War Child revives its ‘Help’ album for a streaming-era sequel benefiting children in conflict zones

In 1995, a hastily assembled CD called The Help Album turned Britpop swagger into more than £1.2 million for children caught in the Bosnian war. Recorded in 24 hours and rushed into shops five days later, it became a touchstone for what a charity compilation could be: urgent, star-studded and musically credible.

Thirty years on, the same charity behind that record, War Child, is trying to repeat the trick in a very different world.

On March 6, War Child released HELP(2), a 23-track compilation billed as a sequel to the 1995 album. Produced by James Ford and recorded over a week last November at Abbey Road Studios in London, the project brings together a cross-generational lineup that includes Arctic Monkeys, Depeche Mode, Pulp, Big Thief, Olivia Rodrigo, Wet Leg, Fontaines D.C., Young Fathers and others.

Proceeds will support War Child’s programs for children affected by conflict in 15 countries, with a particular focus on Gaza and the occupied Palestinian territories, Sudan, Yemen and Ukraine, where the organization says conflict and displacement have disrupted education and exposed millions of children to trauma and abuse.

War Child officials and participating musicians describe the album as both a fundraising tool and a way to keep those crises in public view at a time when humanitarian appeals are competing for attention.

“I think it’s a situation now where musicians feel not that they want to do something, but that they need to do something,” Rich Clarke, head of music projects and fundraising at War Child UK, said in an interview about the project.

A sequel three decades in the making

War Child was founded in 1993 in response to the wars in the former Yugoslavia. Two years later, The Help Album enlisted Oasis, Blur, Radiohead, Paul McCartney, Massive Attack, Sinéad O’Connor and others to raise money for children in Bosnia. The compilation topped the UK compilation chart and became part of the narrative of Britpop’s brief political awakening.

In the years that followed, War Child released other albums and staged benefit shows, but none matched the cultural profile of the original Help. As the organization approached its 30th anniversary, Clarke and colleagues began to talk about a direct follow-up.

Enter Ford, the British producer whose credits include Arctic Monkeys, Pulp, Depeche Mode and Foals. He signed on as executive producer and helped convene sessions at Abbey Road over a “special week” in November 2025.

“The original ‘Help’ meant a lot to me,” Ford said in a statement. He said the chance “to help galvanise our music community into doing something as unarguably positive as helping children in war zones seemed like a no-brainer.”

Where the first album leaned on Britpop and 1990s alternative rock, HELP(2) pulls from multiple generations of guitar music and adjacent scenes. Legacy acts such as Pulp, Depeche Mode and Beth Gibbons appear alongside millennial and Gen Z artists including Big Thief, Wet Leg, Beabadoobee, Arlo Parks, Ezra Collective and The Last Dinner Party. Olivia Rodrigo, the 21-year-old pop star with multiple Grammy Awards, closes the album.

Le Monde, the French newspaper, described the lineup as “some of the biggest names in today’s independent rock,” explicitly linking it to the Britpop-dominated cast of the 1995 record.

New music and carefully chosen covers

The album opens with “Opening Night,” Arctic Monkeys’ first new song since 2022, released as a lead single in January to announce the project. Clarke said the band’s decision to donate a song of that stature “set the tone and the bar for everyone.”

Pulp contribute “Begging for Change,” a track frontman Jarvis Cocker says he began writing 14 years ago but only finished because of the War Child project.

“Somehow, with it having the focus of trying to help some people and change their situation, I did manage to finish it,” Cocker told The Associated Press.

Several artists offered previously unreleased material from earlier sessions, including Big Thief’s “Relive, Redie” and Wet Leg’s “Obvious.”

Alongside the new songs, a significant portion of HELP(2) consists of covers of politically or emotionally charged material. Depeche Mode record “Universal Soldier,” the anti-war standard written by Buffy Sainte-Marie. Dublin band Fontaines D.C. tackle Sinéad O’Connor’s “Black Boys on Mopeds,” which links police violence and political hypocrisy. Beabadoobee covers Elliott Smith’s “Say Yes,” and Beth Gibbons takes on The Velvet Underground’s “Sunday Morning.”

Rodrigo closes the compilation with “The Book of Love,” by The Magnetic Fields, in a string-laden arrangement featuring Blur guitarist Graham Coxon. Arooj Aftab and Beck contribute a version of “Lilac Wine,” a torch song associated with Nina Simone and Jeff Buckley.

The tracklist also includes Foals’ “When the War Is Finally Done,” Young Fathers’ “Don’t Fight the Young,” Black Country, New Road’s “Strangers” and a collaborative song titled “Flags” from Damon Albarn, Grian Chatten of Fontaines D.C. and poet and rapper Kae Tempest.

A bonus track offers a further link to 1995: “Acquiesce,” recorded live at Wembley Stadium on Sept. 28, 2025, by a reunited Oasis, appears as their first physical release since reforming.

Children behind the camera

Alongside the album, War Child has commissioned a companion film from British director Jonathan Glazer, known for features including Under the Skin. The film documents the Abbey Road sessions but with an unusual twist: children, some as young as 8, were given cameras to shoot the performances.

Cocker said he was initially wary of having cameras in the studio but warmed to the concept when he learned who would be holding them.

“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,” he said.

Early descriptions of the project say Glazer’s film intercuts the child-shot studio footage with images from conflict zones, underscoring what is at stake beyond the walls of Abbey Road.

Where the money goes

War Child operates as part of a global alliance working in 15 conflict-affected countries, including Afghanistan, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Jordan, Lebanon, the occupied Palestinian territory, Sudan, South Sudan, Syria, Uganda, Ukraine and Yemen.

The organization cites research estimating that roughly 468 million children worldwide are living in conflict zones. Its programs focus on child protection, education, mental health and psychosocial support, and livelihood opportunities for families.

In Gaza and the West Bank, War Child supports safe spaces, structured play and counselling for children facing repeated displacement and school closures. In Ukraine and neighboring countries hosting refugees, the charity helps provide non-formal education, tablet-based learning for children whose schools have shut, and case management for those separated from their families.

War Child only began operating inside Sudan in April 2025, after the country descended into widespread fighting. There, the charity has rolled out a movement-based psychosocial program called TeamUp, along with child protection and education projects in some of the hardest-to-reach areas.

In Yemen, where war has dragged on for nearly a decade, War Child works through local partners to support community classrooms and child protection services in displacement camps and host communities.

On its website, the organization breaks down potential impacts in small units—for example, stating that a donation of £17 can cover the cost of safely reunifying a child with their family—to illustrate how funds from purchases and streams of HELP(2) might be used.

Old model in a new economy

HELP(2) arrives in a music economy that looks very different from the mid-1990s, when CDs sold in large quantities at relatively high prices. Per-stream payouts from major platforms today are a fraction of that, raising questions about how much money a charity compilation can realistically generate.

War Child has responded by pairing a wide digital release with higher-margin physical formats. The album is available on major streaming platforms but also as a multi-disc vinyl set, with international distribution through record stores and online retailers. Digital storefronts such as Bandcamp, where artists and labels can receive a larger share of revenue, are part of the strategy.

Clarke and Ford have pointed to the original album’s roughly £1.25 million total as an informal benchmark, though they acknowledge that the path to comparable sums now may depend on a longer fundraising tail and strong physical sales, rather than a short, concentrated spike.

For many of the artists, the project is also an extension of political engagement rather than a one-off. Members of Young Fathers and Black Country, New Road, among others, have spoken publicly in the past two years about their concern over the situation in Gaza and broader questions of war and displacement.

“When you see children in these refugee camps, for me it’s a sign of humanity failing for that to even occur,” Young Fathers’ Graham Hastings said in an interview about the album.

Georgia Ellery of Black Country, New Road said the band’s involvement had prompted internal debate about their own responsibilities.

“It became important to us that we became more aware and started questioning things and how we wanted to move as artists,” she said.

Cocker, who took part in the original Help era with Pulp and returns here as part of the band’s recent reunion, framed the project in stark terms.

“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.”

That tension—between the limits of what musicians and NGOs can do and the scale of what children in Gaza, Sudan, Yemen, Ukraine and elsewhere are facing—runs through HELP(2). The album cannot end wars or rebuild destroyed neighborhoods. War Child and its collaborators argue it can help fund counselling sessions, school materials and safe spaces, and keep the lives of children in conflict from slipping entirely out of view.

In that sense, the new compilation echoes its predecessor. Where 1995’s Help responded to a single conflict in Europe, HELP(2) is aimed at a map of crises that is broader and more visible than ever—but no less urgent for the children living at its sharpest edges.