The 40 Blogs of Christmas: #40
Christmas is right around the corner, so in honor of the holiday season, I am bringing you the 40 Blogs of Christmas! From November 15 to December 24, I will count down the 40 biggest Christmas-themed hits of the Billboard Pop Singles/Hot 100 and/or the Christmas charts (beginning in 1963, Billboard relegated seasonal re-releases to a separate Christmas chart, ending their strings of appearances on the Hot 100. A Christmas song can only appear on the Hot 100 once; if it is re-released the following year, it charts on the Christmas chart.) Keep in mind…several favorites didn’t make the list because they only appeared on other charts (R&B, Country, Adult Contemporary, etc.), or they were ineligible for the Hot 100 because they didn’t have a commercially available single (the most infamous of this was Mariah Carey’s 1994 song “All I Want for Christmas is You,” which would have been a top 10 hit if it had a commercially available single.) I also want to pull the Band-Aid (pun unintended, referring to the #40 song) off quickly and tell you songs #41-#60 (based on my research) so you won’t be disappointed later (I will give you their highest original chart position and which chart it appeared on):
41. “The Little Drummer Boy (Carol of the Drum)” - Harry Simeone Chorale (1958) #13 (1959 Hot 100 re-issue)
42. “A Holly Jolly Christmas” - Burl Ives (1964) #13 (Christmas chart)
43. “Pretty Paper” - Roy Orbison (1964) #15 (Hot 100)
44. “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” - Brenda Lee (1958) #16 (1960 Hot 100 re-issue)
45. “Silent Night” - Bing Crosby (1935) #16 (1941 Pop Singles re-issue)
46. “Christmas Blues” - Canned Heat (1968) #18 (Christmas chart)
47. “Sleigh Ride” - Boston Pops Orchestra (1949) #24 (Hot 100)
48. “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” - The Brothers Four (1966) #26 (Christmas chart)
49. “If We Make it Through December” - Merle Haggard (1973) #28 (1974 Hot 100 re-issue)
50. “Better Days” - Goo Goo Dolls (2005) #36 (Hot 100)
51. “Green Chri$tma$” - Stan Freberg (1958) #44 (Hot 100)
52. “The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire)” - Nat “King” Cole (1946) #65 (1962 stereo Hot 100 re-issue)
53. “Where Are You, Christmas?” - Faith Hill (2000) #65 (Hot 100)
54. “This Time of the Year” - Brook Benton (1959) #66 (Hot 100)
55. “Run Rudolph Run” - Chuck Berry (1958) #69 (Hot 100)
56. “Please Come Home for Christmas” - Charles Brown (1960) #76 (1961 Hot 100 re-issue)
57. “White Christmas” - The Drifters (1954) #80 (Pop Singles)
58. “All Alone on Christmas” - Darlene Love (1992) #83 (Hot 100)
59. “Christmas Dream” - Perry Como (1974) #92 (Hot 100)
60. “I Believe in Father Christmas” - Greg Lake (1975) #95 (Hot 100)
40. “Do They Know it’s Christmas?” - Band Aid (1984) #13 (Hot 100)
In late 1984, a BBC report by Michael Buerk was aired highlighting the famine that had hit the people of Ethiopia. Irish singer Bob Geldof of the band Boomtown Rats had seen the report and was a social person to raise money. Aware that he could do little on his own, he called Midge Ure from the band Ultravox and together they quickly co-wrote the song, “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” Geldof kept a November appointment with BBC Radio 1 DJ Richard Skinner to appear on his show, but instead of discussing his new album (the original reason for his booking), he used his airtime to publicize the idea for the charity single, so by the time the musicians were recruited there was intense media interest in the subject.
Geldof put together a group called Band Aid, consisting of leading Irish and British musicians who were among the most popular and recognized of this era. They included: Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, Paul Young, Culture Club (without Boy George, initially), George Michael of Wham!, Kool and the Gang, Sting, Bono and Adam Clayton of U2, Glenn Gregory of Heaven 17 (whom Ure personally ordered down) and his bandmate Martyn Ware, Phil Collins, Paul Weller of the Style Council, Francis Rossi and Rick Parfitt of Status Quo, Jody Watley of Shalamar, Bananarama, Marilyn (who was not invited but arrived anyway), and some of Geldof’s bandmates from the Boomtown Rats all arrived. Only one of Ure’s Ultravox colleagues, Chris Cross, attended. Geldof, noticing Boy George’s non-attendance (despite calling him up in New York the day before demanding he sing on the record), went back to the phone to get the Culture Club frontman out of bed and on to Concorde. Despite being singers themselves, neither Geldof nor Ure had a solo line on the song, though both took part in the “Feed the world” crescendo.
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 standoff 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. The single was released on December 3, 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 in the first week alone. It stayed at #1 for five weeks and ultimately sold more than three million copies. Band Aid II, a re-recording recorded five years later featuring newer musical participants, topped the UK chart in December of 1989, and a third re-recording, Band Aid 20, topped the UK chart in December of 2004 (this version had two new verses rapped by Dizzee Rascal.)
In the United States, the video was played on MTV frequently throughout the 1984 holiday season. It sold more than a million copies in the States 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. It did inspire a similar American project in 1985, USA for Africa, which topped the Hot 100 chart with their song “We are the World.”