Do They Know It's Christmas? - Public Release

Public Release

The following morning Geldof appeared on Mike Read's BBC Radio 1 Breakfast Show to promote the record and promised that every penny would go to the cause. This led to a stand-off with the British Government which refused to waive the VAT (sales tax) on the sales of the single. Geldof made the headlines by publicly standing up to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and, sensing the strength of public feeling, the government backed down and donated the tax back to the charity.

Radio 1 began to play the song every hour - normally an A-list single got seven or eight plays per day - as the public mood was gripped. The DJs began to take apart the song in order to identify each vocalist, and BBC Television was persuaded by Geldof (who rang BBC1 controller Michael Grade personally) that Top of the Pops, the flagship chart show, should break with tradition and feature a song which had yet to be released. Grade watched the video and immediately ordered that every preceding program should start five minutes early in order to accommodate it on Top of the Pops. David Bowie flew into England to record an introduction for the video.

The single was released on 3 December 1984, and went straight to #1 in the UK pop charts, outselling all the other records in the chart put together. It became the fastest selling single of all time in the UK, selling a million copies in the first week alone. It stayed at Number 1 for five weeks and ultimately sold more than three million copies.

During the release of "Do They Know It's Christmas?", while he was at Number 1 in the charts, singer/songwriter Jim Diamond publicly pleaded with people not to buy his own single "I Should Have Known Better" that week, and urged them to instead buy "Do They Know It's Christmas?". He was quoted as saying "I'm delighted to be at number 1, but next week I don't want people to buy my record; I want them to buy Band Aid instead."

Each week of its stay at #1, the video would be shown on Top of the Pops, although for the Christmas Day episode, reviewing the year's hits, the song was relayed through the speaker system in the studio while all the artists mimed their own line - with the exception of Bono. U2 weren't invited on to the episode, as they'd only had one hit in 1984 and were still relatively unknown, so Paul Weller was given the task of miming Bono's words as well as his own.

The single was released just before Christmas with the aim of raising money for the relief of the famine. Geldof's somewhat cautious hope was for £70,000. Ultimately, however, the song raised many millions of pounds and became the biggest-selling single in UK singles chart history. It has since been passed by Elton John's tribute to Diana, Princess of Wales, "Candle in the Wind 1997".

Eventually, the British-American band Foreigner displaced the song at #1 in the UK with their rock ballad "I Want to Know What Love Is" at the beginning of 1985. During Band Aid's tenure at the top, Wham! had stayed at #2 with their double A-side "Last Christmas"/"Everything She Wants", which became the biggest selling single (at over a million) not to reach #1 in the UK. George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley donated their royalties from this record to Band Aid.

In the United States, the video was played on MTV frequently throughout the holiday season. It sold more than a million copies in the U.S. but did not reach #1 there, due to the more complex nature of the chart system, which counted airplay as well as sales. Despite outselling the official #1 by four to one, it did not make the Top Ten due to a lack of airplay, ultimately peaking at #13 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Twelve months later, "Do They Know It's Christmas?" returned to the UK charts, reaching #3 in the week after Christmas of 1985, with only songs by Whitney Houston and Shakin' Stevens preventing its return to the top merely 47 weeks after it had left the #1 spot.

In 2001, the song was included on the Now That's What I Call Christmas! CD, along with 35 other popular Christmas songs, many by the original artists who made them famous. Those artists (or their legal heirs) who participated on the CD received a platinum album for their contributions to its success (certified 6x Platinum in November 2004).