The worst songs in the world... ever!: canada

Saturday, February 27, 2010

"We are the World 25 for Haiti" by Artists for Haiti (2010)

Well, I've already talked about the aesthetic tragedy that is the 'charity single'. Just to underline the message I feel compelled to repeat again and again, charity singles are for very good causes and are definitely worthwhile things to do. I certainly don't want anyone to think that I'm being callous about charity or about disaster relief, and I certainly don't want anyone to think I'm being callous about the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, which affected me very deeply and still continues to.

...but this record sucks. Big time. I refer, of course, to the new version of "We Are the World" which was cobbled together to aid Haiti a few weeks ago. Any cent to help Haiti is well spent, so anyone who is spending money on this particular horrorshow is doing a good thing. But one of my particular pet peeves of charity recordings, the artists' sense of self-importance, is on display in this recording (and its YouTube video) in nearly intolerable levels. These artists are so hung up on the world of good they'll be doing their careers - I mean, doing the people of Haiti - that they lose all sense of subtlety. The result is something so artificial, so faceless and corporate, that any sense of collectivity and altruism is just blasted away.

How does it compare to the original? Well, to its credit it gives no one the job of 'singing Michael Jackson's lines', which would be an obvious disaster waiting to happen. Instead, Michael Jackson suddenly appears out of nowhere, white gloved, and singing with a bunch of people 25 years removed from him. Shrug. Whatever. The single most hilarious moment is when Cyndi Lauper's lines are taken over by Celine Dion - shrill in a lovable way replaces by shrill in a, well, shrill way. Celine Dion is so removed from the joke that she wouldn't even recognise it if she saw it. The autotune is, of course, hilarious. And the rap addendum is on one hand a necessary update to reflect what's popular now (and was popular but more easily ignorable 25 years ago) but on the other hand completely horrible: a bunch of male voices (mostly old enough to have just missed the first "WATW", mind you) engaged in some slow-tempo mass chanting pretending to be rap. Wyclef, candidate for beatification after the past few months (I mean that sincerely; the guy is awesome), embarrasses himself in front of the mic a few times, Jamie Foxx rather ridiculously sings his lines as Ray Charles, the whole mess gets going with Justin Bieber of all people (presumably to give Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers credibility), Vince Vaughn, Jeff Bridges and Nicole Richie are present, for no discernible reason (save nepotism), and everyone keeps clutching their headphones. Like, incessantly.

The whole thing will hopefully earn squillions of dollars for Haiti. The website is world25.org, where you can donate a truly worthy cause. But once you've spent your money, ruminate on how better off the world would be if this particular group of self-important musicians had not gotten together...

Saturday, December 5, 2009

"Tears are Not Enough" by Northern Lights (1985)

It's funny how the music industry works, really. The singer of a moderately-popular Irish band, the Boomtown Rats, sees a report on TV about famine in Africa and is inspired to 'do something' about it. Somehow, his initial impulse spirals into a super-huge phenomenon that, while certainly noble and practical in value, does cause a deluge of rather bad music circa the mid-eighties.

Not that it started out so bad: Bob Geldof's own “Do They Know It's Christmas?”, recorded with such luminaries of the British and Irish pop music industry as Status Quo, Big Country and Ultravox, is actually quite decent, if you can get over the cringe-worthy moment when Bono grunts “thank God it's them instead of you” and the entire ethnocentricity behind the song's hook in a nation that's 34% Muslim and 44% Eastern Orthodox (celebrating Christmas in January). Michael Jackson came to the aid of Ethiopia with the more insipid yet still tolerable “We are the World”.

And then... then we have Bryan Adams. The man responsible for an endless stream of bland MOR-“hard rock” anthems all of which sound identical. Being Canadian (and what's more anglophone Canadian), Bryan Adams decided to help the people of Ethiopia by rounding up some of those globe-straddling heroes of Canadian music as Salome Bey, Carroll Baker, Liberty Silver and Alfie Zappacosta...

The result is, in the grand tradition of all-star charity tributes, horrible but imbued with a sense of seriousness that makes you feel bad for admitting it's horrible. How bad is it? Well, most of its terribleness can be summed up in about 15 consecutive seconds of the song, starting from the moment Corey “Sunglasses at Night” Hart takes the mic. A man afflicted with the same disease as Mick Jagger and forced to sing all of his lyrics through pouted lips, Hart gamely grunts out the line “it's time to send our message everywhere” (since until this time Canadian musicians were operating in silence on the topic of African famine) before adding a faux-Michael Jackson “cha-know” that ups the ridiculousness one point, before heading into...

Two lines in French, stuck in by three performers crowded around one mic, to represent the one-third of Canada that speaks French, in an otherwise entirely English-language song. Forced bilingualism is nothing new to Canadians, but the crassness of this particular example of tokenism is worse than normal. Rightfully sickened, Quebecois artists decided to go it alone, recording the unknown-outside-of-Quebec “Les yeux de la faim” instead. With no token English lines.

As if that weren't bad enough, the thrown-in French is followed by what is by far the most heinous moment of the song, the ludicrous jingoism of the line “let's show them Canada still cares” (sung by the generally politically-sound Bruce Cockburn) in order to reassure any starving Ethiopians who had been heard to say, “you know, it seems like Canada's just not as caring as they used to be”. Neither Britain, nor the USA, nor even Quebec felt the need to stick such a line in. It's immediately followed by Geddy Lee, one of the silliest vocalists in recorded history, “taking flight” on the line “oh, you kno-ooow that we'll be there” (hand-delivering food aid, presumably).

True understanding of this song can be achieved only in watching the video, where all of the principals hunker in turn around a mic in what might be a Sears Portrait Studio, invariably clenching their fists in front of them as if to signal to a passing eighteen-wheeler to pull its air horn. The song builds to its inevitable crecendo of group-sing-along of the chorus (this is a feature of every all-star charity song ever) over which certain principals, overcome presumably with emotion, break rank to 'improvise' key phrases from the song, such as “bridge the disawwwwnce, yeah” in a very orderly fashion. In the video, the chorus of Canada's best-and-brightest suddenly transforms to a rink full of hockey players. Yes, swaying and singing the song. I kid you not. Canada's turn at the all-star charity single game features Wayne Gretzky and whoever else gamely singing along. Which is, to be fair, not that much more ridiculous than the studio chorus including a handful of comedians such as Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara.

Because, you know, the whole thing wasn't already enough of a joke.