I didn’t really know what the song was about, but I vaguely remember thinking it had something to do with AIDS, which was new and very scary. This is not to suggest that aid initiatives cannot help those suffering, or that people should not give to those in need. It was Geldof, who the previous day had told George to drop what he was doing and get to London stat to perform a song he had co-written with Ure. It opened with Paul Young on vocals, followed by Boy George, George Michael, Simon Le Bon of Duran Duran, Sting, and Bono.

We have to drain the sea, or if we cannot completely drain it, we must bring it to a level where they will lack room to move at will, and their movements will be easily restricted. Once [Bob] had Midge on board, all Bob’s friends who know his musical limitations would think ‘we know the record will get made now, so it’s not going to embarrass us,” one person familiar with the project observed. It turns out that writing a song and raising millions of dollars for food assistance was the easy part. Helping people is the ultimate goal, and this requires more than just humanitarian efforts, as some members of Band Aid now realize.I was more partial to Burl Ives singing “Holly Jolly Christmas” or the Peanuts characters belting out “ Hark the Angels. At some point, however, I began to love “Do They Know It’s Christmas”—I still get chills every time Bono hits “well tonight thank god it's them instead of you. Though drought played a role, many have overlooked that the Ethiopian government's military policies were the primary catalyst. As the economist Adam Smith once pointed out, “little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice. Few understand this better than Michael Buerk, the BBC journalist whose report so moved Geldof on that chilly October night in 1984.

The song’s cultural impact—both good and bad—is also hard to overstate, though many smile at the line “Do they know it’s Christmas time at all? George arrived at Sarm West Studios in Notting Hill on November 25, exactly a month before Christmas. The US government estimated it impacted nearly 8 million people—roughly a fifth of Ethiopia's population. This formula—peace and expanding economic freedom—has the power to transform Ethiopia like no amount of humanitarian aid can. Geldof received a dose of perspective that night when he turned on the BBC and saw a news report delivered by journalist Michael Buerk depicting a severe famine in Ethiopia.They’ve steadily expanded economic freedom (though the country still has a long way to go), and prosperity has surged as a result. Ethiopia’s famine claimed as many as a million lives, according to official estimates (the actual total is likely closer to 400,000); so it’s not unusual that many would associate the land with starvation. The assembled cast of performers had 24 hours to record in the studio, which was made available to them freely by producer Trevor Horn.

The band was in shambles, and Geldof was trying to “manage the decline” as he considered his next step. Mengistu’s plan might have been effective as a military strategy, but it ravaged the Ethiopian economy. Many westerners are oblivious to the causes that underpinned Ethiopia’s famine, but Ethiopians are not, and they appear to have learned an important lesson. Horn had initially been asked to produce the song, but told Geldof it would take him six weeks, which would make a December release impossible; so the task fell to Ure. Resettlement also served a darker political purpose, and it would be enforced at the barrel of a gun.As the frontman of the Boomtown Rats, Geldof had tasted fame and success, but his music career was now at a crossroads. One of the reasons the movie is such a hit is that it has not one but two hilarious scenes featuring one of the greatest Christmas Songs ever written: “Do They Know It’s Christmas. Gill said perhaps the most obvious consequence of the Band Aid campaign was that Ethiopia became a sort of caricature of poverty and starvation in the minds of westerners. The song quickly became the fastest-selling single in UK history, a record it would hold until 1997, when it was eclipsed by Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind 1997,” released in the aftermath of Princess Diana’s death. The power of art and celebrity and mass media were combined to engineer a life-saving relief effort in one of the poorest corners of the world.