Today it looked like the goodwill generated by 30 years of music-based charity work had dried up for Bob Geldof, Bono and their latest band of pop sensations. Band Aid 30, unlike its predecessors, has somehow managed to stir public ire as much as it has goodwill.
Geldof’s criticism of singer Adele for not answering his calls was the last straw. A piece by Bryony Gordon in The Telegraph newspaper told everyone why she was right and he was wrong. Adele quietly made a cash donation to charity, Band Aid singers gave up “a few hours of their time on a weekend”.
Gordon has a point. In the video everyone looks very pleased with themselves, having not anticipated that in a world run by the internet and social media people might look into the charitable records of people taking part. Some within the ensemble have been accused of shirking their taxes, and of course there is no mention of whether anyone has given actual, real money to the Ebola crisis.
Geldof’s angry reply to criticism of the single - saying it was was all “b*****ks” - has also gone down badly with critics, who say Band Aid’s credit-to-effort ratio is much higher than arguably more worthy groups such as Medecins Sans Frontiers (Doctors Without Borders), whose staff risk not their reputations or their precious time, but their very lives, in administering aid.
Questions were also raised about the lack of African singers on the record. Almost everyone is white, Anglo Saxon, which gives the single an unwelcome colonial feel. This was pointed out on the Channel 4 News in the UK last night, along with the apparent oddity of depicting the whole of Africa on the Band Aid logo when only a handful countries within the continent are affected.
There has even been irritation that the latest version of song erases its best line – while the rest of the lyrics are a bit boring.
But the public outcry caused by the tackiness, condescension and hypocrisy of the single – not to mention the fact that they’ve wheeled out the same song again – is for the most part irrelevant to the cause. The danger is, of course, that it’ll put people off buying the single and that Ebola victims won’t get as much money as they would have.
So for those of you left with a bitter taste by the Band Aid backlash, here’s my advice. Go to the website of Medecins Sans Frontiers or Oxfam or Plan International or Care International, set up a direct debit and then think nothing more of Bono, Geldof and that increasingly irritating song.