The Alternative Advent Calendar : 19/24

Band Aid 2 - Do they know it's Christmas?

Band Aid. AGAIN. Yeah I know, this tune does tend to suffer from a spot of over-exposure at this time of year but it's still a pretty well-crafted piece of pop and the original version is one of the only charity records that most listeners can sit through without projectile vomiting all over the Xmas tree. The track has been Xmas number one on no less than three occasions since its release, the original fighting off stiff competition from Wham's 'Last Christmas' in 1984 to top the charts on Xmas day and also finish as the year's best selling single whilst a 20th Anniversary rehash featuring a new generation of big-hearted pop stars such as Chris Martin and Dizzee Rascal impressively managed to repeat both feats in 2004. The version between the two tends to get lost down the back of the sofa, and for good reason - back in 1989 the demon overlords of Stock, Aitken and Waterman were running pop music and a tasteless phoned-in version was hastily bundled together for the Xmas market to celebrate five years since the original's release. The period charm of the '84 vintage is lost completely as a gaggle of production line S.A.W puppets line up to trot out an uninspiring run-through the original over the sort of cheap synthetic production that graced most mainstream pop records at the time. Bananarama are the only artists to remain from the first version (good pop quiz question there!) but even they look to be edging closer to the knackers' yard and the new breed of garish pop laboratory experiments like Sonia, Big Fun and Bros manage to totally drain the original of all its magic in the same way modern-day X Factor contestants regularly butcher established classics. As if that lot weren't bad enough, even Sir Cliff pops up to put in a seasonal cameo and in doing so managed to set himself up for a festive hat-trick of Xmas chart-toppers that he had begun the previous year with 'Mistletoe and Wine' and would complete in 1990 with the equally emetic 'Saviour's Day'. Revivalist pop historians will point to 1989 as a landmark year for the crossover success of acid house, baggy and homegrown indie rock but one look at the upper reaches of the singles charts back then tells a different story - pop sucked in '89 and the year's rehash of 'Do they know it's Xmas?' manages to bring together everything that was wrong with pop at the time over one charmless track. The only positive thing about this version of the song is that fucking Bono isn't on it.