Do They Know It's Christmas?

"Do They Know It's Christmas?" is a charity song written in 1984 by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure to raise money for the 1983–1985 famine in Ethiopia. It was first recorded by Band Aid, a supergroup assembled by Geldof and Ure consisting of popular British and Irish musical acts. It was recorded in a single day at Sarm West Studios in Notting Hill, London, in November 1984.
"Do They Know It's Christmas?" was released in the UK on 7 December 1984. It entered the UK singles chart at number one, where it remained for five weeks, becoming Christmas number one. It sold a million copies in the first week, making it the fastest-selling single in UK chart history until Elton John's "Candle in the Wind 1997". UK sales passed three million on the last day of 1984. The song also reached number one in 13 other countries. In the US, it fell short of the top ten in the Billboard Hot 100 due to a lack of airplay, but sold an estimated 2.5 million copies by 1985. It had sold 11.7 million copies worldwide by 1989 and 3.8 million in the UK by 2017.
"Do They Know It's Christmas?" raised £8 million for Ethiopia within a year, far exceeding Geldof's hopes. The success led to several other charity singles, such as "We Are the World" (1985) by USA for Africa, and spin-off charity events, such as Comic Relief and the 1985 Live Aid concert. Some critics objected to its depiction of Ethiopia and Africa as barren. Ure said the song was secondary to the purpose of raising money for the cause.
"Do They Know It's Christmas?" was rerecorded and rereleased in 1989, 2004 and 2014. The 1989 and 2004 versions also raised funds for famine relief, while the 2014 version raised funds for the Ebola crisis in West Africa. All three reached number one in the UK, and the 1989 and 2004 versions became Christmas number ones. The 2004 version sold 1.8 million copies. A new mix, combining elements of the previous versions, was released in 2024 for the 40th anniversary.
"Do They Know It's Christmas?" was inspired by a series of reports made by the BBC journalist Michael Buerk in 1984, which drew attention to the famine in Ethiopia. The BBC News crew were the first to document the famine, with Buerk's report on 23 October describing it as "a biblical famine in the 20th century" and "the closest thing to hell on Earth". The report featured the nurse Claire Bertschinger, who had to choose which children would receive the limited amount of food at the feeding station and who were too sick to be saved. The reports shocked the UK, motivating the British people to inundate relief agencies, such as Save the Children, with donations. The Boomtown Rats singer Bob Geldof and his partner, the television presenter Paula Yates, watched the broadcast on 23 October and were deeply affected by it. Geldof said about Bertschinger: "In her was vested the power of life and death. She had become godlike, and that is unbearable for anyone."
On 2 November, Yates was in the Tyne Tees studio in Newcastle upon Tyne, where she was presenting the weekly live music show The Tube. Among the acts performing were Ultravox, promoting their greatest hits album The Collection. The singer, Midge Ure, was chatting to Yates in the dressing room when Geldof called her. Geldof had worked with Ure at the 1981 charity benefit show The Secret Policeman's Ball. Geldof asked to speak to Ure and told him that he wanted to do something to alleviate the suffering in Ethiopia. He and Ure arranged to discuss ideas over lunch the following Monday, 5 November, and decided to make a charity record.
Geldof began recruiting musicians. He called Sting and Simon Le Bon, who agreed to participate along with the rest of Duran Duran, and recruited Spandau Ballet after a chance meeting with the band's guitarist Gary Kemp at an antiques shop in London. Geldof said: "It suddenly it hit me. I thought, 'Christ, we have got the real top boys here', all the big names in pop are suddenly ready and willing to do this... I knew then that we were off, and I just decided to go for all the rest of the faces and started to ring everyone up, asking them to do it." Further phone calls from Geldof also secured promises of everybody involved to provide their services free of charge. Other contributors included UK music magazines, which donated advertising space to promote the single; Geldof's record label Phonogram, which released the single; their parent company PolyGram, which distributed it; and the artist Peter Blake, who created the single's sleeve.
Geldof's and Ure's biggest challenge was to write a song that could be recorded and released in time for Christmas. To avoid having to pay royalties, which would diminish the amount raised for charity, they wrote an original song rather than record a cover version. Ure wrote what he felt was a Christmas-like melody on a portable keyboard. He sent a tape to Geldof, who sarcastically told him that it sounded like the theme to the television series Z-Cars.
Geldof came to Ure's house the next day and they worked on the song with Geldof on acoustic guitar. Geldof added lyrics based on a song he had originally written for the Boomtown Rats, which he had provisionally titled "It's My World". Ure recorded Geldof and his guitar and used the recording to develop Geldof's ideas in his home studio, adding his own melody as a chorus. He was unable to improve on Geldof's lyrics, with the exception of the line "And there won't be snow in Africa this Christmas time". The original lyric substituted "Africa" with "Ethiopia", but Ure decided "Ethiopia" had too many syllables to fit the melody.
Geldof asked Trevor Horn to produce the song. Horn was an in-demand producer, having produced three number-one singles that year for Frankie Goes to Hollywood. He was receptive but said he would need at least six weeks, which would make it impossible to release by Christmas. However, he allowed the team to use his studios, Sarm West Studios in Notting Hill, London, free for 24 hours on 25 November. Horn later remixed and co-produced the 12" version and remixed it for the 1985 rerelease.
While Ure was creating the backing track, Geldof contacted various artists, hoping to have the biggest names in British and Irish music appear. Those who were unable to appear, such as David Bowie and Paul McCartney, sent recorded messages of support that appeared on the B-side. The Thompson Twins, who were out of the country instead donated part of the proceeds of their single "Lay Your Hands on Me" to the Action for Ethiopia charity. Geldof said only three people refused to be involved, but refused to disclose who.
Members of the US group Kool & the Gang appeared because they were signed to the same record label as the Boomtown Rats, and happened to be visiting Phonogram's London offices on the day that Geldof proposed the single. Geldof invited Francis Rossi and Rick Parfitt of the band Status Quo, to take part. Although Status Quo were from a different musical background and era, he felt their fame and consistent success would add credibility and their large fanbase would add to the sales. Geldof called Boy George, at the time one of the biggest music stars in the world, repeatedly in New York the day before the recording to insist that he attend. George took the last Concorde flight of the day and arrived at Sarm West at 6 pm. He went immediately into the recording booth to deliver his lines, the last solo artist of the day. The singer Marilyn, who had achieved hit singles in 1983 but whose career had declined in 1984, arrived at the recording session uninvited, sensing an opportunity for publicity. Geldof and Ure felt any publicity was good publicity and accepted the additional star.
"Do They Know It's Christmas?" was produced by Ure. He spent several days in his home studio with his engineer, Rik Walton, creating the backing track, programming the keyboards and drum machines. For the intro, he used a sample of the drums from the 1983 track "The Hurting" by Tears for Fears. John Taylor of Duran Duran and Paul Weller visited Ure's studio the day before the recording to add bass guitar and lead guitar. Ure and Weller later agreed that the guitar did not fit and did not use it. Ure sang the guide vocal, and Simon Le Bon and Sting came to Ure's studio to record their parts.
Geldof and Ure arrived at Sarm West Studios at around 8 am on Sunday 25 November with the media in attendance outside. With recording scheduled to begin at 10:30 am, the artists began arriving. Geldof gave the newspaper The Daily Mirror exclusive access in the studio, and had a group photograph taken by the newspaper's photographer Brian Aris before recording, knowing it would appear in the following day's edition and create publicity. The actor Nigel Planer, who had reached number two earlier in the year with a cover version of "Hole in My Shoe" in the guise of his character Neil from the comedy series The Young Ones, also arrived uninvited. He performed in character as Neil to the camera.
Ure played the backing track and guide vocals to the artists. As a way of having everyone involved immediately, he recorded the climax first. The artists were put in a huge group and sang the refrain "Feed the world, let them know it's Christmas time again" until it was complete. Ure chose Tony Hadley of Spandau Ballet to be the first singer to record his solo part. Hadley said this had been nerve-wracking, knowing that all his contemporaries were watching him. One by one the other assigned singers then did likewise, with Ure taping their efforts and then making notes on which segments would be cut into the final recording. Le Bon, despite having already recorded his part at Ure's house, re-recorded it so he could be part of the moment. Sting also recorded his words again, this time to provide harmony vocals. Despite being singers, Geldof and Ure decided that they would not sing any solo lines, although they took part in the "feed the world" finale. Ure wrote in his autobiography that he was constantly battling with Geldof, and telling him to leave when he would come into the production booth and wrongly tell artists what to sing.
Ure planned Rossi and Parfitt to sing the "here's to you" harmonies in the bridge, but Parfitt could not reach the high notes, and so the part was sung by Weller, Sting and Glenn Gregory. Rossi privately told Ure afterwards that in the studio he sang most of Status Quo's vocal parts and that Parfitt only usually sang onstage, and that Ure should have kept Parfitt away from the microphone. Parfitt said later that he and Rossi had been extremely hungover, and were in no fit state to attempt to record their vocals. According to the journalist Robin Eggar, the only journalist present throughout the recording, Rossi and Parfitt supplied cocaine and the session "became a party".
Phil Collins arrived with his entire drum kit to record a live drum track on top of the programmed drum machine. He set up the kit and then waited until early evening, after all the vocals had been recorded. Ure was content with the first take, but Collins asked to record a second take, which he was satisfied with. Boy George, who arrived that evening from New York City, was the last to record his part.
Ure began working on the mix as the participants began to party in the studio. Horn produced a B-side, "Feed the World", using the instrumental track and featuring messages from artists who had been at the recording who had been unable to attend, including David Bowie, Paul McCartney, the members of Big Country and Holly Johnson from Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Before departing the Sarm Studio, Geldof recorded a statement, which featured as the last message on "Feed the World". Geldof's spoken-word statement said:
"Do They Know It's Christmas?" comprises a verse and bridge, which allow individual singers to perform different lines, and a chorus in the form of two repeated phrases performed by ensemble. The first line is sung by Paul Young on the 1984 version, Kylie Minogue on the 1989 version, Chris Martin of Coldplay on the 2004 version, and One Direction on the 2014 version. The opening line was sung by David Bowie at the Live Aid concert in 1985.
The day after recording, Geldof appeared on Mike Read's BBC Radio 1 Breakfast Show to promote the record and promised that every penny would go to the cause. Most retailers agreed to sell the record at its cost price of £1.35 including VAT: however, some refused, citing cost pressures. The British government donated an amount to the charity equal to the amount of tax they had collected on the single.
Radio 1 began to play the song every hour, far greater than the seven or eight plays per day normally received by an A-list single. The number-one single at the time of its release was "I Should Have Known Better" by Jim Diamond. The song had advance orders of 250,000 within a week of its recording, and orders from record dealers reached one million by 8 December. To meet demand, Phonogram put all five of their European factories to work pressing the single.
Initial quantities of "Do They Know It's Christmas?" were made available from Monday 3 December 1984. It was not officially released until 7 December. It received further publicity from a launch party that day at the Royal Albert Hall during the charity event "Dinner at Albert's", an evening of music to raise money for Save the Children and the Ethiopia Famine Relief Fund. The single entered the UK singles chart the following week at number one, outselling all the other records in the chart put together, with the 7" single alone selling 200,000 copies in the first two days of release. It sold a million copies in the first week, making it the fastest-selling single in UK chart history until Elton John's "Candle in the Wind 1997". UK sales passed three million on the last day of 1984. When Wham!, whose singer George Michael appeared on "Do They Know It's Christmas?", reached number two with their single "Last Christmas", they donated their royalties to the Band Aid Trust.
"Do They Know It's Christmas?" was released in the US on 10 December 1984 on Columbia Records. It sold 1.9 million copies in its first eleven days on release but did not reach number one, due to the more complex chart system, which counted airplay as well as sales. Despite outselling the official number one by four to one, it did not make the top ten due to a lack of airplay, and reached number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100. A 30-minute making-of documentary was released in the UK on 15 December 1984 and in the US on 18 December 1984 on VHS and Betamax. It featured footage shot at the recording session, interviews with Geldof and Ure, as well as the completed promotional video.
"Do They Know It's Christmas?" raised £8 million for Ethiopia within a year, far exceeding Geldof's hopes. "Do They Know It's Christmas?" was reissued the following year on 29 November 1985. It reached number three in the UK singles chart the week following Christmas. It was remixed by Horn and included an updated B-side, "One Year On (Feed the World)", beginning and ending with a recording of a telephone message from Geldof and in between featuring Ure reciting a list of what had been bought with the money raised during the previous 12 months. It had sold 11.7 million copies worldwide by 1989, and 3.8 million in the UK by 2017. A parody version, "Do They Know It's Hallowe'en?", was released in 2005. In 2010, the BBC apologised after falsely reporting that money raised by Band Aid and Live Aid had been diverted by rebels and used to pay for weapons.
As the single was recorded and released as quickly as possible, the music video simply featured footage from the recording session. Bowie, who had been unable to attend the recording, flew from Switzerland to record a short introduction for the video to be played on the BBC's flagship television music show Top of the Pops on 29 November 1984. However, the show's strict regulations meant that the song and its video could not be played until it had charted. Geldof contacted the BBC1 controller, Michael Grade, and persuaded him to have every programme preceding that week's episode start five minutes early to make space for the video before the show. Several artists performing on that week's episode, and the presenter Peter Powell, wore "Feed the World" T-shirts.
The video was shown on Top of the Pops each week during its stay at number one. For the Christmas Day special edition, most of the artists on the record appeared in the studio to mime to the song. The most notable absentees were George Michael and Bono: during Michael's line, the cameras focused on the studio audience, while Weller mimed Bono's line to the camera. At the 1986 Grammy Awards, the video was nominated for Best Music Video, Short Form, losing to "We Are the World".
The reception from the UK music press was mixed. NME wrote only: "Millions of dead stars write and perform rotten record for the right reasons". Sounds said, "It's far from brilliant (if not quite the Bland Aid some have predicted) but you can have fun playing Spot the Star on the vocals, and it deserves to sell by the truckload".
Melody Maker wrote: "Inevitably, after such massive publicity, the record itself is something of an anti-climax, even though Geldof's sense of universal melodrama is perfectly suited to this kind of epic musical manifesto. Midge Ure's large-screen production and the emotional vocal deliveries of the various celebrities matches the demonstrative sweep of Geldof's lyric, which veers occasionally toward an uncomfortably generalised sentimentality which threatens to turn righteous pleading into pompous indignation. On the other hand, I'm sure it's impossible to write flippantly about something as fundamentally dreadful as the Ethiopia famine."
For the 2014 version, several contentious lyrics were rewritten, and the song was changed to focus on Ebola rather than famine. The new lyrics have also been criticised as promoting stereotypes and condescension. Criticism from Africans regarding the song remained: in 2014, African activists and Twitter users complained that the song disregarded the diversity of the continent of Africa and ultimately did more harm than good for the people. The musician Fuse ODG declined to sing on the 2014 version, saying the lyrics misrepresented Africa. He cited lyrics such as "There is no peace and joy in west (sic) Africa this Christmas", and said he went to Ghana each year for the purposes of peace and joy.
Several publications and commentators have described the lyrics as racist and demeaning towards Ethiopians. Ethiopia is home to one of the oldest Christian communities in the world, and one likely slightly older than the United Kingdom, yet the lyrics and title imply that Africans would be unaware of Christmas at all. Peter Gill, one of the few Western journalists in Ethiopia at the time, said: "As Ethiopians have pointed out ever since, they did of course know it was Christmas because the starving were mainly [Orthodox] Christian."
In 2010, Geldof told Australia's Daily Telegraph "I am responsible for two of the worst songs in history", with the other being "We Are the World". Ure's wrote in his autobiography that "it is a song that has nothing to do with music. It was all about generating money... The song didn't matter: the song was secondary, almost irrelevant." Responding to criticism in 2024, Geldof said "this little pop song has kept hundreds of thousands if not millions of people alive". He said the alleged "colonial tropes" of the lyrics were in fact "empirical facts", and that hunger remains endemic in Ethiopia, water is scarce, rain is increasingly unreliable due to climate change, and that Christmas ceremonies were abandoned throughout 1984 and 1986.
Professor Lisa Ann Richey from the Department of Management, Society and Communication at Copenhagen Business School, wrote for London School of Economics blog, that "The commodifying compassion collaborative research project explains how producing the good feelings for helpers is a form of affective labour. Causes have been treated as commodities, and sold by celebrities like Geldof for decades. Consumer humanitarianism, ‘brand aid’ and celebrity activism are examples of the corporate norms infiltrating humanitarianism and development." she goes onto say that "Moral responsibility, the currency peddled by Geldof, is based on pity for the Ethiopians suffering from famine, not on demands for justice. While pity historically played a role in charity-based philanthropy, the marketability of feeling of compassion is a recent trend in contemporary neoliberal capitalism."
Adapted from the record sleeve credits.
A second version of "Do They Know It's Christmas?" was recorded under the name of Band Aid II in 1989, overseen by the most successful British production team of the late 1980s, Stock Aitken Waterman. Geldof had telephoned Pete Waterman to ask him to produce a new version of the song to aid the ongoing situation in Ethiopia, and within 24 hours the recording session had been arranged at Stock Aitken Waterman's studios on London's South Bank. The recording took place over the weekend of 2 and 3 December, and featured several artists who had already been produced by SAW, including Kylie Minogue, Jason Donovan, Bananarama, Sonia, and Cliff Richard, as well as other artists who had big hits in 1989, such as Lisa Stansfield, Jimmy Somerville, Wet Wet Wet and Bros. Bananarama's Sara Dallin and Keren Woodward became the only artists to appear on the 1984 and 1989 versions of the record. Siobhan Fahey, who had been part of Bananarama's line-up at the time the first recording of the song was released, had left the group in 1988.
The lyrics were rearranged for a more traditional 'verse and chorus' structure, with the opening verse being split in two with a short repeat of the ending chorus being played at the end of both, followed by the "here's to you" section and a final lengthened version of the closing chorus (with commentary by Michael Buerk played over the outro in the music video).
Released on 11 December 1989, the Band Aid II version spent three weeks at number one in the UK, becoming the Christmas number one single and the last number one single of the 1980s, and ended the year as the ninth biggest selling single of 1989.
Adapted from the record sleeve credits.
Band Aid 20 recorded a third version of "Do They Know It's Christmas?" in November 2004 for the twentieth anniversary of the original recording, and again got to number one. The recording and release of the single tied in with the release of the Live Aid concert on DVD for the first time. The idea was prompted by Coldplay's Chris Martin, although Geldof and Ure both got quickly involved. Geldof did the publicity and educated the younger artists on the issues (some of whom had not been born, or were very young, when the original was recorded) while Ure filmed the event for the corresponding documentary.
The Band Aid 20 version was produced by Nigel Godrich, who was contacted by Ure. Godrich said: "'I thought, 'Oh fuck!' Then I thought I should do it. In our lives we give so little back." He enlisted musicians including Paul McCartney (on bass), the Supergrass drummer Danny Goffey, and Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood from Radiohead. Godrich said in 2009: "I'm glad I did it – it raised quite a bit of money. It came on when I was sitting in a lobby somewhere once, and it took me a while to recognise it. It sounded good though, better than I remembered."
The artists gathered to record the chorus at AIR Studios, London, on Sunday 14 November 2004. The backing track and many of the solo lines had been recorded over the previous two days. Damon Albarn did not take part in the recording but arrived to serve tea to the participants. The 2004 version sold 1.8 million copies.
At a press conference on 10 November 2014, Geldof and Ure announced that another group of artists would come together to record the song, this time under the banner of Band Aid 30 and in aid of the Ebola crisis. The 2014 version was recorded on Saturday 15 November 2014 and released on the following Monday, 17 November.
Tracey Emin provided the artwork and Paul Epworth produced the track. Vocal contributions came from artists including Ed Sheeran, One Direction, Paloma Faith, Ellie Goulding, Seal, Sam Smith, Sinéad O'Connor, Rita Ora, Emeli Sandé, Bastille and Olly Murs. Returning guest musicians from previous versions of the song included Chris Martin (who recorded the opening lines of the 2004 version) and Bono (who sang the tenth line in both the 1984 and 2004 versions). Unlike the previous versions, where lyrics were almost identical to the original, the lyrics were altered to address the then-ongoing outbreak. The lyric changes include the following:
A German-language version of "Do They Know It's Christmas?" was released on 21 November 2014. It was produced by Vincent Sorg and Tobias Kuhn and features vocals from artists including 2raumwohnung, Andreas Bourani, Die Toten Hosen, Jan Delay, Joy Denalane, Max Raabe, Milky Chance, Peter Maffay, Silbermond, Thees Uhlmann, and Wolfgang Niedecken.
A version combining elements of several versions of "Do They Know It's Christmas?" (the original, 20th and 30th anniversary versions), mixed and produced by Trevor Horn, was released on 25 November 2024, the song's 40th anniversary.
Ed Sheeran, who contributed vocals to the 2014 version, said he would have refused permission to reuse his vocals had he been asked, saying his opinion about the song had changed. He shared a post by the British-Ghanaian vocalist Fuse ODG, saying the song "perpetuated damaging stereotypes that stifle Africa’s economic growth, tourism and investment, ultimately costing the continent trillions and destroying its dignity, pride and identity".
The song peaked at #8 in the UK singles chart.
The song was covered by the cast of Glee and was released in 2011 as a single and alongside the full-length album Glee: The Music, The Christmas Album Volume 2. The song was featured in the season three Christmas episode, "Extraordinary Merry Christmas".
In December 2020, a group of musicians from Liverpool recorded a version of "Do They Know It's Christmas?" under the name Band Aid Liverpool as a charity record in support of Shelter. Retitled "Do They Know It's Christmas (Feed the World)" with lyrics referring to places on Merseyside, the project was given the go-ahead by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure, with Band Aid Liverpool releasing their cover version on 10 December 2020.
In December 2020, comedian Leigh Francis recorded a version of the song in honour of late TV presenter Caroline Flack, with proceeds raising money for the Trussell Trust, Crisis, UNICEF, Shelter and Samaritans. His version, recorded in character as Keith Lemon and the Bear from Bo' Selecta!, featured Emma Bunton, Peter Andre and Ronan Keating (with Keating also turning up on a version of LadBaby's "Don't Stop Me Eatin'", another 2020 Christmas number one contender raising money for the Trussell Trust).
On 12 December 2022, British blogger Mark Hoyle, aka LadBaby, announced that he had been given permission from Ure, Geldof, and the Band Aid Trust to rewrite the lyrics to "Do They Know It's Christmas?" and release it as his 2022 Christmas single. Retitled "Food Aid", the single was released on 16 December 2022, and featured Hoyle's wife Roxanne and the financial journalist Martin Lewis. Half of the money raised would go to the Trussell Trust and the other half to the Band Aid Trust.
LadBaby achieved the Christmas number one for the fifth consecutive year, making them the first act to achieve five UK Christmas number-one singles, surpassing the record set by the Beatles.