weller, Sting and Paul Young. In any given week in 1984, the Top 40 might feature almost all of those artists.
When he found out that the UK’s biggest music show Top Of The Pops couldn’t broadcast the song until it had charted, Geldof persuaded the BBC to rearrange the day’s entire viewing schedule by five minutes so that it could be played before the show came on.
The single was released on 3rd December, hitting number one instantly, outselling everything else in the chart put together and becoming both the fastest and the biggest selling single in UK history, records it held for well over a decade.
‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’ made £8million for Ethiopia that year, but the charity records it inspired have made far more - 1985’s US version, ‘We Are The World’ raised over $63million for the same cause.