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
Spandau Ballet the album also reached number one in the UK. Their next single, "Gold", reached number 2. The follow-up album, "Parade", was released in June 1984, and its singles were again big successes in the charts in Europe, Oceania and Canada. The album's opening song, "Only When You Leave", became the band's last American hit. At the end of 1984, the band performed on the Band Aid charity single and in 1985 performed at Wembley Stadium as part of Live Aid. During this same year, Spandau Ballet achieved platinum status with the compilation "The Singles Collection", which kept the focus on