Band Aid is back for Christmas 2024, but not everybody is happy about it. Ed Sheeran has denounced the 40th anniversary remix of Do They Know It’s Christmas? for using his vocals without his “permission”. Will supergroup founder Bob Geldof respond to a fellow superstar distancing himself from the project?
Sheeran recorded vocals for Band Aid 30 back in 2014, alongside One Direction, Sam Smith, Rita Ora and Ellie Goulding. But he says that, had he been approached about this year’s remix, he would have “respectfully declined” to be part of the campaign again.
“A decade on and my understanding of the narrative associated with this has changed,” Sheeran said, citing his collaborator Fuse ODG. The Ghanaian-English singer and rapper said that Band Aid’s messaging “perpetuate[s] damaging stereotypes that stifle Africa’s economic growth, tourism, and investment”. Fuse ODG was originally approached to be in Band Aid 30, but turned Geldof down.
Debate around the Christmas song and the message in sends has continued to grow, and with it Geldof’s ire. A piece published in The Conversation last week unpacked the “problematic” legacy of a song that portrayed Africa as barren and uncivilised – colonial ideas trotted out by Victorian imperialists looking to plunder the continent’s resources. Geldof responded with scorn.
“Haha … It’s a pop song ffs,” he wrote. “There IS endemic hunger due to the unforgiving soil conditions. Water IS scarce save for a scattering of unreliable wells. Rain IS increasingly unreliable. Climate change affects the poorest first and worst.”
In particular, he took umbrage at the implication that Band Aid reinforces outdated ideas about Africa.
“These are not “colonial tropes” they are empirical facts. It is in fact your correspondent’s piece that is the cliched trope. The same argument has been made many times over the years and elicits the same wearisome response. Are you certain it isn’t some ChatGPT scam thing?” he asked.
“’Colonial tropes’ my arse.”
Band Aid began in 1984, when the BBC’s visceral coverage of the famine in Ethiopia prompted Geldof, then lead singer of the Boomtown Rats, and Ultravox frontman Midge Ure, to put together a super group and record a charity single. Geldof and Ure used all their contacts, getting contributing vocals from Bono to Boy George, George Michael to Sting. The BBC has announced it’s making a documentary of the making of this moment in music history.
The song was written and produced at great speed, with recording and mixing happening over a period of just 24 hours. When it was released on December 7, 1984 it shot straight to No. 1 in the UK charts and stayed there for five weeks. Within a year it had raised a reported £8 million in aid for Ethiopia. Geldof went toe-to-toe with Maragaret Thatcher and her Conservative government for refusing to waive VAT on the record sales, resulting in the agreement for the government to donate the equivalent of the VAT on Band Aid sales to charity.
In 1989, Geldof oversaw Band Aid II, which added new stars to the mix such as Kylie Minogue, Jason Donovan and Cliff Richard. It was top of the UK Singles Chart for three weeks.
For the 20th anniversary, Band Aid 20 involved a re-recording of the single with more popular music stars of the era, including Lemar, Estelle, Daniel and Natasha Bedingfield, Dido, Dizzee Rascal, and the Sugarbabes’ Mutya Buena and Keisha Buchanan. It became the biggest-selling single of 2004, spending four weeks at No. 1.
Band Aid 30, which debuted on X Factor in 2014, focused on the Ebola crisis with some updated lyrics. This was the single Sheeran made his Band Aid debut on. While it debuted at No. 1, it only spent a week in top place.
In recent years, the song’s lyrics have come under increased scrutiny. “Where nothing ever grows / No rain or rivers flow / Do they know it’s Christmas time at all?” in particular raises eyebrows for portraying the famine as the result of inhospitable geography. The famine in Ethiopia, from 1983 to 1985, had more complex roots in armed conflict and the wider post-colonial legacy across the continent.
In 2014, writer Bim Adewunmi called the Band Aid output “patronising and uncomfortable”. “There exists a paternalistic way of thinking about Africa, likely exacerbated by the original (and the second, and the third) Band Aid singles, in which it must be ‘saved’, and usually from itself,” she wrote.
Last year, writer Indrajit Samarajiva also condemned the song. “It’s not just that these lyrics haven’t aged well. They were never good at all,” he said. “They take an ignorant and colonial attitude.”
There is also increasing unease with the kind of visuals employed by Band Aid to raise awareness of the scope of the crisis. Fuse ODG was originally asked to participate in Band Aid 30, but declined. In a thoughtful op-ed published in the Guardian, he outlined his reservations about using graphic imagery of the Ebola dead.
“Saying no to Bob Geldof is one of the hardest decisions I have had to make this year,” her wrote. “However, seeing what looked like the corpse of an African woman being carried out of her home on primetime TV when the video was premiered on X Factor crystallised my concerns about this strategy to combat the Ebola crisis.” He explained that the gratuitous use of such images denied Ebola victims their dignity.
Fuse also said he was “shocked and appalled” by the new “offensive” lyrics, and was tired of the messaging in general. “I, like many others, am sick of the whole concept of Africa – a resource-rich continent with unbridled potential – always being seen as diseased, infested and poverty-stricken,” he said.
Geldof has previously given these criticisms short shrift.
In 2014 he swore twice on live television during an interview with Sky News presenter Jayne Secker, prompting her to end the conversation. Secker challenged Geldof to respond to comments that wealthy artists should pay their taxes rather than ask the public to donate (”they’re talking bollocks”) and that Band Aid perpetuated “patronising” myths about Africa (”complete load of bollocks”).
Bob Geldof has been approached for comment.
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