Culture of the United Kingdom music of Christmas has always been a combination of sacred and secular, and every year in the UK there is highly publicised competition to be the Christmas number one single, which has led to the production of music which provides the mainstay of festive playlists. Responding to a BBC report on the 1984 famine in Ethiopia, Bob Geldof created the charity supergroup Band Aid who recorded "Do They Know It's Christmas?". It has been Christmas number one three times. Written by Sarah Flower Adams in 1841, the Christian hymn "Nearer, My God, to Thee" is associated with the sinking of
The Christians (band) Mersey", released in aid of those affected by the Hillsborough disaster. The single stayed at number one for several weeks (No. 5 in Germany). Their second album, "Colour", released in 1990, reached number one in the UK Albums Chart and yielded the international hit "Words", which was No. 18 in the UK (including the Hillsborough charity single their eighth consecutive UK Top 40 hit) and Sweden, No. 5 in the Netherlands (for two weeks), and No. 1 in France (also for two weeks). The second single from the album, "I Found Out", reached No. 22 in France (No. 56 in