FireAid, featuring Billie Eilish, Lady Gaga, Sting, Red Hot Chili Peppers and others in a fundraiser for Los Angeles-area wildfire relief efforts, is the latest event to combine music and philanthropy.
Thursday's concerts at the Intuit Dome and Kia Forum in Inglewood, California, will be streamed on YouTube, Prime Video, Apple TV+, and numerous other sites, but whether the fractured cultural landscape will unite around them the way it has in the past remains to be seen. Benefit concerts have come a long way since George Harrison's "The Concert for Bangladesh" at Madison Square Garden in 1971.
Here's a look at some of the biggest:
British rockers Bob Geldof and Midge Ure expanded their Band Aid charity single "Do They Know It's Christmas?" into daylong concerts in London and Philadelphia, starring dozens of music's biggest stars -- from Paul McCartney, David Bowie and Queen to Madonna, U2 and Tina Turner.
CAUSE: Ethiopian famine
IMPACT: The concerts, broadcast live to 150 countries, eventually raised $140 million and awareness of the need in Ethiopia. The fundraiser also showed the power of pop music to inspire action, leading to decades of similar events.
John Mellencamp, Willie Nelson and Neil Young took the Band Aid template and applied it to small farms in the Heartland, with performances from the organizers, as well as Loretta Lynn and Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, before becoming an annual fundraiser.
CAUSE: U.S. family farms
IMPACT: The concerts have raised $80 million over the years to help family farms survive and build a market for the food they produce.
To rally support and resources for a New York City dazed by a terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, Paul McCartney united famous friends and Big Apple neighbors -- David Bowie, Billy Joel, Jay-Z, The Who and others -- at Madison Square Garden for a defiant celebration of heroes and a memorial for those who were lost.
CAUSE: The 9/11 attacks
IMPACT: The concert and associated merchandise raised $35 million distributed by The Robin Hood Foundation to the families of those killed or injured in the World Trade Center attacks.
After the massive Hurricane Sandy stunned the Northeast with both wind and flooding damage and more than 70 deaths, Bruce Springsteen, Paul McCartney, Billy Joel and The Who banded together to raise funds at Madison Square Garden and raise spirits in the region mired in months of cleanup.
CAUSE: Hurricane Sandy aid
IMPACT: The concert and associated merchandise sales raised $50 million, distributed by The Robin Hood Foundation to nonprofits supporting residents as they started to rebuild.
After a suicide bomber attacked an Ariana Grande performance, killing 22 concertgoers, Grande returned to Manchester, England, to raise funds for those injured or killed in the attack. Grande headlined the concert, which also included performances by Coldplay, Miley Cyrus, Katy Perry, Justin Bieber, and Robbie Williams.
CAUSE: Survivors of the Manchester bombing
IMPACT: The concert, broadcast in 38 countries, raised $24.5 million for those affected by the bombing.
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