This formula—peace and expanding economic freedom—has the power to transform Ethiopia like no amount of humanitarian aid can. The song implores us, “Feed the world.” This is precisely what economic freedom has done, sparking the biggest drop in extreme poverty in history. It has become the iconic poor country,” Gill wrote in his 2010 book Famine and Foreigners: Ethiopia Since Live Aid. “Instead of its glorious past and rich culture, we now associate Ethiopia with famine.” At some point, however, I began to love “Do They Know It’s Christmas”—I still get chills every time Bono hits “well tonight thank god it's them instead of you.”

One of the reasons the movie is such a hit is that it has not one but two hilarious scenes featuring one of the greatest Christmas Songs ever written: “Do They Know It’s Christmas.” Smith’s formula might sound simple, but executing it is not. Power has a way of concentrating and unleashing itself on its own. Dawit Wolde-Giorgis, the author of Red Tears, said this is perhaps the greatest scar of the Ethiopian famine. Gill said perhaps the most obvious consequence of the Band Aid campaign was that Ethiopia became a sort of caricature of poverty and starvation in the minds of westerners. This is not to suggest that aid initiatives cannot help those suffering, or that people should not give to those in need. Giving is good and can help those in need, especially when combined with prudence—but it is not an end in itself. Helping people is the ultimate goal, and this requires more than just humanitarian efforts, as some members of Band Aid now realize. The assembled cast of performers had 24 hours to record in the studio, which was made available to them freely by producer Trevor Horn. (Horn had initially been asked to produce the song, but told Geldof it would take him six weeks, which would make a December release impossible; so the task fell to Ure.)What few realize is that the famine was not an accident. Though drought played a role, many have overlooked that the Ethiopian government's military policies were the primary catalyst. There was a charming naivete about this song,” Sting said years later, while speaking to Ure. “I think a more sophisticated song wouldn’t have worked. It had to be a kind of Christmas carol, nursery rhyme, simple, idealistic vision. And that’s exactly what it was.” On November 24, 1984, the pop musician Boy George was sleeping in his New York City hotel room when the phone rang. He was touring with the Culture Club and had had a late night partying. The call woke him up. It was Geldof, who the previous day had told George to drop what he was doing and get to London stat to perform a song he had co-written with Ure.

Mengistu’s plan might have been effective as a military strategy, but it ravaged the Ethiopian economy. Among the many problems it produced was that it created a surplus of labor in some places and a dearth in others. The song’s cultural impact—both good and bad—is also hard to overstate, though many smile at the line “Do they know it’s Christmas time at all?” I was a little kid when the song came out, and as a child I wasn’t much of a fan. I didn’t really know what the song was about, but I vaguely remember thinking it had something to do with AIDS, which was new and very scary. I was more partial to Burl Ives singing “Holly Jolly Christmas” or the Peanuts characters belting out “ Hark the Angels.” A 45-year-old farmer named Ibrahim who Gill spoke to decades after the famine recalled being pressed into service digging graves as a young man because there were not enough workers. As most readers already know, the song had nothing to do with AIDS, but with a famine in Ethiopia. Fewer, however, know that the famine was man-made.

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The] biggest toll of the famine was psychological,” Dawit wrote. “None of the survivors would ever be the same. The famine left behind a population terrorized by the uncertainties of nature and the ruthlessness of their government.” Geldof received a dose of perspective that night when he turned on the BBC and saw a news report delivered by journalist Michael Buerk depicting a severe famine in Ethiopia. Fifteen thousand children here now. Suffering. Confused. Lost,” Buerk says, as the camera pans to emaciated bodies of starving Ethiopians. “Death is all around. A child or an adult dies every twenty minutes.”

This is not to diminish the work of Band Aid. If you visit Korem today, you can still see evidence of its works, including a hospital completed on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the famine with proceeds from Geldof and co.Peter Gill was one of the few western journalists in Ethiopia in 1984. Working with Action Aid, a global humanitarian group, he spent weeks in Korem, the epicenter of the famine, and the highlands of Amhara. Many westerners are oblivious to the causes that underpinned Ethiopia’s famine, but Ethiopians are not, and they appear to have learned an important lesson.