charity songs

647. ‘Sacrifice’ / ‘Healing Hands’, by Elton John

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It’s amazing to think that Elton John went the entirety of the eighties without a number one single. It’s amazing to think that, twenty years into a stellar career, this was his first solo UK chart-topper. But perhaps most surprisingly, it’s amazing that this particular record was a hit at all.

Sacrifice / Healing Hands, by Elton John (his 2nd of ten #1s)

5 weeks, from 17th June – 22nd July 1990

It’s a decent enough song. Elton and Bernie could still knock out a good tune, even this far into their partnership. But it’s very middle-of-the-road, very made-for-Radio-2, very much Elton John reinventing himself for middle age (he was approaching forty-five when it eventually made #1).

And, given that this is adult-oriented soft rock, the lyrics are on a fittingly grown-up theme. Into the boundary, Of each married man, Sweet deceit comes calling, And negativity lands… Ergo, men are men, and they all cheat. I’m pretty sure he blames the frigid woman: Cold, cold heart, Hard done by you… Bernie Taupin was coming to the end of his second marriage at the time of writing, and you do wonder if that might have been an influence.

Away from the lyrics, this has all the glossy touches you’d expect of a soft rock ballad in 1990. I don’t dislike it – in many ways it’s a sophisticated piece of song writing befitting of the nation’s (second?) most prolific hit making partnership – but it also gives me the feeling of mineral water poured over ice: crisp, and clear, and pretty cold. Yet it’s lingered on in the Elton John canon, seemingly held in higher regard than I afford it, and the Cold, cold heart line formed the basis of a 2021 #1, thirty-one years on…

The flip side of this double-‘A’, ‘Healing Hands’, is a bit more lively. It’s a bouncy rocker: a little bluesy, a little gospel. It was apparently inspired by the Four Top’s ‘Reach Out, I’ll Be There’, and you can hear it in the chorus: Reach out, For her healing hands… Is it just me, or is he suggesting that God is a woman…? Anyway, it’s a great vocal performance from John and, while he gets plenty of praise for his showmanship and his presence, I’m not sure he always gets enough credit for his voice.

Again, though, it’s very mum-friendly. Why now? Why, on the verge of being a very old man (in pop star terms) did Elton score the biggest British hit of his career? We have time to ponder this as ‘Healing Hands’ meanders towards its conclusion (seriously, it has one of the longest fade-outs ever). ‘Sacrifice’ had been released nine months before, making a lowly #55. Steve Wright then started playing it on Radio 1 (crushing my Radio 2 theory from four paragraphs ago), it was re-released with ‘Healing Hands’, and the rest was history. Proceeds from the record’s sales went to four different AIDS charities, which again probably help boost sales.

We can perhaps see this record as a dividing point in Elton John’s career. Long gone were the hit-filled, rhinestoned, giant spectacled days of the seventies. The eighties had brought addiction, rehab, a doomed marriage, fewer hits… By 1990, he’d had one Top 10 single in five years. If this hadn’t caught fire, would Elton have faded into obscurity and the nostalgia circuits? Maybe that’s a stretch, but it definitely set him up for a huge career renaissance in the 1990s. Superstar duets, Disney themes, and the planet’s biggest-selling single of all time, were all about to follow…

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638. ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’, by Band Aid II

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And so we reach the end of the 1980s. And, in some ways, the decade’s final number one single is quite perfect.

Do They Know It’s Christmas?, by Band Aid II

3 weeks, from 17th December 1989 – 7th January 1990

It’s a charity single, for a start, a ‘genre’ that has dominated the charts since the middle of the eighties. It’s a cover, of course, of the charity single, the one that kicked the whole trend off. Plus, it was produced by Stock, Aitken and Waterman, giving the trio their seventh #1 of the year. But beyond the good cause, and the production team, the tag ‘perfect’ quickly wears thin.

There’s a reason why none of the three subsequent Band Aids have ever been much played after their original chart runs; while the first is seen as a classic, a perennial returnee to the charts every Christmas. There’s a novelty factor each time, and the urge for people to be seen to be doing something for charity, that means a new Band Aid single will always chart highly. But beyond that initial burst of enthusiasm, there’s always the slow realisation that the new versions simply aren’t as good.

Here, we swap Bono, Boy George, Sting and Paul Young for a considerably younger crowd. Kylie is on opening line duties, followed by Chris Rea and Jimmy Somerville. We meet Jason Donovan, Sonia, Lisa Stansfield, Bros and Wet Wet Wet again, after their recent chart-topping successes. The only singers to reprise their roles from 1984 are two-thirds of Bananarama (Siobhan Fahey having left the year before). To be honest, I struggled to recognise many voices without watching the video, which isn’t a problem you have with the original. One voice stands out above the rest, though: Sir Cliff, who makes it two Xmas #1s in a row (and who will, without wanting to give too much away, soon be making it three).

The production is muted and respectful by SAW’s usual standards, which was probably to be expected. The video is standard: Michael Buerk reporting from Ethiopia, horrifying images of malnutritional babies spliced with footage of Marti Pellow and Matt Goss goofing about. We’ll leave Band Aid II to play out here, bringing the 1980s to a close, and instead muse on the final year of the decade.

1989 has been, I’m going to stick my neck out here, a game-changing year. It’s set the template for modern pop music, in various ways. Firstly, on a purely technical level, songs have started to enter regularly at #1. They’ll continue to do so throughout the 1990s, speeding up the turnover of chart-toppers. As well as that, we’ve had the first ‘modern’ dance #1 from Black Box, from which almost every subsequent dance smash can be traced. We’ve met the first ‘modern’ boy band too, in New Kids on the Block.

Meanwhile, rock music is no longer the force that it has been since the late ‘50s. Rock groups will still make #1, as U2 and Simple Minds have recently done, but often for one week only, thanks to fanbase support rather than genuine cultural heft. And finally, Madonna has defined the ‘modern’ female pop star, and the pop comeback (and comeback video) as a massive event that every pop star since 1989 has tried to mimic.

Next up, we’ll be embarking on the 1990s – the decade in which I came of age, among Britpop, dance, the Spice Girls and boy-bands. I’m looking forward to reliving it. But, you could argue that the nineties began a year earlier, in the final year of the decade that taste forgot…

628. ‘Ferry ‘Cross the Mersey’, by The Christians, Holly Johnson, Paul McCartney, Gerry Marsden & Stock Aitken Waterman

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Of all the charity chart-toppers we’ve met in recent years – and we’ve met a fair few since Band Aid kicked it all off at Xmas 1984 – I’m most uncomfortable approaching this next one with anything like my usual light-hearted tone…

Ferry ‘Cross the Mersey, by The Christians (their only #1), Holly Johnson (his only solo #1), Paul McCartney (his 3rd and final solo #1), Gerry Marsden (his only solo #1) & Stock Aitken Waterman

3 weeks, from 14th May – 4th June 1989

We’ve had records raising money for famine in Africa, children’s charities, and a ferry disaster. We’ve already had one charity single for a disaster in a football stadium, when I was able to comment blithely on the fact that the Nolans and Lemmy from Motorhead were singing along together happily. But this one somehow hits deeper.

Three weeks before this record was released, Liverpool and Nottingham Forest were due to contest an FA Cup semi-final at Hillsborough stadium, in Sheffield. One of the stadium concourses, next to a stand housing the Liverpool supporters, had become dangerously overcrowded. To alleviate crowds outside the ground, with kick-off fast approaching, an exit gate was opened, which meant that people could enter the stand more quickly. This created an even bigger crush inside the stadium, from which there was no escape. The match was abandoned after five minutes, but by the end of the day ninety-four Liverpool supporters had been crushed to death. That number would rise in the coming months and years to ninety-seven. A further three hundred were hospitalised.

So far, so tragic. Of course what makes it worse, and what makes Hillsborough resonate to this day, was that South Yorkshire Police blamed the disaster on drunken hooligans rather than police mismanagement and incompetence, aided by sensationalism from various newspapers. Subsequent reports and inquests over the years uncovered that the crush wasn’t down to hooliganism, and that the police, the ambulance services and the stadium design were the main factors. It took almost thirty years for criminal charges to be brought against those responsible.

I’m not sure why this tragedy hits deeper, and I’m not sure if this is the place to ponder that question. Perhaps it’s because I’m a football fan, have been to many football stadiums, though usually in a seat (following the Hillsborough disaster, football stadiums used in the upper tiers of British football were required to transition from standing to seating). Then there’s the fact that it took so long for justice to be served. And the fact that crushes like this still happen at football matches (see last year’s Champions League final) and elsewhere (in Seoul, last Halloween). They tend to happen at what should be fun occasions – sporting events, concerts, nights out – and the people who die what must be excruciating deaths are never the ones to blame.

Musically this song is as you’d expect of a hastily-assembled charity single in 1989. It’s an interesting chart moment: a group of the biggest Liverpudlian pop stars claiming their only ‘solo’ #1s (Holly Johnson of Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Gerry & The Pacemakers’ Gerry Marsden) as well as the biggest songwriting team of the day (Stock Aitken Waterman) getting a rare credit. Oh, and an ex-Beatle scoring his last (officially credited) #1. Unlike previous charity singles the video doesn’t feature the stars – instead it features old footage of Liverpool, of the football team, of Hillsborough flooded with flowers in the aftermath of the disaster, with the name of each victim running by at the bottom of the screen.

‘Ferry Cross the Mersey’ had originally been a #8 hit for The Pacemakers in early 1965, their final Top 10 record after a burst of success at the start of the Merseybeat boom. It’s a nice enough song, though you’d assume that had ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ not been used by The Crowd then it would have been the chosen song, given its association with Liverpool FC. Anyway, here ends this sombre interlude, both in terms of the charts and this blog. Jason Donovan will be keeping things light and fluffy next, so until then…

609. ‘With a Little Help from My Friends’ / ‘She’s Leaving Home’, by Wet Wet Wet / Billy Bragg with Cara Tivey

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Our next #1 is an interesting concept, and (I think) the only chart-topping example of it: a double-‘A’ side with songs by two different artists…

With a Little Help from My Friends / She’s Leaving Home, by Wet Wet Wet (their 1st of three #1s) / Billy Bragg with Cara Tivey (their 1st and only #1s)

4 weeks, from 15th May – 12th June 1988

Actually, the songs on the recent M/A/R/R/S double-‘A’ were by two different bands in all but name, but OK… This definitely is. A fun pop-soul cover by a hot new lad-band (that presumably got most of the airplay at the time), and a more introspective offering on the flip side. Both are Beatles covers – ‘Sgt Pepper’s’ covers, no less – and were recorded for children’s charity Childline.

Which means we have to sound the Charity Record alarm! But, actually, this is one of the best charity singles of the decade. Perhaps ever. There’s no gimmick, nobody is dicking about, there are no misguided attempts at comedy. Just two solid Beatles covers. Wet Wet Wet’s take on ‘With a Little Help…’ is fine, though not a patch on either the original or Joe Cocker’s OTT version. It’s perky, fast-paced, with a soaring organ, and a little bit of over-singing from Marti Pellow… The ‘friends’ in this version are the kind folks at Childline (as the video makes clear). Though I’m not sure they’re the sort you’d ‘get high’ with… No matter, Pellow glides past that line without blinking.

It’s nothing special, but when you think of some of the horrors inflicted on classic rock songs by X Factor alumni in the name of charity then you’ll take ‘nothing special’ all day long. In fact, it’s a pretty low-key intro for a band who will go on to have one of the biggest number one singles of all time. But that particular beast can wait… For now, Wet Wet Wet were a likeable bunch of lads from Clydebank, who’d had a run of Top 10 hits following their 1987 breakthrough ‘Wishing I Was Lucky’ (and who make it two Scottish chart-toppers in a row, following Fairground Attraction’s Eddi Reader).

And on the other side? Well, considering that the charity album this single came from was produced by the NME, and featured covers from The Fall (‘A Day in the Life’) The Wedding Present (‘Getting Better’) and Sonic Youth (‘Within You Without You’), perhaps Wet Wet Wet were actually the surprise inclusion? Billy Bragg is an activist, a left-wing folk-punk songwriter, and possibly the ultimate Pointless answer to ‘Artists with a UK #1 single’.

His take on ‘She’s Leaving Home’ with his long-time collaborator Cara Tivey on piano, is something different – both in terms of the peppy song on the flip-side, and in terms of chart-topping singles in general. Few pop hits can have featured an accent as uncompromising as Bragg’s, for example. Though the kitchen-sink drama in the lyrics… She’s leaving home after living alone for so many years… is very on-brand for him. It’s a pretty take on the original, and another win for ‘80s indie which, after The Housemartins and Fairground Attraction, is actually getting more of a crack at the top spot than I’d have anticipated.

I like the concept, and the contrast between the two songs… but neither comes close to its original. And I say that as someone who doesn’t even rate ‘Sgt. Pepper’s’ as much as certain of the Beatles’ other studio albums (at least the two before and the two that followed it…) There now, I feel like I’ve outed myself as a complete Philistine… Up next, perhaps a post on why I’ve always found Bob Dylan overrated… Or maybe not.

588. ‘Let It Be’, by Ferry Aid

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Uh-oh, charity single ahoy…!

Let It Be, by Ferry Aid

3 weeks, from 29th March – 19th April 1987

OK. That intro might have been slightly tasteless, especially given the disaster that prompted this latest charity chart-topper. On 6th March 1987, a passenger ferry left Zeebrugge in Belgium bound for Dover. The bow door, the one that lets cars drive on, was left open as the ship set off, and it capsized almost immediately. One hundred and ninety three people lost their lives.

Undoubtedly tragic. But the nautical analogy holds up, I think. You’re floating along through the mid-to-late eighties, when along comes a hulking iceberg of a record. Charity songs, with their casts of thousands, their cramming of different styles and voices into one, their overlong runtimes, really do knock the charts off course. And when the record in question is a cover of ‘Let It Be’, one of the world’s best-loved songs, by the world’s best-loved band, you can’t help but wince, no matter how worthy the cause.

But we must listen, and ponder. The best part of an charity ensemble singalong is seeing how many people you can identify. It kicks off with the song’s writer, Paul McCartney, doing his best chirpy Uncle Macca impersonation. Then there’s the still heroin-husky Boy George, carrying the first verse. There’s Andy Bell from Erasure. There’s someone who looks like Marti Pellow (it’s not…) There’s Mel & Kim, again! They (sort of) join the exclusive club of acts who have replaced themselves at #1. There’s Kim Wilde and Nik Kershaw. There’s Kate Bush, who purrs her way through a couple of lines, sounding like she’s been spliced on from a completely different recording. There’s Edwin Starr, of ‘War!’ fame.

There are two guitar solos, from Gary Moore, and Mark Knopfler. Moore’s in particular is pretty blistering, marking this out from the usual charity single fare. There are two guys – one with a bottle of beer, the other smoking a fag – who aren’t quite giving the occasion the respect it deserves. Turns out they’re one half of Curiosity Killed the Cat. This is the second best aspect of a charity single: flash in the pan acts immortalised by being in the right place at the right time. (Also present here is Taffy – no, me neither – who qualified for a line or two thanks to her recent #6 hit ‘I Love My Radio’.)

By the end it’s descended into a pub-singalong, as all charity singles must. I refer to Wikipedia, because it looks like there are at least five-hundred people in the throng, to find it’s actually a ‘Who’s Who’ of previous chart-topping acts: Bucks Fizz, Suzi Quatro, Alvin Stardust, Bonnie Tyler, Doctor and the Medics, Frankie Goes to Hollywood and The New Seekers. Alongside The Drifters… the actual Drifters??… Gloria Hunniford, and Anne Diamond. Of course. They all look far happier than they should, given that it was the deaths of almost two hundred people that brought them all together.

I haven’t commented much on the music, because what’s the point? Charity singles aren’t bought to be listened to. Before you press play, imagine what a cover version of ‘Let It Be’, recorded for charity, in the late-eighties, would sound like. I’ll bet you come pretty close. (Oh and don’t forget to throw in a completely incongruous, but brilliant, guitar solo.) It is what it is. We listen once, and we move on.

567. ‘Living Doll’, by Cliff Richard & The Young Ones ft. Hank Marvin

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The newest addition to our chart-topping roster – the charity record – returns. But it has shapeshifted. Morphed into a form that will terrorise the charts from here until the end of time… The comedy charity record…

Living Doll, by Cliff Richard (his 11th of  fourteen #1s) & the Young Ones ft. Hank Marvin

3 weeks, from 23rd March – 13th April 1986

As with most charity records – which tend to be very rooted in their particular time and place – this needs a bit of explaining. ‘The Young Ones’ was a sitcom, about a group of flat-sharing undergraduate students of Scumbag College: Rick, an anarchist; Vyvyan, a psychopathic metalhead; Neil, a hippie; and Mike, the ‘cool’ one. The show’s theme tune was Cliff Richard & The Shadows’ 1962 #1 ‘The Young Ones’ and Rick, played by Rik Mayall, was a proud Cliff fan, despite his anarchist leanings. In-jokes on top of in-jokes…

This one isn’t on Spotify, which actually ends up being in the record’s favour – it works better as a video. As a song, it’s fairly unlistenable. Cliff does a straight, very soporific cover of his 1959 #1, while the four actors prat about over the top. Meanwhile, Hank Marvin emerges from behind a door to perform the solo.

It is undoubtedly hard to write a song that is as funny as it is catchy. And this is not how you do it… ‘The Young Ones’ is a funny programme, and Cliff is Cliff. But they’ve had to paint their anarchic humour in very broad strokes here. There are funny(ish) bits… At one point Vyvyan calls Cliff ‘Shaky’. And they call out the creepy ‘gonna lock her up in a trunk’ line: I still feel that locking girls in trunks is politically unsound… Well I feel sorry for the elephant… (groan)

It reminds me – and I’m not sure how I even remember this song – of ‘I See the Moon’, The Stargazers’ 1954 chart-topper. That also featured voice actors pratting about – in a very proper, pre-rock ‘n’ roll kind of way – over a well-known tune. It also reminds me of just about every other ‘comedy’ record to come: ‘Spirit in the Sky’, ‘Islands in the Stream’, ‘500 Miles’ will all be subjected to the same treatment in the years to come, and that’s just off the top of my head.

This was recorded for the very first Comic Relief (AKA Red Nose Day), a BBC charity telethon. Like Band Aid, it was set up in response to the famine in Ethiopia and has since gone on to raise 1.4 billion pounds for charity over the last thirty years. For all the musical chaos it has unleashed, it has undoubtedly done a lot of good for the world. Four minutes of Cliff, and Adrian Edmondson bashing everyone on the head with a mallet, is perhaps a small price to pay…

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556. ‘Dancing in the Street’, by David Bowie & Mick Jagger

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At the end of my last post I promised you an all-star duet at #1. Well, has there ever been a more all-star duet atop the charts than this? It’s only David Bowie and Mick Jagger…

Dancing in the Street, by David Bowie (his 5th and final #1) & Mick Jagger (his only solo #1)

4 weeks, from 1st – 29th September 1985

I also promised that this wouldn’t be underwhelming. And this record may be many things, but underwhelming it is not. It starts with a giant whistle, the sort shepherds use to summon their dogs from three fields away, and a rollcall of cities and continents. OK! Toky-oh…! Jagger bellows. South Ameriiiiicaaaa…! Bowie replies.

It sets the tone for the entire song. Every dial here is set to eleven: the horns, the handclaps, the riff… But nothing more so than its two stars. This should have been listed as David Bowie Vs Mick Jagger, as they spend the entire three and a half minutes trying to outdo one another for sheer ridiculousness. It makes for a tremendously fun listen.

Bowie does his best, sounding all white soul on the they’ll be swinging, swaying, records playing line, and doing his best Noel Coward with on the streets of Brazil…  But Bowie, even David Bowie, cannot compete with Mick Jagger when he’s in the mood. The way he soars through just as long as you are there…, the way he makes Philadelphia PA sound like a sexual position, and the piece de resistance: his ridiculously aggressive Back! In! The! USSR! It’s good to hear his voice again, sixteen years on from the Stones’ last chart-topper. It’s great to hear him on such fine form.

The video is even more extra. The two middle aged men (Jagger was forty-two, Bowie thirty-eight) prance and flounce around like the campest of pantomime dames. At one point they appear on the verge of a proper smoochy kiss. Again Bowie tries his best, again he is blown away by the force of nature that is Sir Michael of Jagger. The boy was unplayable, as they say on Match of the Day. On YouTube some wag has made a music-less version of the video, and it is as hilarious/terrifying as you’d imagine. It is a completely random, and yet somehow perfect, way for both of these stars to bow out from the top of the charts. And this curio, this borderline novelty single, ends up being one of the biggest hits either man ever had…

But why? I hear you asking. Why now? Why ‘Dancing in the Street?’, which was originally a #4 for Martha Reeves & the Vandellas in 1969. Well, why did most records make #1 in 1985…? For charity, of course. It was for Live Aid, and therefore for those affected by famine in Africa, like Band Aid and USA for Africa before it. The pair were originally meant to perform the song via video-link during the Live Aid concerts, but that would have involved one of them miming to a backing track. Neither was willing to do that, so they went to Abbey Road studios and recorded it instead.

In many way this is the template for how to do a charity record. Don’t bother writing some overblown twaddle about how we’re all God’s children, don’t bother getting everyone from Bobby Davro to Engelbert Humperdinck in the same room… Just get two genuine icons of popular music singing along to a well-loved classic, having the time of their lives. Sadly, very few future charity records will actually take this advice. This is a decent pop record, but I think it might actually be the pinnacle of its particular genre: the greatest charity single of all time…

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551. ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’, by The Crowd

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It’s our third charity chart-topper in six months, after over thirty years of managing quite happily without them, and so I’m introducing a new template. For every charity single that features henceforth, I’ll first spend a paragraph detailing how terrible the tragedy that inspired it was. I’ll then spend several more paragraphs detailing how terrible the ensuing record is… Sounds good?

You’ll Never Walk Alone, by The Crowd

2 weeks, from 9th – 23rd June 1985

The serious bit, then. On 11th May 1985, at a Third Division match between Bradford City and Lincoln City, a fire broke out in the main stand of the home side’s Valley Parade stadium. A fan had dropped a cigarette butt through a hole in the floor, where it landed on a pile of litter. On a dry and windy day, the stand was engulfed with flames inside five minutes. Fifty-six people died, many horrifically burnt alive, while another two hundred and sixty five were injured.

Gerry Marsden, of Gerry & the Pacemakers fame, decided to make a record to raise money for the victims and their families, and settled on a cover of his band’s 1963 #1, ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’, which was already a popular terrace song. He assembled a cast drawn from all corners of the British popular entertainment scene…

And the record sounds exactly as you’d expect. It is a large group of people singing along to ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’. It’s not awful; it’s far from being particularly good. It’s karaoke, recorded solely to make money for a good cause. I’m sure Marsden’s heart was in the right place (and he wasn’t just bandwagon jumping his way back to relevance). The most interesting thing about it, by far, are the people involved. Band Aid was full of bright young things; USA for Africa was a ‘Who’s Who’ of American pop. The Crowd are, well, a crowd.

Let’s start with the musicians. There’s Gerry Marsden (becoming the first person to top the charts with the same song), there’s Jim Diamond, Kiki Dee, Denny Laine, Tony Christie and Rick Wakeman. There’s Rolf Harris… There’s Motorhead and The Nolans! (Any record that manages to feature both Motorhead and The Nolans cannot simply be dismissed…) There’s Phil Lynott of Thin Lizzy, John Entwhistle of The Who, and Frank Allen of The Searchers. There’s Black Lace!! And then there are the non-musicians… The DJ Dave Lee Travis, the boxer John Conteh, the comedian Keith Chegwin, certified national treasure Bruce Forsyth…

Frankly, there are too many to list properly. It is a mind-bender of a lineup, a walking pub quiz question of a number one… Some bloke called Paul McCartney is relegated to a spoken-word ‘B’-side (completely understandable when you’ve already booked Rolf Harris and Cheggers…)

The fact that this record gave a #1 single to so many different people makes me think it should be better remembered. Except, then I press play one more time and realise why this has been quietly forgotten. It’s neither good enough, nor bad enough, to linger very long. And, sadly, the Valley Parade fire would also be overshadowed by another disaster in a British football stadium before the decade was out… ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’, meanwhile, has been back atop the charts fairly recently, still raising money for charity.

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548. ‘We Are the World’, by USA for Africa

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You wait thirty-odd years for a charity single, and then two come along in the space of four months…

We Are the World, by USA for Africa

2 weeks, from 14th – 28th April 1985

Trust the Americans, eh? They see a successful, popular original and, rather than just accept it, they have to remake it… Is ‘We Are the World’ to pop music what ‘The Office’ was to sitcoms, or ‘Ringu’ to horror movies? And in true American fashion, everything here is bigger than anything found on ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’: bigger production, bigger stars, a bigger song (literally… it’s over seven minutes long…)

Bigger, yes. But is it better? Well, no. From the minute the syrupy, faux-grandiose intro kicks in, you know what this is going to be. Seven long minutes of earnest, self-indulgent, do-gooding cheese. As with Band Aid, I try to identify as many voices as I can. Lionel Richie gets things underway, I can hear Stevie Wonder, and Kenny Rogers, and Michael Jackson on the chorus (he and Richie were the Geldof and Ure here in writing this behemoth, while Quincy Jones was on production duties). I can hear Diana Ross, and Cindi Lauper (who really goes for it). And Bob Dylan – this is the only time he’ll be appearing on a #1 single – and in true Bob Dylan fashion he sings his lines like your uncle obliviously singing along to something on his headphones… It’s true we make a better day, Just you and me… (it’s my personal highlight of the entire song, to be honest…)

I’m quite embarrassed by the voices I didn’t recognise, for this makes Band Aid look like a primary school assembly. George Michael? Bananarama? Pfft. They were clearly going for current acts, to attract the kids. USA for Africa is a ‘Who’s Who’ of American popular music, including Tina Turner, Paul Simon, Billy Joel, Dionne Warwick, Willie Nelson, Bruce Springsteen, Ray Charles, all the Jacksons, Smokey Robinson, Bette Midler and Harry Belafonte (whose idea this whole thing was, after he’d seen the success of Band Aid) among many others. There was a sign above the studio asking these superstars to ‘check their egos at the door’, while Stevie Wonder joked that if the recording wasn’t finished in time he and the equally blind Ray Charles would be driving everyone home. And yet. None of these names, or this admirable attitude, manage to make this a particularly enjoyable listen…

For a start, what are they singing about? This was recorded for the same reason as Band Aid – to raise money for those starving through the famine in Ethiopia – but where ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ has so many memorable lines (for better or worse) this has very few. We are the world, We are the children… sticks with you, as does the soaring It’s a choice we’re making, We’re saving our own lives… (which is the best line, for me, musically). The rest just float past in a sea of glossy blandness. What they’re really missing, I think, is Status Quo…

Some people think charity records should get a free pass. That because they’re raising money they can be as crap as they want, and it’s our duty to buy them anyway. I disagree, and will not be holding back as I rip into charity singles on this countdown. Starting with this one. Just because it’s for a good cause doesn’t mean it shouldn’t try to be a good song. Plus, there’s always the uncomfortable sight of wildly rich recording artists – who could have donated a million dollars without blinking – caterwauling on about us all being a part of God’s great big family…

Still, despite it being a bloated fart of a record, ‘We Are the World’ actually ranks towards the higher end of the charity song scale. It was written by Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson, after all. And, as someone who has lived in Asia for many years, I can confirm that this is a much more widely-known song than ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’, largely thanks to the MJ-factor. Plus, this ‘We Are the World’ is for any time of year, not just Christmas… I was going to add that, unlike Band Aid, USA for Africa hadn’t been re-attempted. Except it turns out that it has been: in 2010, after the devastating earthquake in Haiti, featuring the likes of Justin Bieber and Kanye West, as well as Jackson’s original vocals. It made #2 in the US, but only #50 in the UK… There may well be a reason I’ve never knowingly heard it…

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