Thirty years after its first benefit album demonstrated popular music’s capacity to raise large-scale charitable support for children in conflict zones, War Child UK is repeating the model amid what several participating artists describe as a more acute global crisis.
War Child UK will release “Help(2)” on Friday, a benefit compilation album featuring unreleased songs from Arctic Monkeys, Olivia Rodrigo, Wet Leg, and Pulp, to raise funds for children affected by conflict in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan. The album is the follow-up to the charity’s 1995 compilation “Help,” which reached No. 1 on the British charts and raised more than £1.25 million (approximately $1.938 million) for children in war-torn Bosnia.
Thirty years after the original demonstrated popular music’s capacity to raise large-scale charitable support for children in conflict zones, War Child UK is repeating the model. Rich Clarke, War Child UK’s head of music, said the charity had been trying to recreate the original’s success ever since it debuted.
“I think it’s a situation now where musicians feel not that they want to do something, but that they need to do something,” Clarke told the Associated Press. “That’s a powerful driver. And sometimes, things happen when they’re meant to happen.”
A long-gestating song finds its focus
Pulp’s contribution to “Help(2)” is “Begging for Change,” a song frontman Jarvis Cocker said he began approximately 14 years ago but could not complete until now. Cocker’s connection to War Child UK stretches back to 1996, when Pulp donated the financial windfall from winning the Mercury Prize to the charity.
Producer James Ford, who worked on Pulp’s 2025 album “More,” approached Cocker about contributing a new track. Cocker said the charitable purpose helped him finish it.
“Somehow, with it having the focus of trying to help some people and change their situation, I did manage to finish it,” Cocker said. “And I’m quite pleased with the result.”
The recording at Abbey Road Studios in London took an unexpected turn when Cocker learned the session would be filmed by children working on a documentary with director Jonathan Glazer. Cocker also invited some of the children to form a choir that appears on the song.
“If you’re going to do a thing for a charity that is supposed to help children in war zones, then it makes sense to capture it from a child’s point of view,” Cocker said.
Cocker said the share of the world’s children living in poor areas has roughly doubled since the original compilation came out — from about 10 percent to about 20 percent.
“Charity shouldn’t have to exist if governments did what they were supposed to,” he said. “But they do need to exist. They need to exist even more now.”
Artists describe a sense of obligation
Black Country, New Road contributed a song titled “Strangers” to the album. The British band has also held previous fundraisers for Palestinian children. Georgia Ellery, the band’s violinist, said the work reflects the group’s broader direction as artists.
“With what was going on in the world a couple of years ago, I think it became important to us that we became more aware and started questioning things and how we wanted to move as artists,” Ellery said.
Graham Hastings of the Scottish band Young Fathers said participation was a “no-brainer.”
“When you see children in these refugee camps, for me it’s a sign of humanity failing for that to even occur,” Hastings said. “For us, the important thing is for people just to feel a general awareness about what’s happening and why it’s happening, and get active and get involved in the community.”
Benefit compilations as a DIY tradition
John Nolan, guitarist and singer in the rock bands Taking Back Sunday and Straylight Run, said benefit compilations offer artists a more hands-on way to support causes than other forms of charitable giving. Nolan released his own compilation, “Music for Everyone, Vol. 2,” in November as a fundraiser for the American Civil Liberties Union.
“It’s something that we can be a lot more hands-on with,” Nolan said. “I think that’s also why a lot of more underground bands take on compilations for causes too, because it’s something you can be kind of DIY with.”
The original 1995 “Help” album included unreleased songs from Oasis, Blur, and Radiohead, alongside a supergroup featuring Paul McCartney and Paul Weller.