Band Aid records the controversial charity single "Do They Know It's Christmas?" - November 25th, 1984

On this day in 1984, a group of celebrity musicians recorded the benefit song “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. Hello and Welcome to This Day in History Class,
a show that shines a light on the highs and
lows of everyday history. I'm Gabelusier and in this episode
we're talking about one of the most polarizing songs of

(00:22):
the holiday season, the celebrity supergroup charity single that dared
to ask the patronizing question do they Know It's Christmas?
The day was November, a group of celebrity musicians recorded

(00:44):
the Benefits song do They Know It's Christmas? The project,
known as band Aid, was organized by musician Bob Geldoff
as a way to help alleviate famine in Ethiopia. He
convinced dozens of famous singers to lend their voices and
star power to the track, with all proceeds from sales
of the single going to those in need. With that

(01:07):
noble goal in mind, gelled Off in the song's co
writer and producer, Midge your held a marathon recording session
at psarm West Studios in London. When the finished song
hit British airwaves less than one week later, it's soared
to the top of the charts. Just as everyone involved
had hoped. The single remained the number one track for

(01:28):
five weeks, racking up millions of pounds for a good cause.
It sounds like a clear cut success story, and going
strictly by the numbers, it certainly was, and yet do
they know It's Christmas? Has since become one of the
most divisive songs in the entire Christmas cannon, and not
just because it's been played to death either, which reminds

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me for the two people out there who've managed to
avoid hearing the song. Before your time is up, take
a listen. Bob Geldoff got the idea for a charity

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single in October of four when he was watching a
BBC report about the severe famine that had plagued Ethiopia
for more than a year. The images of suffering stuck
with him, and Geldof began brainstorming ideas for how to
raise money through music. About a week later, he reconnected
with an old friend and colleague named Midge Your, the

(03:12):
frontman of the British new wave band Ultravox. Your had
seen the troubling reports as well and agreed to help
Geldof write a benefit song in time for Christmas in
order to take advantage of the communal spirit of generosity
and goodwill, Geldof proceeded to call every industry contact he
had and even a few he didn't. He knew he

(03:34):
would need quote the cream of pop music talent in
order to raise as much money as possible during the
holiday season, but rather than go through the proper channels,
Geldof skipped the record labels and agents and just track
down the phone number so the most popular singers of
the day. That back channel approach paid off big time,
with a slew of British and Irish celebrities signing on

(03:57):
to the project. Geldof got amitments from Sting George, Michael,
Phil Collins, Boy George, plus members of YouTube Duran, Duran,
Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Cool In the Gang, and many
many others. David Bowie and Paul McCartney were invited to
contribute as well, but both had to decline due to
scheduling conflicts. However, they did contribute spoken word versus to

(04:22):
the tracks B side single Feed the World, which was
an instrumental version of the main song. Once all the
artists were on board, the next step was to find
a song for them to sing geld Off and Your
considered having the group sing an old standard or a
classic Christmas song, but they worried the cost of royalties
might cut into the proceeds, so instead, geld Off dusted

(04:44):
off a half finished tune he had written for his band,
The Boomtown Rats. It wasn't a Christmas song at first,
but after some tinkering from him and Your, it became one,
a Yule Tide ballad designed to, as Your put it,
touch people his heart strings and loosen their purse strings.
On the production side, Geldof tried calling in another favor

(05:07):
from producer Trevor Horn, but he was unavailable to produce
the song. He still helped out in a major way, though,
by offering the use of his studio in London free
of charge to make sure the single was ready in
time for the holidays. Your agreed to take on production
duties himself, and Geldof began making arrangements with their many collaborators.

(05:29):
On November, the all day and all night recording session began.
The singers hadn't heard the track before they arrived and
had to learn their lines in the studio with the
help of a demo tape prepared by Your Sting and Duran.
Duran's Simon Lebone recorded guide vocals to help the other artists,

(05:49):
and after they had all sung through the song together,
the singers were recorded individually so that your could select
the best clips for the final edit. Wrangling that much
talent was an exercise and controlled chaos, but for the
most part the session went smoothly. The only hiccups were
a late arrival by boy George and a concern about

(06:09):
the lyrics raised by You Two's Bano. He thought one
of his lines was in poor taste, and he was right.
More on that later, but for the sake of the project,
he withdrew his objection and sang the words as written.
Do they Know It's Christmas was conceived, recorded, edited, and
dispatched to the pressing plants at a blistering speed. Just

(06:30):
four days after the recording session, You're dropped off a
tape at the BBC, and the song made its radio
debut that same day. The vinyl single hit store shelves
a few days later in a sleeve designed by Peter Blake,
half of the husband and wife duo behind the Beatles
iconic Sergeant Pepper album cover, sporting a who's who of

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talent and a charitable message well attuned to the season,
the single shot to the top of the sales charts
and stayed there all through Ristmas and into the new year.
In total, three point eight million copies were sold in
the UK and twelve million worldwide. Geldof had expected to
raise seventy thousand pounds at most, but instead the single

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brought in more than eight million pounds within the first
year of its release, the equivalent of well over thirty
million dollars today. That was enough to make it the
highest selling single in UK chart history, a title which
it held until when it was overtaken by Elton John's
Candle in the Wind, A tribute to the late Princess Diana.

(07:37):
From a financial standpoint, Do They Know It's Christmas? Was
a resounding success. It provided millions of pounds in aid
and brought a new level of global awareness to the
plight of an often overlooked country. So why then, is
the song so unpopular today, often ranking near the top
of the list of most hated Christmas songs. It's partly

(07:58):
down to personal taste. The song is clearly a product
of the nineteen eighties and all that that entails, and
that's just not everyone's idea of Christmas, no matter how
many jingling bells are thrown in there. The optics of
the song are another hurdle. Anytime a group of highly
paid celebrities joined forces to earnestly plead for someone else
to spend their money, it's gonna rub some folks the

(08:21):
wrong way, and all the more so when that plea
is caked in the cloying sentimentality of a Christmas song. Still,
the most likely reason for the backlash is the songs
often condescending and cringe inducing lyrics. Although likely unintentional, many
of the lines treat the song's aid recipients as alien,

(08:42):
referring to the people of Ethiopia as quote the other ones,
those who live in a world of dread and fear,
where the only water flowing is the bitter sting of tears.
And then there's the line that Bono didn't want to sing,
the part that encouraged listeners to quote thank God it's
them instead of you. But mothering the people the track

(09:06):
was meant to help is just the start of the
song's lyrical shortcomings. Another stanza reveals oh woefully inaccurate understanding
of Africa's geography, describing the entire continent as a place
quote where nothing ever grows and no rain or rivers flow.
The songs read on African culture is misinformed as well,

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and the surest evidence is right there in its title,
do they Know It's Christmas? Ethiopia is one of the
oldest Christian nations on Earth and has a majority Christian population,
so yeah, it's safe to assume they've heard of Christmas.
But perhaps most troubling of all are the song's implications
about the true cause of Ethiopia's famine. Like most Western media,

(09:52):
it attributed the famine to natural forces such as drought,
and while that's certainly exacerbated the problem, the root cause
was actually man made. Ethiopia's famine was the result of
a decade of corrupt government policies, ones that had misused
international aid to strengthen the country's military while neglecting its
agriculture and its people. The sad irony is that once

(10:16):
famine assistants began pouring in, provided mostly by Western governments
and by various humanitarian efforts, it actually contributed to the
suffering it was meant to help relieve, instead of using
the money to address the famine head on, the Ethiopian
government put it towards strengthening the policies that had reduced
food production in the first place. Unfortunately, according to a

(10:39):
ninety six report and Spin magazine, that's what happened to
at least some proceeds from Do They Know It's Christmas,
as well as from Geldoff's follow up charity projects We
Are the World and Live Aid. That's not to say
that band Aid didn't help at all. It did, but
it is a reminder that good intentions alone aren't a

(11:00):
strong foundation for an effective relief program, and in the
worst scenarios, an attempt to help can cause more harm
than good. So does Do They Know It's Christmas? Deserve
all the flak it gets? Well, there was a time
when even Bob Geldoff would have told you that it did.
In he told the Hollywood Reporter quote, I am responsible

(11:23):
for two of the worst songs in history. One is
We Are the World? The other one is do they
Know It's Christmas? Any day soon I will go to
the supermarket, head to the meat counter, and it will
be playing every effing Christmas. That said, Geldoff did change
his tune. Just four years later, when asked about the

(11:44):
ongoing criticism of the song in an interview with The Telegraph,
the musician replied, quote, please, it's a pop song. Relax,
it's not a doctoral thesis. Medjor expressed a similar feeling
in his two thousand and four autobiography, arguing that the
song's impact was what mattered, rather than its content. It

(12:06):
is a song that has nothing to do with music,
he wrote. It was all about generating money. The song
didn't matter. The song was secondary, almost irrelevant. That may
be true, but it's worth noting that in geld Off
in your Re recorded the song to raise money for
the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, and they rewrote most

(12:28):
of the lyrics in the process, So I guess the
song itself mattered at least a little. I'm Gabe Louzier
and hopefully you now know a little more about history
today than you did yesterday. You can learn even more
about history by following us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram
at t d I HC Show, and if you have

(12:51):
any comments or suggestions, you can always send them my
way at this day at I heeart media dot com.
Thanks to Chandler Mays for produce in the show, and
thank you for listening. I'll see you back here again
soon for another day in history class.