system. The two most notable absentees were George Michael and Bono: during Michael's line the cameras focused on the studio audience, while Paul Weller mimed Bono's line to the camera. The charity received a further boost during Band Aid's five week tenure at the top of the UK charts with Wham! at number two with their double A-side "Last Christmas"/"Everything She Wants". Wham! singer George Michael had appeared on the Band Aid single and he and fellow band member Andrew Ridgeley donated all the royalties from their single to the Band Aid Trust. As of 2021, "Last Christmas" has sold almost two million copies, and until it reached number one in January 2021 it held the record for the biggest-selling single never to reach number one in the UK. A 30-minute video titled 'Do They Know It's Christmas?' – The Story of the Official Band Aid Video was released in the UK on 15 December 1984 and in the US on 18 December 1984 on VHS and Betamax formats. The video featured documentary footage shot at the recording session and interviews with Geldof and Ure, as well as the completed promotional video. At the 1986 Grammy Awards the song's video was nominated for the Best Music Video, Short Form award, eventually losing out to its US counterpart song "We Are the World". Reception The reception in December 1984 to the original single from the UK music press was mixed. Under a caption of "TURKEY" (a double meaning referring both to the traditional Christmas dinner and an artistic failure), the biggest selling music paper NME dismissed the song with the single line, "Millions of Dead Stars write and perform rotten record for the right reasons". The other two major music papers looked upon the record more favourably, recognising that while musically the song was flawed, its intentions were admirable. Sounds said, "It's far from brilliant (if not quite the Bland Aid some have predicted) but you can have fun playing Spot the Star on the vocals, and it deserves to sell by the truckload". Melody Maker stated, "Inevitably, after such massive publicity, the record itself is something of an anti-climax, even though Geldof's sense of universal melodrama is perfectly suited to this kind of epic musical manifesto. Midge Ure's large-screen production and the emotional vocal deliveries of the various celebrities matches the demonstrative sweep of Geldof's lyric, which veers occasionally toward