1. Various Artists, "Voices That Care" (1991)
How many voices are necessary to prove that we
really, really
care about soldiers fighting overseas? Ten? Screw that. Twenty? Not even close.
As "Voices That Care" shows, it takes at least 110 singers, actors, and
athletes singing and swaying en masse to properly capture the appropriate level
of caring. Recorded in 1991 to boost the morale of troops fighting in Operation
Desert Storm, the single—along with its hilariously dated documentary
video—proves that quantity always beats quality when it comes to schlocky,
celebrity-choir-driven charity ballads. It starts out typically enough, with a
cadre of then-A-list musicians—Bobby Brown, Celine Dion, Michael Freakin'
Bolton—trading fist-pumping sentiments like "Lonely fear lights up the sky
/ can't help but wonder why you're so far away." But after an awkward rap
breakdown from the Fresh Prince and a smooth sax line from Kenny G, the
care-ball busts open, unleashing a flood of painfully earnest actors (Sally
Field! Jean-Claude Van Damme!), comedians (Whoopi Goldberg! Jon Lovitz!),
athletes (Michael Jordan! Wayne Gretzky!), and, um, other (Don King?) emoting
their hearts out to the chorus, "Stand tall! Stand proud! / Voices that care
are crying out loud." Only one thing could cap off such a tremendous, garish
outpouring of support: Warren Wiebe, a nondescript session singer tapped by one
of the songwriters to belt out the final lines, just before the surrounding
celebrity army breaks into self-congratulatory applause.
2.
Artists United Against Apartheid, "Sun City" (1985)
Multi-artist benefit songs are undignified and
embarrassing by nature, but Steven Van Zandt made an almost†credible stab at†turning the genre against
itself by using it to chastise his fellow entertainers for performing at a
South African luxury resort. Van Zandt backed off a plan to name
names—thereby letting the likes of Linda Ronstadt and Rod Stewart off the
hook—but otherwise, "Sun City" offers a surprisingly cogent critique of
the Reagan administration's tepid plan for dealing with apartheid. The single
actually topped the Village Voice's Pazz & Jop critics' poll for 1985, but that
was more a political gesture—both a statement against apartheid and an
appreciation of Van Zandt's attempts to fuse rap and rock. In retrospect, for
all its good intentions and all-star cast—including Bruce Springsteen,
Gil Scott-Heron, George Clinton, Bono, Bob Dylan, Afrika Bambaataa, Jackson
Browne, Lou Reed, Joey Ramone, Ruben Blades, and Kurtis Blow—"Sun City"
is leaden as a rap track and over-earnest as a rocker. It's the best of a bad
lot, which isn't saying much.
3. Artists Against AIDS Worldwide, "What's
Going On" (2001)
Remember the part in "What's Going On" when Marvin
Gaye breaks it down at the end and wraps his velvety voice around the classic
couplet: "Everybody want to live, don't nobody really want to die, you know
you're feeling me, right?" Oh wait, that line isn't in Gaye's 1971 original,
it's an ad-lib made by noted humanitarian "rapper" Fred Durst on the cover of
"What's Going On" by Artists Against AIDS Worldwide. "What's Going On" was
conceived by Bono and Jermaine Dupri as, presumably, a selfless act of artistic
altruism intended to benefit AIDS programs around the world. What it ended up
being, however, was yet another self-congratulatory, celebrity-bozo circle-jerk,
with the likes of Britney Spears, Jennifer Lopez, the Backstreet Boys, and the
bald tub of goo from Staind somehow failing to conjure Gaye's graceful
gravitas.
4. Band Aid, "Do They Know It's Christmas?"
(1984, 1989, and 2004)
The almost cosmic tackiness of Band Aid's "Do They
Know It's Christmas?"—a project that gathered Britain's top music stars
to combat famine in Ethiopia—has been catalogued exhaustively since the
record became a phenomenon in 1984. And it's still a brain-melter. The song's
video is a rap sheet of staggering crimes against tact: Shots of chart-topping
millionaires walking around in fur coats and signing autographs. A close-up of
Sting singing the line, "the bitter sting of tears." Bono delivering the direly
embarrassing "Thank God it's them instead of you" in the original, then
repeating the lyric in 2004 when Band Aid 20 reprised "Do They Know?"—a
low-key but equally smug take on the tune. Surprisingly, the least annoying
version of the song came courtesy of Band Aid II, the overlooked 1989 sequel;
then again, it's easy to keep egos in check when Kylie Minogue is by far the
biggest star in the room. Underlying Band Aid's sense of self-importance,
though, is the song's basic ignorance: Ethiopia, a country that's more than 50
percent Christian, probably doesn't need to be schooled about Christmas by Boy
George, Lisa Stansfield, and whoever the hell Sugababes are.
5. Hear N' Aid, "Stars" (1986)
Is "Stars," by mid-'80s heavy-metal charity group
Hear N' Aid, overblown? Let's see: In the very first line, Ronnie James Dio
sings softly, "Who cries for the children? I do!" And that's the subtlest part
of the song. So yes, "Stars" is a touch on the bombastic side. Inspired by the
lack of metal-heads on USA For Africa's template-setting "We Are The World,"
Hear N' Aid's rockin' shot across the bow of African hunger is, as the title
suggests, more about supporting the massive egos of its participants than
supporting starving children. With Rob Halford, Don Dokken, Kevin DuBrow, and
other distinguished headbangers of the time gamely trying to out-shriek and
out-ham each other, "Stars" does a stage-long knee-slide straight into the
waiting arms of self-parody.
6. The West Coast Rap All-Stars, "We're All In
The Same Gang" (1990)
Thanks to producer Dr. Dre, "We're All In The Same
Gang" is at least better musically than most heavy-handed cause songs. Ignore
the words, and you can almost imagine it's another prime-era N.W.A. track about
blasting motherfuckers in the face with a sawed-off while bitches lick your
enormous balls. The problem with "We're All In The Same Gang" is context. Sure,
rapping about ending gang violence is noble, but can one song outweigh the
blood-soaked and bullet-riddled gangsta mythology that West Coast rap was built
on, especially when the video looks about as cool as an episode of Family
Matters?
While Straight Outta Compton didn't necessarily influence youngsters to grab
guns and start shooting people, "We're All In The Same Gang" definitely never
convinced them to stop.
7. The King Dream Chorus And Holiday Crew,
"King Holiday" (1986)
The combination of hard rhymes and soft R&B;
has proven surprisingly potent in recent years, but this 1986 single doesn't
know how to balance the two. A tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr. written by
Kurtis Blow at the request of King's son Dexter Scott King, "King Holiday"
finds an all-star cast of mid-'80s rap and R&B; stars trading unmemorable
verses against the blandest of synth-heavy backing tracks. Any song that brings
Run DMC and Whodini together with New Edition and Ricky Martin-era Menudo can't
be all bad. And it's fascinating to revisit a time when a healthy-looking
Whitney Houston only warranted a little more screen time than Lisa Lisa. (Though
based on the video, she was excused from socializing with either the Dream
Chorus or the Holiday Crew.) But the noble sentiment soars above an execution
so dull that not even the Fat Boys' Human Beat Box can make it funky.
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8.
Michael Jackson & Friends, "What More Can I Give" (2001)
There's arguably no bigger fuck-doggle in the
history of charity singles than Michael Jackson's "What More Can I Give," which
was intended to raise money for assorted charities providing aid in the wake of
9/11. Jackson's label balked at releasing a new song while they were still
trying to promote the poor-selling Invincible, and the trouble mounted
from there: Right-wing commentators griped that one of the charities the single
was benefiting was sponsored by The Church Of Scientology, then noted that
producer Marc Schaffel had been involved in gay porn. And Jackson didn't help
matters with the song's video, which alternates between close-ups of attractive
young boy singers and Jackson-worshipping testimonials from kitsch-pop legends
like Celine Dion. Self-promotion and child-love… What more can Jackson give?
9.
Various Artists, "Come Together Now" (2005)
Undaunted by the "What More Can I Give" fiasco,
some of the same artists—including Celine Dion and the Carter
brothers—answered Sharon Stone's call to take part in a song to benefit
the victims of Hurricane Katrina and the Indian Ocean earthquake/tsunami. The
inevitable video follows the inevitable pattern: Disaster footage sprinkled
between shots of the be-headphoned superstars of yesteryear, singing one
insipid inspirational line after another. Hang tight, New Orleans. Ruben
Studdard is doing his part.
10.
Northern Lights, "Tears Are Not Enough" (1985)
After
the Brits and the Yanks had their say on Ethiopian famine relief, the Canucks,
led by raspy rocker Bryan Adams, got in on the act. Northern Lights' "Tears Are
Not Enough" and its accompanying video are like a roll call of "Hey, I forgot
that guy's Canadian!" moments, as strange bedfellows Gordon Lightfoot, Geddy
Lee, Anne Murray, Wayne Gretzky, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Bruce Cockburn,
Corey Hart, Paul Shaffer, Eugene Levy, and that dude from Loverboy each take
their crack at lines like, "It's up to me and you to make the dream come
true."(Plus the inevitable French verse: "C'est l'amour qui nous rassemble /
D'ici l'autre bout du monde.") So many mullets. So many moustaches. So much
heart.
11. Dionne Warwick And Friends, "That's What
Friends Are For" (1985)
In what is surely one of the strangest origins of
a charity song ever, the Carole Bayer-Sager and Burt Bacharach-penned "That's
What Friends Are For" began its life in the 1982 comedy Night Shift, where Rod Stewart
offered a touching tribute to the joys of running a call-girl service with your
best buddy. Yet somehow the association with hooker-related ha-has didn't
dissuade Dionne Warwick And Friends—a group featuring Elton John, Stevie
Wonder, Gladys Knight, and later Luther Vandross and Whitney Houston—from
recording it and releasing it as a charity single for AIDS research. That
version became the number-one single of 1986, so it was an admirable bit of
philanthropy—it earned more than $3 million for the cause. But that
doesn't save it from being one of the schmaltziest, most insincere performances
of all time: Those too-big smiles, that shameless mugging, the palpable tension
that arises whenever divas are forced to share the stage—something tells us
that if Dionne Warwick really had a problem, Elton might not be "for sure" the
one to count on.
12. Various Artists, "Tears In Heaven" (2004)
The 2004 tsunami was one of the deadliest natural
disasters in history, and no expression of sympathy could convey the shock of
losing more than 225,000 lives. But that still doesn't explain the rationale
behind producers Sharon Osbourne and Simon Cowell turning Eric Clapton's very
personal, elegiac ode to his late toddler son into an awkward emote-off between
the strangest group of celebrities ever assembled. Glurge veterans like Elton
John, Rod Stewart, Mary J. Blige, Josh Groban, Phil Collins, Ringo Starr, and
even Andrea Bocelli are understandable. But once tabloid terrors like Steven
Tyler, Velvet Revolver, Pink, Gwen Stefani, Gavin Rossdale, and Robert Downey
Jr. show up, the whole thing starts to feel like an act of compulsory community
service. Then there's the shameless plugging of the Osbourne clan: Ozzy slips a
little taste of his own "No More Tears" into the chorus, and duets prominently
with daughter Kelly—whose makeup and lighting might be the most
charitable thing about the video.
13. U2 And
Green Day, "The Saints Are Coming" (2006)
What
do an Irish band, a Bay Area band, and a Scottish song have to do with New
Orleans? They were all united in grief, of course: Following Hurricane Katrina,
U2 and Green Day decided to join forces to record a benefit single—a
cover of "The Saints Are Coming," a 1979 song from Scotland's The Skids, the
punk band that would eventually give birth to Big Country. Adding a dash of
blues to the gumbo, Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong—a man so empathetic
he apparently mussed his hair as a show of solidarity with New Orleans'
trammeled cityscape—begins by quoting "The House Of The Rising Sun"
before Bono comes marching in (on water, one would assume). The video tries to
make a strong statement about the federal government's failure to aid Katrina
victims, but viewers have to piece it together themselves from the two-second
clips of soldiers and bombers that pop up between all the onstage prancing and
preening.
14. Westboro Baptist Church, "God Hates The
World" (Hateful Non-Benefit Bonus Track)
The Westboro Baptist Church—you know, that
sunny group of protesters behind godhatesfags.com—didn't really create
"God Hates The World" to benefit any particular charity. They're more
interested in teaching the children about the irredeemable evils of mankind.
The Church did, however, appropriate the melody of "We Are The World" for this
kick-ass single, "God Hates The World." In it, a group of tone-deaf frumps
explains how it's already too late to save yourself, using such expressive
lines as "fag beasts and bloody flags." (They hate gays and the military!) They
do explain, too, that "It's too late to change His mind," so in a way, this
song encourages sinning. "You'll eat your kids, you hateful people!"
15. Special Bonus Track