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
Band Aid 20 Bono and Paul McCartney were the only artists from the original Band Aid to lend their voices to Band Aid 20. There was a reported dispute over the line 'Well tonight thank God it's them, instead of you', which Bono sang on the original version. Justin Hawkins, of The Darkness, laid down a version of the line, as did Robbie Williams, but Bono insisted on re-recording his version, which was eventually used on the record. Travis lead singer Fran Healy, who played guitar on the recording, said, "It's dead exciting. When [the 1984 version] was first recorded, I was 11