A month ago, in the light of the Haiti earthquake, several international musicians thought it would be good to ride on the cause of philanthropy, while raising their own profile.
What came out was surely a musical abomination, where the egos of superstars took over. I can live with the fact that Justin Bieber sings the opening line, even if he is replacing Lionel Ritchie in the original, because we need to make the song relevant to hundreds of hormonal teenage girls.
I can live with the fact that the talentless Miley Cyrus sings in it, because once again, they also have to target the tween market, who are infamous for being clueless about anything except being popular and "cute things."
However, they thought it would be okay to add a rap track into a classic charity single, and they even had a section where Wyclef Jean vibratos like a baboon in the defence that he is singing in Creole, the native language of the Haitians.
It's like taking "Heal the world" and turning it into one of those stupid hip hop tracks. Ludacris' "How Low" comes to mind. The music video actually starts with "Rumour has it, if you go low enough, Ludacris will appear in the mirror."
Wow, how freaking creative. So now Ludacris is the Candyman, or Japanese horror just found a new superghost. "How low can you go" indeed.
The funniest and perhaps saddest thing to come out of this whole saga is, the single was actually deemed an unprecedented success in getting the musical superstars of this age to do their part for a charitable cause.
Check out the crappy video here, and look out for the monkey cameo at 3:16. Thank goodness Adam Levine of Maroon 5 appears immediately after, because at least he sings well, even if he hasn't been releasing many new songs lately because he's too busy playing the field.
But just when I thought hope was kind of over for good music, I found the Youtube version of the same song, and I must say it trumps the 2010 "25" version. Simply because people who can actually sing are in it, without the use of "autotune", stupid raps and monkey mating calls.
It's really amazing how Youtube can actually bring talent from households worldwide and congregate them together in a single medium, on a single video, without the need for record companies that sometimes have no idea what they are doing. If you don't watch the video, and just listen to the song by itself, you will realise it's actually good enough to be commercially produced.
That being said, I still don't understand how music and social causes link together in this day and age.