Did Band Aid make a difference? |
Is this the year that ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’ – the charity song written by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure in 1984 to provide relief for the victims of famine in Ethiopia – finally died? The song has been condemned for its broad-brushstrokes lyrics about Africa, and it feels increasingly like the work of a naïve and distant past. But the truth is that it has always been better music than critics would like us to think. The question that matters most though is the hard one: did Band Aid improve the world?
Urging the public to ‘feed the world’, Band Aid created the modern association between fame and philanthropy and sparked a global movement culminating in the Live Aid concert the following summer. In combination, the song and the concert raised over £100 million in today’s money for the famine, and placed Africa on the Western agenda. Geldof’s lyrics call for thought for the ‘world outside your window’, but they were inspired by the world as it appeared on the TV. Geldof watched BBC coverage of the famine on a Friday night in November, as his fame in the Boomtown Rats dwindled.
The stars who recorded ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’ did it in part to feel good about themselves
The story that follows is a familiar one, and boils down to several weeks of bollocking people on the phone; but there was a surprising level of brinkmanship involved in finishing the song in time for Christmas. Geldof wrote the majority of the lyrics in half an hour in the back of a taxi. Ure, the Ultravox singer who served as producer, had four days to finish the music and record the instruments at home. ‘Feed the world’ was already the strapline by the time the singers stepped into the studio, but not a lyric. The ‘Let them know’ finale was written........