Stars Redo “Christmas”
Twenty years after the all-star charity single “Do They Know It’s
Christmas?” raised money to provide famine relief to Ethiopia and
inspired the star-studded Live Aid benefit concert, some of today’s
top British acts plan to record a new version of the song to aid
famine victims in the Sudan. Nigel Godrich (Radiohead, Beck) is
slated to produce the track, and Coldplay, the Darkness and Travis
are among those on the shortlist of participants.
“This is a fantastic idea,” posts Travis singer Fran Healy on
the band’s Web site. “I will be anywhere they want me to be at
anytime, and I will cancel any engagement to take part.”
The original “Do They Know It’s Christmas?,” written by Bob
Geldof and Midge Ure, featured vocals by Sting, Bono, George
Michael and Boy George, among dozens of others. The song became the
biggest-selling song in U.K. history and inspired an American
response: 1985’s “We Are the World,” featuring Michael Jackson,
Bruce Springsteen and Stevie Wonder, recorded under the name U.S.A.
for Africa.
“It was two totally incompatible bits of music that had to be
glued together with a new piece of music in the middle, and the
last thing we came up with was the ‘Feed The World’ bit,” Ure told
Rolling Stone of “Do They Know Its Christmas?” “It’s a
song without a chorus. It shouldn’t work, but it did because of
what was going on, because of the people who contributed their
talents to it, because of the media exposure.”
The Band Aid Trust, which oversees the monies raised from the
single and the Live Aid projects, have raised $144 million dollars
for famine relief in struggling African nations.