USA FOR AFRICA – "We Are The World"

…and Bob Dylan finally gets a number 1 in the UK…and as I recall Prince wisely ducked out of the recording – donating one of his zillion spare songs to the album.

Now all this conjures up is ‘Kidney now’ on the last episode of 30 Rock

On Tacky Souvenirs Of Pre-Revolutionary America, one of the key albums of the eighties, Culturcide attack “We Are The World.” Sonically their attack is not to the extent which we find on, say, their reworkings of “Dancing In The Dark” or “Ebony And Ivory” but the critique is spot on. Here is how they rephrase the chorus:

“We’re not the world, we’re not the children,
We’re just bosses and bureaucrats and rock ‘n’ roll has-beens.
There’s a choice we’re never given, to run our own lives,
Without it your ‘better day’ is just a better lie.”

Elsewhere they point out: “There are people dying – oh, and they just noticed!” Where the saving grace of “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” was its admittedly appealing am-dram let’s-do-the-show-right-here/sticky-backed-plastic approach – and where was Cliff Richard in that Band Aid line-up? – “We Are The World” from its arrogant title downwards through its depressingly pompous extended intro, is a Corporate Statement, brilliantined and polished to a curtain of platitude-sympathetic bland.

Despite producer Quincy Jones’ instructions to the participants to “leave their egos at the door” – doubtless mindful of Geldof’s scowling presence in the studio – the song’s central concept, in its execution, is insultingly misguided. Yes, “we” should be “the world,” and the “All You Need Is Love” citation is taken into account, even though “the truth” is that far more than non-committal “love” is needed when trying to save lives; but then we come to this problematic line, “We’re saving our own lives” which in this self-congratulory environment is easily interpretable as “We’re saving our own careers, or consciences.”

The message proposed in “We are the ones who make a brighter day” is that we, America, are The World, and will pat starving Africans on their prematurely withered heads with scraps from their flowing baskets. It is not so far from claiming “We are the master race.” Am I being too hard on what sounds, then and now, like an endorsement of Reaganite officious indifference masquerading as empathy? After all the song was composed and produced by black musicians, and nearly all of the participants were, and are, paid-up Democrats – but then a significant exception to that number is co-writer and then-recent Reagan endorser Michael Jackson, who had to be emphatically dissuaded by Jones and Richie from chanting “shalom” at key points in the song.

From a Jackson point of view – and bearing in mind his own near-identical “Heal The World” from a decade later – the song does make its own curious sense; this is Michael, crouching in his darkening corner, possibly entirely genuine in his wish to reach out to the world…but as some of his subsequent songs demonstrate, he had an unfortunate tendency to treat “the world” like Ben the rat, a simple beast who indeed only needs love, and where does the distinction between best friend and God get to be drawn?

Musically it is a lumbering, elephantine plod of a record; where “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” is, if nothing else, brisk and eager, “We Are The World” is An Epic, a monetarist “Hey Jude.” And despite the urged ego-checks, nearly every featured performer overacts grievously, howling and roaring as though this signified Soul and Caring, bursting their lungs to demonstrate How Strong Their Love Is. There is some true poignancy in hearing Little Stevie trading fours with Uncle Ray towards the end, and a little unintended humour as Dylan drawls his line, correctly treating the song like one of Weberman’s rescued laundry lists – Dylan being very much the Paul Weller figure here, asking the others why they wouldn’t record a fundraising song for America’s farmers (Willie Nelson obligingly played the Heaven 17 role) – both of which elevate the record above minus zero. But in terms of missing the point – Geldof was diplomatic about the exercise but every twist of his jowls betrayed what he really thought – “We Are The World” becomes one of the least humble of number ones, and certainly one of the most presumptuous. “If children are starving, let them drink Pepsi?”

The one record that I’ve heard recently that really reminded me of ‘We Are The World’ has been ‘Our Vision Of Global Strategy’ by ‘KPMG’, a corporate power ballad for the multinational that includes The Haliburton Corporartion – That big managerial sound, impersonal hymning of cliches about humanitarianism. Which is to say that not only do I dislike this, it sounds actively sinister.

When I was 12, I didn’t yet go that far, but ‘We Are The World’ was already a collossal bore. Whereas Band Aid gave us a lot of familiar faces singing a tune, the American version was twice as long, very boring and I wasn’t sure who half of the performers were.

i think he’s DEFINING all bad art as being based in faked or compromised desires*, which is almost certainly GM channeling guy debord: i haven’t read much recent marcus to be honest, but i wonder quite a bit how he’s since reconciled his fling with debordist absolutism with his subsequent clinton-as-elvis line; let alone with present-day currents in american politics, where the anti-pragmatic absolutist radicals are all massed on the side GM isn’t

the problem i gradually began to have with culturcide – is that the strength of their work entirely pimps off the residual strength of the material they’re “detourning” and sneering at: a rarely admitted disingenuousness that itself becomes “spectacular”, to use an obfuscatory technical term hurriedly

*which is either an inadequate or a locally polemical definition, depending on where yr standng

no i’m not punctum, read it again: i’m saying pretty much the opposite — that when you’re using the enemy’s techniques against them, you’re cheering one side of the enemy’s being against another (which i approve of; which is why i said like banksy and dislike the lame interpretation of him, ie very carefully and clearly stepping round the elementary trapdoor); and two, as noted above, i CAME to dislike this about eg culturcide — i liked it a lot at the time, and it took me quite a while to recognise that hostile versioning is ALWAYS part-hommage

subversion is simply a fancy word for guilty pleasures

Horrible in its stereotypically American self-regardingness: we are the world series and we don’t even know what the world cup is…. that sort of thing. And the contrast with “Do they know’s” other-centered ace, the ‘Feed the world’ sing-along – from ‘Feed’ to ‘We are’- was drastic and seemingly telling. As a piece of music it’s alright: Those are some *big* voices – Ray Charles is like a B-52 landing! Bruce is positively elephantine. And where’s Aretha for that final belt-off? – so 3 seems a little harsh to me, notwithstanding the dire lyrics and vibe. Raising to the power of Cyndi Lauper gets it a:
5

But actually yr right, I’m probably not being fair to culturcide themselves there: I was trying to link them in that post to the Langley Schools Music Project and couldn’t and deleted what wrote. Well I just worked it out: they’re the Langley kids grown up and disenchanted that what they had loved had turned out so lame! And I’m talking about the same process: growing up out of a spasm of art excitement to realise it’s turned into its opposite. If the exciting thing about [xx] is subversion, the exciting — bcz scary and perilous — thing abt subversion is it’s always a two-way process.

(I have in fact been reading Debord all weekend, hence am inclined to see everything as its opposite this morning.)

The only real defense I’ve read of this record is Dave Marsh’s, which was pretty much a direct response to the Marcus essay, and the core of it was (& i’ll dig out the book):

“Among them, [Lionel] Richie, Jackson and Jones didn’t have enough objectivity or guile to see things in a more broadly politicized context. This was…a bunch of craftsmen who happened to be rich enough to afford a certain solipsism….What critics of “We Are the World” really wanted was an oppositional record about the famine…instead, they got something from the side of the music that’s about reconciliation and, typically, were unable to grant it any validity.”

It’s a dreadful, woeful clunker of record that gets to me at times. I think it’s just the talent–Ray Charles, Smokey Robinson, Jackson, Dylan (his groaning bit is wonderful–it nearly stops the song dead)–is so strong, vocally, that they can sing the most banal navel-gazer of a charity record and make it compelling. A 5, somehow.

Woah, youtube answers my question!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRSn7gDc4gQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJN3u1wAWIk

The type of record that doesn’t get reviewed for its musicality but its musicians. A simple sentiment, these lyrics are, but the song hangs on because of its vocals. Its not just the brilliant finish by Ray Charles. It’s top efforts by Stevie Wonder, James Ingram, and short sharp cameos by Cyndi Lauper, Daryl Hall and Steve Perry. Review the record? Most critics at the time never got around to it. The sentiment the record targeted: feed the world, we are all one, etc. was too easy a target. Most took one look at the millionaires in the video and decided that the song wasn’t even worth their time. An ego fest? Puerile, banal? 25 years later I hear the same thing that I thought when this came out: musicians who for one recording night actually thought they were indeed doing something worthy of their fame. And what’s wrong with that? A solid 7.

French Band Aid:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4tiwF1yswM

Having lived in the States for 17 years now (bugger me) and being married to a Sherman my old knee-jerk, sniffy European anti-American attitudes are tempered somewhat but sometimes, Christ, they really live up to the worst expectations. You just want to punch this record in the face don’t you? When Dylan croaks in it’s like someone ripping a hole in the pop space-time continuum.

The line-up is top notch though, real heavyweights to Band Aid’s plucky contenders. As an English mate of mine once remarked when I was describing some contestants on American Idol to him “you get people who sound like Luther Vandross while we get kids who only want to be a minor member of S-Club 7”

I don’t think anyone has mentioned the worst part – the ludicrous misquotation of the Bible, with Jesus’s refusal to turn stones into bread changed into his having done so!

It is a sad comment on the education of American pop stars that no one noticed or cared about this. I would probably peg Dylan and Simon as the most likely of the group to be well-read, and both are Jewish and perhaps not familiar with the Gospels – but what about Dylan’s born-again period? I guess Willie Nelson (who sang the line) didn’t have the hard-core Christian upbringing that so many country (as well R & B and early rock and roll) singers did. Perhaps if Johnny Cash had been invited to participate, the screw-up could have been stopped.

“I can’t say that I thought the Bible-misquoting bit was the worst part of the record.”

Well, what I meant was that it is (for me) a major contributor to the feeling of bloated self-righteousness that the record gives off. It’s not as if they called an apostle by the wrong name or something relatively trivial – they got the entire point of the story backwards.

@LondonLee ‘married to a sherman’. Brilliant, I’d not heard that one (risky as applied to the missus, I would have thought, but there you go…). I thought ‘Jarfur’ short for ‘J Arthur Rank’ was the preferred rhyming slang in this case?

At any rate, clicking around a bit now I’ve been led to read stuff on wiki about ‘hands ascross america’ which was an event that tried to continue the spirit of USA for Africa (and involved many of the same people in high profile roles). It should be read to be believed:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hands_Across_America
esp., the section on ‘Protests’. Sometimes the Vonnegut or Pynchon (or Simpsons) take on the US is essentially documentary.

Private charitable giving by Americans is much higher than elsewhere (Interestingly, Americans falsely believe that the Fed Govt provides enormous amounts of foreign aid, and certainly more as a gdp % than elsewhere), and quite poor Americans and ‘red’ states give the most. It’s highly correlated with religiosity IIRC.

#26, #29 yes, isn’t nearly all of this charitable giving
church tithes? (hence the poor in red states). with the rest being alumni donations to already loaded ivy league colleges. so, basically, bad causes and self interest.

lord wotsit #7 i’m not sure i get your distinction about ‘defining’, but you’re probably right – there’s a bit in the essay about the stars getting to eat ethiopians which seems like pure debord (bearing in mind that i know basically nothing about debord except what greil marcus has told me…). i think maybe all the situationist stuff was a way for him to write himself into punk story (as it clearly did genuinely affect him) and to assert a continuity with the berkely free speech movement and all the other stuff he did know and care about. he certainly seemed to keep faith in his ability to see the punk impulse at work for longer than pretty much anyone else but it must have become a stretch and so it was probably a relief when clinton came along and he could go back to elvis and the boomers. though the elvis/clinton is pretty much just a collection of unrelated 90s essays with only the thinnest attempts to make the elvis clinton theory mean anything. nice cover though.

I’ve always hated this song, but listening to it now, the second chorus — Springsteen! Kenny Loggins! Steve Perry! Daryl Hall! All of whom were clearly instructed to sound as much as possible like themselves! — is fucking glorious.

http://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/rock/song-85.php

Robert Christgau: by any reasonably objective critical standard, USA for Africa’s “We Are the World” is a good (maybe great) record where Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” was a bad (or terrible) one. Forget meaning momentarily, stop telling me rock and roll can’t feed the world, and just think voices…

it isn’t just talent that gives “We Are the World”‘s humanism its force–it’s also concept, and even words. Where Band Aid’s female contingent consisted primarily of Bananarama, USA for Africa is sexually integrated, and also a lot more seasoned, probably too much so–there’s no one under 30 on the record who isn’t named Jackson (my nominations to replace no-show Prince: Melle Mel and Eldra DeBarge). And of course it’s blacker, which is crucial. USA for Africa celebrates a long overdue hegemony that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago–not merely interracial, but with blacks in the forefront and such relatively marginal black artists as Warwick, Ingram, Jeffrey Osborne, and Al Jarreau granted the pride of place they deserve in the pop-vocal firmament AfroAmerican tradition has generated. One reason the singers manage to mean the uplifting lyric is that they’re old enough to have lived through the civil rights movement. They’ve already stood “together as one” and made “a brighter day”–in fact, they’re among the rare black people who’ve reached gospel’s Jordan-on-earth. Though their belief that something comparable can be done for their brothers and sisters in Africa may be naive or self-serving (or just wishful or provisional), it does enable them to go at the problem from a more constructive angle: not “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” topped off with the appalling “Well tonight thank God it’s them instead of you,” but “We Are the World,” climaxing with the inspirational “There’s a choice we’re making/ We’re saving our own lives.”

Good question Punctum. It’s also worth noting that Sting did an acoustic set at Live Aid because his all-black backing band wanted to be paid before going on.

Of course this is a blacker record than “DTKIC”. I remember Harry Belafonte (who did leave his ego at the door) saying his first reaction to Band Aid was “What are all the black guys doing about this ?” In fairness to Geldof who did he have to pick from in 1984 ?
Finding room for the likes of Leee John, Junior or David Grant would have diluted the record’s impact.

The song is execrable in its self-congratulatory tone and probably fuelled more anti-American feeling than “We Didn’t Start The Fire” which was at least amusing.

I’m now busily casting a phantom ‘black’ version of ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ in my head, with Phil Lynott, Phil Fearon, Errol Brown, Aswad, etc…

Reading Christgau is just so unpleasant! He tells us that this record has reason, objectivity, sexual integration, and a long-overdue black hegemony on its side. Well, that’s settled then. I guess we all *should* like it or something. Funnily, most of us experience and value music as a realm of relative freedom from ‘should’s of various sorts – this way of writing about it is horrible, anti-musical, and makes me re-appreciate Tom’s columns, with which I often disagree but which I always enjoy reading. Thanks Tom!

And what’s ‘gospel’s Jordan-on-earth’ at which Stevie and the rest have so luckily/rarely arrived? LA? At any rate I thought Jordan (and the River Jordan) *was* on Earth… (Writes tirade about crossing the Jordan in the Old Test being immediately followed by divinely-assisted ethnic cleansing and genocide… but thinks better of it and erases. Considers sacrificing a Bunny.)

#45 – I watched a documentary about Live Aid on BBC2 around the time of Live 8 (i.e. 2005) and the word was that MJ, Stevie, Lionel, Prince etc. had mutually agreed to say no to doing Philadelphia. This started when Geldof presumptuously included Stevie in the Philadelphia line-up at his initial press conference without actually having asked him beforehand, and there were other doubts being generally raised, some political, about the whole affair. It was an unofficial boycott.

#46 – That would have been the most boring record ever! At the time in a long-defunct fanzine I proposed a Brit improv remix of “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” where Derek, Evan etc. just did eight bars of their thing over the original backing track but no one took me up on it bah.

As regards Phil Lynott appearing on a charity single plus curious personnel overlap with “Sun City”… (get away from me bunny!)