On this day in music in 1984, Do They Know It’s Christmas? by Band Aid entered the UK chart at No.1.
The iconic Christmas hit maintained its position at the top of the charts for a total of five weeks. Do They Know It’s Christmas? was first recorded in just a single day, on 25 November 1984.
The record became the fastest selling single in UK chart history, selling a million copies in the first week alone and passing three million sales on the last day of 1984. The song went on to become Christmas number one that year. The song held this title until 1997.
The original version of “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” has now sold over 3.8 million copies in the UK to date.
The supergroup, Band Aid, is the mastermind plan from the former Boomtown Rats singer Bob Geldof. Geldof was moved by a TV news bulletin detailing the crisis of famine in Ethiopia at the time. Therefore, he had the idea to raise funds for the crisis through a one-off charity single.
Super Group Members
The song featured the absolute best of the current pop world at the time. The line up included the likes of Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, Paul Young, Culture Club, George Michael, Sting, Bono, Phil Collins, Paul Weller, Francis Rossi and Rick Parfitt of Status Quo and Bananarama. This incredible line up all appeared on the original recording of the song.
Other Versions
The original version of the song is without a doubt the best. However, there has also been a number of other versions of the song. Do They Know It’s Christmas? has actually been re-recorded a total of three times. With an additional Live Aid version.
These re-released came out in 1989, 2004, and 2014. Each of the re-recordings were also songs to raise money for charity.
As a result, the 1989 and 2004 versions also set out to raise money for famine relief. However, the 2014 version of the Christmas song raised funds for the Ebola crisis in West Africa. The 2014 version featured famous faces such as Ed Sheeran, One Direction and YouTuber Zoella.
Each of these reiterations of the classic song also reached number one in the UK. The 1989 and 2004 versions also managed to hold the prolific title of Christmas number 1 for their corresponding release years.
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