Celebrations of the 80th anniversary of Bob Marley’s birth kicked off a year early. On 6 February 2024 – Bob Marley’s 79th birthday – Ziggy Marley appeared on Jimmy Kimmel, both to mark Bob Marley’s birthday and to promote the official Bob Marley biopic, One Love, which was about to be released in the US on 14 February, Valentine’s Day, 2024. On Kimmel, Ziggy Marley played Could You Be Loved?, a hit from Uprising (1980), the last album Bob Marley released. (There have been posthumous releases, as you would expect).

Ziggy Marley’s “Could You Be Loved?” is notable for being faithful to his father’s “Uprising” version. That’s an achievement. It’s hard to get the Marley sound. Even the Wailers band tended to fall short when they toured with stand-in Bobs. Ziggy gets the nuances of his father’s vocals, and the band sounds great. Is the wind section a tad too jaunty? Is the keyboard a little slick? Never mind, it’s damn close! Most importantly, the song sounds fresh and vibrant, even as a close cover of a beloved reggae staple.

Bob Marley: One Love was released with the cooperation of the Marley family. The film grossed $180M worldwide and introduced new generations to the music of the reggae legend in the year preceding Bob Marley’s 80th birthday. No doubt, this helped set the scene for a remarkable musical event in the Manchester Co-Op Arena on 6 February 2025. On Bob Marley’s 80th birthday, the world’s largest children’s choir assembled to sing a medley of Bob Marley songs. Eight thousand primary school pupils gathered in the stadium.

Children’s choirs around the world linked up remotely. The head of Young Voices children’s choir, Ben Lewis, told the BBC that “more than 2000 schools across the world took part in the event, broadcasting 300,000 children to 50 countries.” “I think it’s a testament to Bob Marley’s music, that global appeal,” he added. This mini-doc introduces the event before the performance kicks off at 6m10s into the video – if you want to skip to the music. It’s quite something hearing so many kids singing Marley songs in 2025!

As readers would expect, there have been a lot of events to celebrate what would have been Bob Marley’s 80th birthday. Many of these events are documented on social media. One video that will appeal to regulars is a selection of three Bob Marley covers by buskers on Dublin’s Grafton Street (recorded over the last five years). The video was specially curated for Marley’s 80th birthday by Dublin City Today, the popular YouTube channel that documents the vibrant Grafton Street scene. Don’t rush away after listening to buskers Fabio Rodrigues, Zoe Clarke, and Andrés Macnamara. This being a overview of celebrations of Bob Marley’s 80th, it’s only right that we conclude with one of Bob’s versions of one of his songs. I’ll introduce the final video after we visit Grafton Street. Take it away, Dublin.

As promised, we’re signing off with a Bob Marley classic. There are so many choices. I considered a 1973 recording of Get Up, Stand Up with Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer. I thought of Trenchtown Rock from the Rainbow Theatre in London…. In the end, I settled on a song that ties back to the beginning of this article and provided the Bob Marley biopic with its title, One Love. The Don Letts produced video for the song was released in 1984 – after Bob Marley’s death from cancer on 11 May 1981, aged 36. The video features footage of Bob Marley in London filmed by Letts. Letts’ friendship with Marley is partly responsible for Marley writing Punky Reggae Party, the song that opens Marley’s Babylon By Bus live album (1978). Happy heavenly 80th birthday, Bob Marley. This is One Love.