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Monday, July 25, 2022

Musical Monday - Do They Know It's Christmas? by Band Aid


#1 on the Billboard Hot 100: Never.
#1 on the Cash Box Top 100: Never.
#1 on the U.K. Chart: December 15, 1984 through January 12, 1985 and December 23, 1989 through January 6, 1990.

In 1984, Boomtown Rats frontman Bob Geldof saw a news report about a famine in Ethiopia. Moved to do something, he wrote one of the most white savious songs of the era, used his connections to recruit a Who's Who's of British pop music personalities, and recorded this single, pledging all of the proceeds to charitable famine relief. It was one of the iconic moments of the 1980s, and one of the most culturally imperialistic events of my lifetime.

To be fair to Geldof, his heart was probably in the right place. He really did want to help, and the single and resulting concert series (named Live Aid) raised millions of dollars, most of which apparently did go to food aid. I must confess that I am doubtful as to the actual impat of this fundarising on the actual famine - most famines in the modern era are not due to an actual lack of food, but rather due to poor infrastructure hampering distribution networks or political instability (or outright political repression) halting the flow of food from where it is produced to where it is to be consumed. Whether the aid was useful or not, Geldof actually did raise money and it seems to have actually been used for its intended purpose. What uis also undeniable is that Band Aid and Live Aid resulted in some of the signature moments of the 1980s, most notably a performance by Queen at Wembley Stadium, and stunts like Phil Collins playing in Live Aid events in both Britain and the United States on the same day.

That said, that doesn't make the song any less cringe-worthy. Many of the individual lines are somewhat offensive (the most obnoxious being "[t]hank god its them instead of you"), but on top of that, the entire premise of the song "do they know its Christmas?", is a very religiously imperialistic in tone. Africa is an incredibly religiously diverse continent. There are Christians to be sure, but the continent is populated with large numbers of Muslims, vast numbers of people who follow aboriginal African faith traditions, and a smattering of Hindus, Jews, and Buddhists as well as many others. To reduce this rich and varied collection of relgious beliefs to a question about whether the beknighted natives kow whether it is Christmas is stunningly offensive in its reductiveness.

In any event, the critiques of the song didn't dampen its pop culture dominance. The idea of a group of pop artists getting together to record a song for charity spread like wildfire through the music world of the 1980s. Band Aid's charity single was soon followed by USA for Africa's recording of the almost as cringey We Are the World. Live Aid was copied by Farm Aid, an effort spearheaded by John Mellencamp to raise money to save failing family farms. Ronnie James Dio and his bandmates got together a bunch of metal artists who put out the charity album Hear'n Aid. And so on. By the end of the 1980s you couldn't fall over without landing on one charity single or another. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Geldof should be the most flattered man of the decade.

Previous Musical Monday: The Wild Boys by Duran Duran
Subsequent Musical Monday: Like a Virgin by Madonna

Previous #1 on the U.K. Chart: The Power of Love by Frankie Goes to Hollywood
Subsequent #1 on the U.K. Chart: I Want to Know What Love Is by Foreigner

Previous #1 on the U.K. Chart: Let's Party by Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers
Subsequent #1 on the U.K. Chart: Hangin' Tough by New Kids on the Block

List of #1 Singles from the Billboard Hot 100 for 1980-1989
List of #1 Singles from the Cash Box Top 100 for 1980-1989
List of #1 Singles on the U.K. Chart for 1980-1989

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