text: Not only did the song become the Christmas number one, it sold over three million copies and became the biggest selling single of all time, a record that held for the next thirteen years. The song at number 2, Wham!'s Last Christmas, sold over a million and proceeds from that also went to the charity. Further Band Aid singles would be released in 1989 (Band Aid II) and 2004 (Band Aid 20), both also Christmas number one.
  The classical year was kicked off by the first complete performances of Oliver Knussen's one act fantasy opera Where the Wild Things Are, based on Maurice Sendak's 1963 children's book of the same title. Knussen composed the music from 1979 to 1983 and an earlier version was first heard in Brussels in 1980. The other major classical music event of the year was the first performances (in the US, then in the UK) of The Mask of Time, the longest and most ambitious of Michael Tippett's late works, written in 1982 by the then 77 year-old composer. Wilfrid Mellers called it "a mind-boggling cosmic history of the universe", while Paul Driver wrote that the Mask revealed "the authentic early Tippett", with a return to the lyricism of The Midsummer Marriage and multiple acknowledgements of his early compositions.
  Events
  9 January – first complete performance of Oliver Knussen's Where the Wild Things Are by Glyndebourne Touring Opera at the National Theatre, London.