Everybody’s ears hurt
If there’s one thing that miserable old me likes even less than people going on holidays for charity, it’s pop stars recording songs for charity. So you’ll imagine that I was delighted to hear that national saviour Simon Cowell has gathered together all of our very favourite musicians (Rod Stewart, Susan Boyle, someone from Westlife) for an over-emotive mangling of REM’s classic ‘Everybody Hurts’ for the people of Haiti.
Great. Lucky them.
Why are charity songs so lazy and so bad? Increasing the profile of a cause is almost always welcome, as is raising money, and I’d like to think that the motivation behind the charity single is largely genuine (and I dare say it was once upon time – in 1984). Somehow I suspect though that the opportunity to generate some column inches in a non spouse-cheating/my-drug-hell/help-I’m-having-nervous-breakdown kind of way is the real selling point for ‘the artists’ involved these days.
Honorable intentions or not though, doesn’t it make more sense to choose a decent song in the first place? Being associated with dirge like ‘Rocking around the Christmas Tree’, hideous sap like ‘Earth Song’ or point-missing remakes of ‘Perfect Day’ might raise some much-needed cash, but it’s hardly helping the long-term credibility of either party is it?
The original versions of ‘Do They Know it’s Christmas Time?’ and ‘We are the World’ worked not just because raising money to alleviate famine in Ethiopia is a good thing, but because the actual songs weren’t cynically chucked together in five seconds flat à la Band Aid 20 and everything ever featuring the X Factor finalists.
So who buys these crap charity singles? Who is encouraging their recording? Is it you, dear reader? Have you ever bought a charity record? Come on, be honest now.
Tags: half-baked conjecture
February 8th, 2010 at 10:25 pm
I bought the 12-inch of Living Doll, but I was a Young Ones fan at the time, and I wanted to hear the B-side. (Oh dear.) Around the same time, my friend bought the 12-inch of Sun City by Artists United Against Apartheid. Which was laudable, but unfortunately had no tune, and lasted 12 bloody minutes.
The real queasiness about a record like the Everybody Hurts remake is that I’m not sure what it’s got to do with Haiti in the first place. Cowell obviously thought of the title, rubbed his hands with glee at which line Susan Boyle would deliver, and… Well, REM couldn’t really say, ‘Thanks for both misunderstanding our song and the humanitarian catastrophe in Haiti’.
I hate to say it, but at least an original composition might have been able to be slightly more empathic, as ghastly as the end product might have been. It all reminds me of the Herald of Free Enterprise sinking in 1987 when not only did The Sun newspaper and Stock Aitken Waterman organise a cover of Let It Be (Let WHAT Be, exactly?), but with even less taste, Warner Brothers Records reissued Rod Stewart’s Sailing. The thought process on that one causes my head to split open.
February 9th, 2010 at 9:20 am
I bought most of 80’s charity singles as part of my growing political awareness. I think more so than giving money to charity it was a statement personal as much as political much like most records teenagers buy.
Now a days I give via gift aid.
I have no problem with benefit concerts, people baling buns at work etc to raise money for charity what I think is bad about the Haiti record is that it’s so poor and that some how we shoudl buy not to help people in need but because Simon Cowell has willed it.
Also in the age of internet it’s much easier to give money to charity direct and not need things like charity records as conduit. In 1984 many more people just didn’t have this ability to do this were as now we do.
February 9th, 2010 at 10:04 am
I think you’re right, Brian, an original composition would have been better, more meaningful, but they just don’t seem to do ‘em anymore. It’s like an unwritten law now – charity single = lousy cover. And speaking of the Sun, I think that whilst 50% of the profits of the Haiti single go to the DEC, the other 50% go to the Sun’s Haiti charity. What’s that all about then?!
According to Wikipedia, BLTP, Gordon Brown ‘asked’ Simon Cowell to organise a charity single. If this is true, well, it could taken as another sign of how quaintly lost Labour are. I think that what I really don’t like about the charity single, which you hint at, is that it implies that people aren’t especially altruistic or informed. Simon Cowell will motivate ‘the people’ to part with their cash, rather than a series of terrible and moving stories on the news.
February 9th, 2010 at 10:25 am
pooh half baked conjecture – my favourite. the best thing about being so diabollically out of touch is never having to hear awfulness like this. even that council collective soul deep thing for the miners was almost unlistenable – I’m not convinced thar things ever work
x
February 9th, 2010 at 10:27 am
that was supposed to start oooh obviously. bloody touch screens
x
February 9th, 2010 at 12:36 pm
Not heard this one and hopefully won’t ever have to. Although we had 7″ copies of the original Band Aid and Livin’ Doll I think they were both Christmas presents, which partly undermines the reason for buying them in my view. I’ve not deliberately bought a charity record since – in fact when the first War Child album was produced although there were tracks on it by bands I was working towards completeism from I still didn’t splash out. And then was vindicated by said tracks turning up as B-sides on later singles anyway. (So there may have been a royalty donation from those but I didn’t buy them on that basis).
February 9th, 2010 at 1:46 pm
Like you, I have no time for this type of claptrap. It’s so manipulitive and mawkish. And the videos always show everyone with one hand on their ear really over-emoting to the song, while being studiedly dressed down. Woolly hats optional.
Ghastly.
I saw the video and barely recognised a soul.
February 9th, 2010 at 1:46 pm
I think I’m right in saying that “War Child” is the only charity record I’ve ever bought, actually – and that was more because I bought into the hype of the music which was apparently on offer than because I desperately wanted to donate to the cause. Had I wanted to do the latter, I would have done so irrespective of whether the NME nagged me to or not.
It was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize, but it wasn’t really that good apart from Radiohead’s “Lucky”, which turned up again on “OK Computer” anyway. I don’t think I’ve even tried to listen to it from start to finish since the day I bought it.
February 9th, 2010 at 2:02 pm
I bought one a BBC Essex thing for Children in Need – Don’t know where it is though or I may blog it.
It also gets forgotten how many charity singles followed in the wake of Band Aid. They must be recorded or captured somewhere on the interweb
February 9th, 2010 at 3:18 pm
When I give money to charity, I don’t want anything back in exchange – least of all some dire piece of musical guffage knocked out by a load of momentarily righteous twerps all high as kites on their own self-importance (and, in the ultimate hypocrisy, the coke which has ruined the economies of at least some of the countries they would purport to be ‘helping’.).
*bursts blood vessel*
February 9th, 2010 at 4:07 pm
Memory fade…
I also bought the NME Ruby Trax compilation which benefitted the Spastics Society (as they were still called) for their 40th anniversary. That has got some cracking covers on it, although again the really good ones turned up elsewhere. But that was a purchase for the music, and the charity aspect didn’t come into it for me.
February 9th, 2010 at 6:01 pm
So go away Simon Cowell, no one round here wants your lame-arse mawkish charity songs!
I think you’re right, 23Daves and Simon, the War Child and Ruby Trax compils might be the only decent ones (and maybe Red, Hot and Blue for HIV/AIDS awareness if I remember correctly), but they all undermined their own exclusivity by making the tunes available elsewhere.
Here you go Mondo – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charity_record – read it and be distressed!
I personally nominate ‘We’re sending our love down the well’ from The Simpsons as the best charity song ever. It’s not on the list.
February 9th, 2010 at 6:44 pm
No, don’t think I’ve ever bought a charity record, probably–as has already been pointed out–because 98% of them are utterly dreadful. Maybe “Lucky” would be defensible but I can’t think of many others off the top of my head…
I was never keen on “Everybody Hurts”–in fact I like to think I can trace REM’s decline in later years to exactly this song–but the Cowell version is totally unlistenable. I’m sure we shouldn’t expect any better from him in that respect.
What’s worse though is the utter crassness of the lyrics when applied to the situation in Haiti. This says it better than I can.
Hrrmph…
February 9th, 2010 at 6:45 pm
That link again: http://thequietus.com/articles/03670-haiti-appeal-everybody-hurts-rem-simon-cowell
February 9th, 2010 at 10:08 pm
Thanks for that link, Hoops – Jude Rogers is absolutely spot on. And if I ever bothered to listen to lyrics and was a better writer, that would have been this post!
Did not know though about Simon’s grooming of the song ’slathering over its subtlety with key changes, powder and paint.’ Disturbing, really – but, on the other hand, perhaps we should all stop being so precious about ‘our music’. I know, that’s a bit rich coming from me!
Off to listen to Yo La Tengo now – now, there’s a band who could do an interesting charity single…
February 9th, 2010 at 10:53 pm
been trying to think of one decent charidee record, but am beat!!! But then, I’m guessing the charity record is not really aimed at music lovers really is it?? Much like the majority of ‘chart’ music isn’t aimed at music lovers (do i sound like a snob yet?!). I find it hard to understand, but the vast majority of people are not obsessed with music… and are quite happy to listen to “whatevers on the radio”… i mean, what other reason can there be for careers such as Rick Astley, Phil Collins and millions of reality TV show winners (and losers!). It’s the same people buying this charity smalk. I guess a music lover just sticks a fiver in the collecting tin and has done with it.
I’m not that confident about this, but how about ‘least worst’ = bowie and jagger dancing in the steet?? (please don’t hit me! i thought it was ok! honest!)
P
February 10th, 2010 at 12:59 am
I’d forgotten the NME’s Ruby Trax, which I actually shelled out for on CD. Thanks for the reminder, SimonB. And I’ve just remembered the NME’s Sgt Pepper’s covers album in 1988 in aid of Childline, which if I try and forget that it contained Wet Wet Wet, did at least give Billy Bragg a number one single (it was a double A-side) and feature The Fall doing A Day in the Life.
Oh yes, and there was that Heavenly EP of Right Said Fred covers in aid of the Terrence Higgins Trust. I bought that. Saint Etienne doing I’m Too Sexy, Rockingbirds tackling Deeply Dippy, and perhaps best of all, Flowered Up trying their hand at Don’t Talk Just Kiss.
February 10th, 2010 at 1:13 pm
I got given “Ruby Trax” for Christmas, if that counts. I remember being delighted with it as a gift at the time – it sounds like old hat now, but the idea of a lot of different bands and artists doing cover versions of old number ones seemed hugely entertaining and original at the time. The idea’s been done to death since, of course, but there’s the odd treasure to be found on that CD. Blur’s version of “Maggie May” is a corker.
February 10th, 2010 at 2:22 pm
Yes, Piley you do sound like a snob! But I know what you mean – even though I do actually like Rick Astley and Phil Collins (to a point!), I draw the line at hyperbolic wailing for charity. I think you might be on your own with ‘Dancing in the Street’. It’s ok, but mostly memorable for their loud 80s suits and questionnable dancing don’t you think?
Ah, yes, the Right Said Fred EP Brian! I think I might have that somewhere in our house (although I’d like to stress that my charity-record-free status remains and I didn’t buy it). Might have to have to dig that one out now that you’ve mentioned it.
23Daves, of all people I was anticipating that you would have boxes of bizarre charity records stashed away, if not just for the comic value. I say comic advisedly. Did anyone ever think that ‘The Stonk’ was hilarious? But yes, Blur’s ‘Maggie May’ is great – Piley played that on one of his and Mondo’s podcasts last year I think.
February 10th, 2010 at 7:03 pm
Brian – Perhaps The Rockingbird’s 5 mins of fame right there on the barrelhead.
February 10th, 2010 at 7:04 pm
Ps Must change my log-in.
Former Roman Empress.