Over a dozen of the biggest voices in music gathered over the weekend to cover the 1984 Band Aid song “Do they Know it’s Christmas?” to raise funds to fight Ebola.
One Direction, Sam Smith, Rita Ora, and original Band Aid crooner Bono are among those hoping to “heal the world” through the power of music. Funds from sale of the song, available on iTunes, will go toward the effort to stop the spread of Ebola in West Africa, where the bulk of the 5,000 people who have died from the disease during the current outbreak have lived.
The first Band Aid charity supergroup of musicians originally recorded the song in 1984 to fight famine in Ethiopia, raising over 8 million pounds, BBC reports. The challenge in 2014 is to get people to purchase the song, and not share or stream it. To encourage purchase, the song will not be available on Spotify until January, according to BBC News.
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