What is Band Aid 40 and why are people talking about it?

Ed Sheeran has said he wasn't approached for permission to use his voice on the new mix of the charity single

This year marks the 40th anniversary of Band Aid, a group put together to make a charity single called Do They Know It's Christmas?.

The single featured some of the biggest stars of the 1980s.

It was recorded to raise money for people in Ethiopia during a national crisis.

To celebrate its 40th anniversary, a new mix has been put together of the original song with a re-recorded version made in 2014 for the 30th anniversary.

Band Aid 30 featured huge stars such as Harry Styles, Paloma Faith and Ed Sheeran

However, some critics of Do They Know It's Christmas? think its lyrics are outdated.

And some of the artists involved have come out and said they regret singing for the track.

Singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran is one of them.

He said he wasn't asked if they could reuse his part on the 30th anniversary track, and if they had, he would've politely declined.

But why is this? And how did the song come about in the first place?

Why was Band Aid started?

In 1984, there was a famine in Ethiopia, a country in Africa.

A famine is when there isn't enough food to go around, either because it can't be grown in the country or there isn't enough money to import it from elsewhere.

This meant lots of people were getting sick, and many people died.

It was all over the news, and people around the world were trying to figure out what they could do to help.

Ethiopia is in the East of Africa

A singer called Sir Bob Geldof saw a BBC News report and decided he wanted to raise money to send to Ethiopia, so that people could buy food to eat.

He, along with another artist called Midge Ure, gathered lots of other famous artists together to record a song to raise money for people affected by the famine.

They recorded everything in one marathon 24-hour session and released it days later, on 3 December 1984.

It featured huge names from the time, including Sting, David Bowie, and Bono from U2.

The original Band Aid lineup

The track shot to number one in the charts almost overnight and remained there for five weeks, making it 1984's Christmas chart-topper.

Band Aid's aim was to “touch people’s heartstrings and to loosen the purse strings,” according to Ure.

And some people think it did just that - it raised millions of pounds while it was number one, and continued to do so until today.

Band Aid recording Do They Know It's Christmas

The next year, Sir Bob Geldof put together a concert called Live Aid to continue raising money for the Ethiopian famine.

It raised £40million that day alone, which would be the equivalent of a significantly larger sum now.

Why are people arguing about the song now?

Even though it has been a very successful song, more recently it has been criticised for what the lyrics say about the continent of Africa and Africans generally.

"Over the years, some people have been critical of the song’s lyrics," explains Noor Nanji, a Culture Reporter at BBC News.

A line in the original version of the song suggests that there is no snow in Africa at Christmas, but snow is common in certain areas of Africa in December.

Another line in the original track says "nothing ever grows" on the continent, which critics of the song say is clearly untrue and enforces a very negative stereotype about Africa.

Midge Ure (left) and Sir Bob Geldof (right)

Noor explained to Newsround that some people say some of these lines are "old-fashioned, and suggest Africa is a place that needs saving by Westerners."

"Sir Bob Geldof, who organised and co-wrote Do They Know It’s Christmas has defended it, pointing out the number of lives it has saved", she continued.

Sir Bob Geldof wrote of the criticism: "This little pop song has kept hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people alive".

But British-Ghanaian rapper Fuse ODG told BBC Radio 1's Newsbeat the song gives the impression Africa is full of people who are hungry and poor, which he says is "not the truth".

Rapper Fuse ODG said while he recognises Band Aid has raised lots of money, he doesn't agree with the "damaging stereotypes" the song makes about the continent of Africa

He said that when he first saw the Band Aid videos as a child, the images were "so negative that I wanted to disassociate myself from being African because there was no sense of pride in it."

Ed Sheeran has come out in support of Fuse ODG, and commented that his understanding of the song has changed in the 10 years since he was involved in the 30th anniversary version.

He said he wasn't asked if they could reuse his part in the song, and that if they had, he would have refused.