The special 2024 ‚Ultimate Mix‘ of ‚Do They Know It’s Christmas?‘ commemorates the original song’s 40th anniversary.
On Nov. 25, 1984, a group featuring some of the biggest names in British pop music — including members of Duran Duran, Culture Club, Spandau Ballet, the Police, Bananarama and Wham! — recorded a charity single to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia. Co-written by the Boomtown Rats’ Bob Geldof and Ultravox’s Midge Ure, “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” by Band Aid generated humanitarian funds for the effort and set the stage for the massive Live Aid event in 1985.
Forty years after its release, “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” not only became a holiday music standard but it’s popularity and success spawned three remakes in 1989, 2004 and 2014. On Mondayt, a new mix of the song spearheaded by legendary producer Trevor Horn was unveiled combining elements of the 1984, 2004 and 2014 versions and collectively featuring the likes of Sting, Boy George, Bono, Ed Sheeran, Harry Styles, Coldplay’s Chris Martin, Sam Smith, Seal, Sinead O’Connor and others. The special 2024 “Ultimate Mix” will appear on the new “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” compilation this Friday commemorating the 40th anniversary milestone, according to a news release.
“I think the concept and the social meaning behind it — the social reasons for doing it – still resonate,” Midge Ure, the song’s co-writer, says recently of the original song’s legacy before the announcement of the new mix. ‘The long-term aftermath of Band Aid and Live Aid is that younger generations understand the concept of charity because we used a medium that they understood.”
“We used a medium that they got, which was music,” he continues. “It wasn’t politics. It was music. And it kind of forever changed their views on caring because up to that point, charity what was perceived as something old people do, something you do when you get really ancient like I am now.”
The story behind “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” began when Geldof in 1984 saw a BBC news report on television about the crisis in Ethiopia and later rang up Ure.
