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Bob Geldof has revealed plans for a fourth version of the U.K. charity single Do They Know It’s Christmas, designed to fight the Ebola epidemic, featuring several big stars in the latest version of Band Aid.
Bono, Ellie Goulding, One Direction, Ed Sheeran, Sam Smith, Underworld, Sinead O’Connor, Bastille and Elbow will all lend their voices to the charity single, with more acts to be announced before the recording session in London on Saturday. Paul Epworth, who has worked with Adele and One Direction, will produce.
“We called up some of the giants of the past and our own contemporaries, equally giant, and they said they’d come again to the party,” Geldof said in a press conference Monday.
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Whereas the original 1984 single, still the second biggest single of all time in the U.K., was aimed at tackling hunger in Africa, the latest edition will focus on fighting the Ebola epidemic and helping medical workers in Africa dealing with this “particularly pernicious illness that renders humans untouchable.” Geldof confirmed that several of the lyrics have been changed to reflect the new angle, although the main “feed the world” chorus line will remain.
“For 30 years, we’ve been boring people to death about the great inequalities of the world, whereby 50 percent still live on two dollars a day. That’s disgraceful. It’s ridiculous, and it’s unnecessary,” he said. “And what they were dying of in 1984 was of course hunger, but they died essentially because they were poor. We know we can contain Ebola; we have the doctors, the nurses, medicines and state systems. We have money. They’re dying again because they are extremely poor. That is radically unacceptable.”
Geldof confirmed that Quincy Jones would be working on a similar project, just as he did with USA for Africa in 1985 with We Are the World, which sold more than 20 million copies. He also revealed that French and German singles would be created.
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