A few people I know really loathe this song. Or, I suspect, they loathe what they believe it's come to symbolize: rock stars earning brownie points through charitable singles. They have a point on that score, but on its own, Do They Know It's Christmas? still works, 25 years after its release, and long after the Ethiopian drought and famine of 84-85.
The video for the original recording is below; I agree with my friend Joan, who at the time noted that what she loved about the video was that it looked like they were hauling strangers in off the street. Never mind the fact that protagonist Bob Geldof and his collaborator Midge Ure (who cut the backing tracks the day before the voices were all recorded) recruited the top shelf of the English pop scene of the time, as well as a chorus of lesser-knowns who chipped in for the chorus.
Do They Know It's Christmas? happens to be a favourite of our son. He responded to it early on, when he was two or three and in the backseat of the car, and around this time of the year would call for the song he knew as Feed the World. (Are there many other songs that can be boiled down to such a powerful imperative?)
There have been subsequent remakes. A 1989 redo by the shallow production team of Stock Aitken Waterman can be safely forgotten. Geldof himself participated in the Band Aid 20 production five years ago; it's not bad, but the first one is much more powerful. I've seen grown men tear up over it, even years after its release. (The Band Aid 20 video is worth watching, if only to see Birhan Woldu, whose image as an emaciated, near-death child shocked the world, appear before the singers as a healthy, fully grown adult who remains active in the issues that Band Aid sought to publicize.)
There's a new version this year, produced by the Canadian band F***d Up (aka, the band whose name can be said aloud on CBC Radio 3, but not on 1 or 2). They recruited alt-scene luminaries, like Tegan and Sara, Bob Mould and Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend, to sing the parts. It's a fun version, and all of the proceeds are going towards three Canadian groups that are fighting violence against women. You can buy it from iTunes for 99 cents right here, and stream it here.
Here's the video for the original. A trivia note: the opening lines, sung on the record by Paul Young, were meant to be handled by David Bowie, who coudn't get to the studio in time (he's heard with a spoken passage on the 12" single version). Bowie, though, opened the song during its rendition at the close of the Wembley leg of Live Aid.
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