22 December 1984
U2’s first appearance at number one in the Irish singles charts: I was going to add a ‘surprisingly’ there, but every true Irish person is fairly cold towards U2. We do have the deathless gag about the two people on ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ who sing their own name: Sting’s “bitter sting of tears” and Bono singing “God”. That said, neither Sting nor Bono spoil this record for me, so I can use that ‘surprisingly’ after all.
My small child brain registered ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ as a real ‘event’ at the time, and nowadays at Christmas I still enjoy its video as a Panini sticker album of ’80s pop stars: Bananarama! Marilyn! Kool and the Gang! Handy tip: if you don’t recognise someone in it, they’re a Boomtown Rat.
I enjoy ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ as a record too, though God knows there’s plenty wrong with it. Its grasp of African geopolitical and post-colonial sensitivities, not to mention basic geography, is as clumsy as you’d expect from any record featuring Bono. Even at the time, all the lead vocalists being white males seemed a bit off. And for all the undoubted good it did—you’d be hard pressed to find someone who owes their literal survival of a catastrophic famine to ‘Mistletoe and Wine’—it cemented an equally damaging and retrograde white-world view of ‘Africa’, the entire continent in one sweeping hand gesture, as some sort of failed socio-political entity or basket-case of human poverty and misery.
For all those serious reservations, it genuinely came from a place of well-meaning civic action and fellow feeling, plus it was filling a gap where the world’s political leaders were conspicuously absent. On balance, ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ is a good thing, though admittedly you need to block out all the subsequent versions to maintain this line.
One reason why the original is better than its successors is because, as this was a new departure, the class of ’84 don’t go in for the performative emoting and showboating of subsequent more self-aware line-ups, who know now that you do this sort of thing with eyes scrunched up, one hand on your headphones, and some deep n’ meaningful pseudo-soul wailing. All the lead singers do a solid job. I especially like Boy George flexing his honeycombed croon the way he does on ‘Do You Really Want To Hurt Me’.
As for the song itself, the sombre beginning and bleak opening line surely make it the only Christmas record influenced by Joy Division. Some may not like how it eventually opens out into a bouncy singalong, but for me this ties in with the song’s striking and memorable lyrics; Christmas is ideally a holiday of shared happiness. ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ of 1984 certainly makes me happy, which is more than I can say of its cover versions—or its upcoming imitators.
