It’s a popular Christmas song, but it hasn’t aged brilliantly
Some people are wondering whether it might be time to take ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ off the roster of classic festive tunes as the lyrics aren’t looking great in 2024.
You’re only a little way into your advent calendar by this point and if you’re doing Whamageddon then here’s hoping you’ve avoided having to hear ‘Last Christmas’ and spin out in the first week.
Like clockwork, once it becomes December you can expect discussions over whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie, if the lyrics to ‘Baby It’s Cold Outside’ are problematic and whether it’s time to retire ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’.
To quickly run through the list, the answers are ‘yes, obviously’, ‘no, remember the cultural expectations placed on women at the time it was written’ and as for the third we’re going to dig a bit more into it.
A 40th anniversary version of the track was released last month, and Ed Sheeran made it clear that had he been asked whether he wanted the vocals he did for the 30th anniversary to stay on, he would have said no.
The song blends Sheeran’s singing with that of Sting, and posting on Instagram Sheeran said he’d have ‘respectfully’ declined any request to use his voice if one had been made after rapper Fuse ODG had criticised the song, saying it helped to ‘perpetuate damaging stereotypes’ about Africa.
Sheeran wrote: “My approval wasn’t sought on this new Band Aid 40 release. Had I had the choice I would have respectfully declined the use of my vocals.
“A decade on and my understanding of the narrative associated with this has changed, eloquently explained by @fuseodg.
“This is just my personal stance, I’m hoping it’s a forward-looking one. Love to all x.”
This opinion is one shared by plenty of people who have been listening to the song again and thinking that 40 years on it might be time to call it a day.
Some people have said the song ‘needs to be retired’, and that the ‘lyrics to ‘Do they know it’s Christmas?’ really haven’t aged well’.
One person wondered ‘Was it ever ok to sing ‘Thank god it’s them instead of you’?’, while others liked the tune but didn’t enjoy the lyrics themselves, calling the song the ‘most banging use of absolutely godawful lyrics’ even if they liked the instrumental bits.
More pointed out the blatant inaccuracies in some of the lyrics, as the line ‘there won’t be snow in Africa this Christmas time’ is dead wrong when there’s ‘snow on Kilimanjaro’.
‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ keeps getting updated each decade, but it might be time to send it packing.
In response to the critics of the song, Bob Geldof told The Conversation ‘it’s a pop song ffs’ and rattled off a list of ’empirical facts’ about the situation in Ethiopia when the song was originally written, saying the issue has come up so often that it ‘elicits the same wearisome response’ from him.
“This little pop song has kept hundreds of thousands if not millions of people alive,” Geldof said as he pointed to the work Band Aid did in the past and still does today with proceeds raised from the song.
He said money had gone to help feed 8,000 children in the same areas of Ethiopia that had been affected by the famine in 1984, arguing that thousands would ‘sleep safer, warmer and cared for tonight because of that miraculous little record’.
Geldof ended his statement by saying: “We wish that it were other but it isn’t. ‘Colonial tropes’ my ar*e.”
