At this point in the year we're normally irritated to be hearing about Christmas releases but we'll make an exception for rumors that Bob Geldof is snooping around the internet recruiting talent for a new version of the classic carol "Do They Know It's Christmas?" according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Nothing is for sure yet but an anonymous source told The Sun that Geldof was looking to do a new cut both to mark the 30th anniversary of the original track and to raise fund for fighting the Ebola epidemic in Africa (the original single raised money for those suffering from famine in Ethiopia).
"Bob started casually getting in touch with people earlier this month," the source said. "A few big names were very surprised to see he had emailed them just asking if they would be interested in being part of a project... He didn't make any formal requests, but he wanted to gauge an idea of who was potentially available."
We don't want to cast any shade on the new project at all, considering its good intentions, but Geldof will certainly have a tough time trying to live up to the original version of "Do They Know It's Christmas?" Paul McCartney, David Bowie, Bono and George Michael were just a few of the names that took part in the original recording. The track stayed at no. 1 for five weeks and sold 12 million copies before 1990.
Hopefully Geldof has been sending out signals for a while. Getting that many superstars together for recording, even apart from each other, will take some time and we all know that Christmas singles are typically released well before December. The original single dropped on November 28, 1984 so keep an eye on that date this year for a new single from the new Band Aid.
