We have all heard of the tragedy that struck Haiti on Tuesday, 12 January 2010. It's staggering to look at the numbers that were killed, injured and homeless. It's difficult to turn on your TV or radio and not see or hear of some organization trying to raise money through donations to help out. One regular commercial I see on SkyPerfect TV (Japanese Satellite), is one from UNICEF with Ewan McGregor asking for people to donate money for relief in Haiti. It isn't a fancy commercial. In fact, it's a pretty crude cut that looks like it was made on site there in Haiti at night in some tent. It got me thinking about how I could donate something, anything.
I recently heard of the new
We Are the World 25 for Haiti and decided to look it up on
iTunes. It was there and I ended up buying the song and the music video. After reading up on the new remake of the song, I've come across many who have negatively criticized it and I don't feel the same way. I'm not saying the song couldn't have been better, but I feel it turned out the way it should have.
When
the original first came out, I was in elementary school and it was a big deal. We had assemblies where we all learned how to sing the song using sign language and TV crews came to put us on the local news as well as other schools that were doing the same thing. The singers and musicians that participated in the original were the all-stars of that time. The first recording started on January 22, 1985 and the last recording wasn't made until February 28, 1985 and was released on March 7, 1985. It took them over a month to record.
That being said, this new remake of the song was recorded in just 14 hours on February 1 by over 80 artists and its debut release was on February 12 at the opening ceremonies of the 2010 Winter Olympics. I'm not sure how many artists sang on the original, but just looking at wikipedia, there were maybe a little over half of what they had for the remake. 80 artists coming together in one day to put together a song is a pretty big triumph to me.
As for the artists that participated in this remake, I think they were right on. This new remake is not intended to out-do the original, but to reach out to a newer generation of people. I'm a fan of Rock and Hip Hop from a very young age. You didn't see Run DMC, The Sugar Hill Gang or any of the other Hip Hop/Rap artists from that time on the original, but I bet it would have sold better if they were. I enjoy the new Rap part they put in the end of the song. Seeing LL Cool J, Snoop Dogg, Busta Rhymes, Swizz Beatz and some of the other rappers come together like that was really cool to me. I'll admit that I don't care for the music from some of the Rap artists in the new remake, but just because I don't like them doesn't mean other people don't.
One of the other things I thought was cool is, they had some older generation artists performing as well. They had Carlos Santana for crying out loud! Awesome. They had Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers to Tony Bennett and Barbra Streisand. Just a huge variety of age and genre as well as some actors.
So as I bring my rant to a close, I guess what I'm really trying to say is, I don't feel this new remake of the song takes away anything from the old. They just took a great old song and tailored it for a new generation and did it well. I feel the new remake was worth my money for the song and the music video and I'm glad it's going to a good cause. The original raised over 63 million dollars in humanitarian funds. It will be cool to see how much this new remake will raise, if it ever gets past the lousy critic reviews. I know this post has nothing to do with photography or Amami, but I just thought I would share my opinion of this song.
Me, being an American, I looked up on the interwebs what America is doing to help out Haiti. I came across several sites but one that stood out to me was this site,
The Clinton Bush Haiti Fund. I thought this maybe a good place to donate my money to. If you're not from America, see where your country is helping out and do what you can to help the people of Haiti. If you've read this post this far, thanks for reading.
