Band Aid 30: fastest selling single of 2014

The first radio play of the rejuvenated Band Aid single, Do They Know It’s Christmas?, happened this week, following a first look at the music video on last Saturday’s X Factor. This is the fourth time in thirty years that the charity song has been recorded, but the first time the lyrics have been changed. Bono’s controversial line ‘Well tonight thank God it’s them, instead of you’ has been replaced with ‘Well tonight we’re reaching out and touching you’.

Stars like 1D, Ellie Goulding, Jessie Ware and Ed Sheeran gathered at Sarm Studios to record the track on Friday, which coincided with chancellor George Osborne announcing that the UK government would wave the VAT on purchases of the single. The downloadable version was released on Monday, with a hard copy coming out on 8th December. The singles, with cover art by Tracy Emin, will cost 99p and £4 respectively.

Bob Geldof, who just finished a UK tour with old band The Boomtown Rats announced the relaunch of Band Aid last Monday saying, “I don’t like doing this stuff, it’s quite embarassing calling people you don’t know”. Ebola has already claimed the lives of over 5000 people since March.

Of course, and perhaps not to its detriment, the campaign hasn’t been without its controversy. Despite being named as collaborators in Geldof’s initial press release, Foals, Fuse ODG and perhaps most notably, Adele, are not in the final recording. It has now emerged that this conference was given before the involvement of these artists had been finalised.

NME reports that Foals weren’t able to attend due to recording commitments. Fuse ODG pulled out on Saturday morning, telling Sir Bob that he felt ‘awkward’ about the new lyrics, tweeting that he felt “the message … was not in line with the This Is New Africa movement”.

The day after recording, _The Sun _reported that Adele had “snubbed” the charity single and that Bob Geldof had called her “hundreds of times”. This was later denied by Adele’s people, who said she had made a sizable donation to Oxfam. In a pre-watershed interview with Sky News on Monday that got cut short due to his repeated swearing, Sir Bob qualified her absence by saying that Adele was doing nothing in the public eye at the moment. “She’s bringing up a family you know,” he said.

So how well is it going to do? The original, in 1984, raised about £8 million for aid efforts during the Ethiopian famine. It also sold 200,000 copies in two days. By Tuesday, Band Aid 30’s single had already sold around 206,000 copies, making it the fastest selling single of 2014. The chief executive of the Official Charts Company called its first day’s performance “truly exceptional”, and it’s expected to go straight in at number one on Sunday. But how much will it make? In an interview with Radio 4 on Monday, Geldof remarked that the performance on _X Factor _meant it had made £1 million before it went on sale, presumably from pre-ordering.

While Bob and the gang are busy promoting, several people have spoken out against the idea of another charity single ‘for Africa’. Damon Albarn, formerly of Blur, told journalists before his performance at the RAH last week, that Band Aid 30 was perpetuating a patronising Western stereotype that the whole continent is in need.

In his _Sky News _interview, Geldof’s swearing was in reaction to a question about the tax status of some of his participants. The project’s line-up, timing, necessity, old and new lyrics have been criticised by all parts of the press spectrum. Morrisey once called the original “daily torture on the people of England”. Sir Bob doesn’t seem to care though. Harking back to his infamous line in 1984, that people should “give us your fucking money”, he told fans this week, “it really doesn’t matter if you hate this song or you don’t like this song, you have to buy this thing”.