About “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”

Written to raise money to help relief efforts for the famine raging in Ethiopia in the mid 80s, “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”, sung by supergroup ‘Band Aid’, broke several chart records and has been re-recorded several times, most recently in 2014 to help with the Ebola crisis.

Featuring the vocal talents of Boy George, George Michael (then a member of Wham!), Sting, Bono, and more British stars, “Do They Know” went on to be a massive success, raising $10 million, and is still a Christmas standard today. While its full impact on helping to end famine in Africa and message it sent about Africans to Western audiences are outdated, the song is still quite leggy in helping charities with every reissue, and those featured in the re-releases have attempted to amend some of the more questionable lines.

Described by the New York Times as a

cheery pop carol that tended to homogenize individual voices into a jingly singalong,

“Do They Know” is perhaps as 80s as they come, featuring excessive synths, gated reverb drums, and a chorus you just can’t help but to sing along to. An “American Response” to this song, albeit not Christmas-themed, came in the form of “We Are the World”.