Band Aid ‎– Do They Know It's Christmas?

While the song itself may not be the most catchy, its a testament to the love & compassion one man (Geldof) can have to come up with a way to help people he's never met (the starving citizens of Ethiopia) and to convince other people of incredible power (the members of Band Aid) to come together to use their collective power to help people on the other side of the world (so to speak) simply because they know that there's need for help and they can do something to help that would otherwise take years to come to fruition. Top it off with the fact that ultimately it captured the sound of the 'cutting edge British pop' scene of the day and even more important it gave rise to other equally monumental acts of compassion such as USA for Africa, Geldof's own Live AID and Mellencamp's similarly styled Farm AID, Hands Across America, the AIDS Walks both in America and other nations around the globe.

People saw this trend as just a fad, due primarily to the hoopla (positive and subsequently negative) hoopla around America's sister effort, "We Are The World." The bad press was a result of the way the American top 40 charts were calculated at the time; unfortunately because of the size of the American population at the time, a different formula had to be used to keep the data accurate, which also meant there was a lag time between actual sales and airplay and the result appearing in Billboard or Cashbox. This allowed "We Are The World" to sell 2 million copies before even debuting on the top 100, even then at #3, not #1. It did move to #1 for a couple weeks and then dropped off the charts entirely a few weeks after for the same aforementioned reasons. Ultimately it was a success, but the song's short run was the primary catalyst for Billboard and the now defunct Cashbox to search for a better method to calculate the charts so that they would be more accurate and not misrepresent what was actually happening in the American music markets, which "We Are The World," when compared to "Do They Know It's Christmas?," helped to expose the gross misrepresentation.

Even given that "We Are The World" and the subsequent benefit records and events that came and went in the following years became fewer and fewer, to this day they still are recorded - a trend (not fad) that Geldof and Band Aid initiated.

And the best part of all it? Even in America, "Do They Know...?" has become a modern holiday standard that gets played on almost every top 40 station in the US, like Lennon's "Give Peace A Chance," McCartney's "Wonderful Christmastime," or anything off the first "A Very Special Christmas" album... and every time you hear it you remember there are others less fortunate than you, no matter how bad off you are, and that you have another opportunity to do something to help them.

Thank you Bob.