"Sun City" - Artists United Against Apartheid - Classic or Dud?

The hip "We Are The World." Twenty-four years later, it's hard to think of this as a cause celebre. P.W. Botha was probably as frightened by Lou Reed and John Oates' mullets as the rest of us.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKCJWjqjQww

considering that parent label EMI was part of weapons conglomerate Thorne-EMI at the time, and that they were selling stun guns and ammo to the South African cops, I'd have to say this record is a big hypocritical dud.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgxWk4BE8Y8

Couldn't find "Let Me See Your I.D."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNQuJm67OzE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3NJwyzFlTE

Anyway, somewhere around here I've probably got what I actually wrote about "Sun City" at the time, but here's Christgau in his '85 Pazz & Jop essay, fwiw:

there is one bright spot among both singles and videos--the top one. I don't want to make too much of "Sun City," a not quite superb single that generated a strong but flawed album and a corny, courageous, gut-wrenching, educational, and rather beautiful video, but it's significant that amid all this year's corrosive commentary only one critic (besides Chuck Eddy, whom see) was moved to put the thing down--Don Waller, who complained that except for the hook it didn't jam. In a year paved with good intentions, "Sun City" was hard not to respect, and for many critics it fulfilled a long-cherished fantasy of really serious fun. Had it limited its attack on apartheid to South Africa it might have been dismissed as an elaborate radical pose, but "Sun City" brought its critique home, not only in its lyric but in its musical form, and perhaps even more important, it jammed sufficiently to dent those other charts, the ones in Billboard

http://robertchristgau.com/xg/pnj/pj85.php

I was going to post his remarks; reading them a little while ago inspired the post. Too enthusiastic for my tastes (the song). I prefer "We Are The World."

Okay, found that old P&J section. After rambling a while about "We Are The World" (which I now would probably say is the best of the three records) and "Do They Know It's Christmas," I write this:

"Sun City" may be "better" still, but it certainly doesn't really break any new rhythmic ground, and by addressing its rhetoric to celebrities rather than real people, I'd say it indirectly assents to just the sort of human power system that gives birth to travesties like apartheid in the first place. -- CHUCK EDDY, Fort Knox

Not that great, I don't think (I'd just turned 25, fwiw), but I still don't think the song is, either.

Banalities aside, "We Are The World" allows Steve Perry, Willie Nelson, and Ray Charles to be themselves, whereas I can't distinguish John Oates from Ruben Blades, or Nona Hendryx from Bono; it's a lot of cross-racial humanist yelling.

Yeah, what's kind of amazing about "We Are The World" is that all those very distinctive singers (and huge stars') personalities actually somehow manage to emerge, in just the few brief seconds they're each alloted. (Though they're pretty much all Americans, right? Hardly the "world". Which I'm sure lots of people must have pointed out at the time. Not that it makes the record any worse.)

Christgau liked both songs btw ("Sun City" was his #5 single of the year, "We Are The World" his #8). Greil Marcus hated "We Are The World," though, as I recall, and I could never make sense of his reasoning, which struck me as really convoluted.

I actually thought We Are The World was a really good album, too -- "If Only For The Moment Girl" is this great lost Steve Perry song that nobody ever mentions, and "Trapped" might well be my favorite post-Born In The USA Bruce track.

Greil Marcus hated "We Are The World," though, as I recall, and I could never make sense of his reasoning, which struck me as really convoluted.

I followed it fine (he gets off one great zinger using the line "When you're down and out" -- "The Ethiopians are `DOWN AND OUT'?") but didn't agree with most of it.

A Band Aid started a few years ago horrified me: lots of preferred "Do They Know It's Xmas?"

defend the indefensible: "we are the world"

Wow...I had no idea people hated the song so much!

But what do they think of "Tears Are Not Enough" by Northern Lights, is what I really want to know.

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

Or Hear N' Aid, for that matter

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9AGHguQ_oM

Doesn't Marcus also make some half-baked cultstud argument about U.S. celebrities devouring the bodies of the third world or whatnot?

"We Ate the World"

Uh...I swear I wasn't aware of this til just this second (was kind of busy with other things today):

The ceremony closed with two even more powerful gestures. Lionel Richie kicked off his and Michael's pleas for global peace, "We Are the World" and "Heal the World," joined by background singers and dancers from Michael's comeback tour "This Is It" that was scheduled to begin next week.

Is that the first time somebody actually covered it? Was it any good? Was anything else at the tribute ceremony any good? Kind of curious now.

Actually, lots of tribute stuff viewable here (which is where that quote came from):

http://new.music.yahoo.com/blogs/hiphopmediatraining/147357/michael-jackson-tribute-fit-for-a-king/

Don't get the "We Are The Ones" in the screen in that one clip...Maybe they covered the Avengers classic, too?

first time somebody actually covered it?

Well, there's this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQLhOXlGnRE&feature=PlayList&p=D12E9F33AA184C72&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=43

SNL one doesn't seem to be on youtube.

And there's this:

http://www.hulu.com/watch/33851/the-simpsons-sending-our-love

I always found "We are the World" the most loathesome example of celebrity back-patting self congratulatory dribblespit out of the whole lot of those things. So schmaltzy! So dreadful. At least "Ain't gonna play Sun City" had some kick and funk to it.

yeah "sun city" is the best song qua song of the bunch -- they all have stupid lyrics, but "sun city" is more specific at least, and i always sort of admired the small scale of its ambitions. not saving the world or the children, just saying that we as rock stars will at least not go play in a south african resort. ok, maybe the least they could do, but as far as i know they actually all lived up to it.

Banalities aside, "We Are The World" allows Steve Perry, Willie Nelson, and Ray Charles to be themselves, whereas I can't distinguish John Oates from Ruben Blades, or Nona Hendryx from Bono; it's a lot of cross-racial humanist yelling.

i dunno, joey ramone singing "con-STRUCK-tive en-GAGE-ment is ronald reagan's play-un" is pretty joey ramoney. plus, the rap breakdown alone on "sun city" is better than any part of "we are the world."

Serious question: Do you think anyone in the world played this album straight through last year? It was #5 P&J for 1985.

I've played weirder, more time-trapped things beginning to end on a whim, so I suppose it's possible. If it happened, though, I'd be surprised if it was more than 3 or 4 people out of 6 billion.

I got this album a month ago and let the whole thing play. It was surprisingly good from start to finish. I had low expectations and there’s no doubt that it’s by design an LP length maxi-single, but these are really good B-sides.

Put it on again in memory of Desmond Tutu.