Stop Shit Music

It might seem controversial (well, maybe if more than three people read this blog) to put a charity single at number one in this protracted countdown. The fact that it’s a shit version of the song and entirely inappropriate is besides the point because it’s for a good cause and that’s all that matters. Aren’t they are just trying to do a good thing for a nation of beleaguered people?

Of course. Simon Cowell loves charity work. Especially if it gives him a chance to promote all his artists and show how lovely and altruistic they all are. That’s why the X-Factor finalists appear every year with a charity single. It’s like he expects the audiences to say “Hey look! There’s Leona Lewis! And JLS! And Joe McElderry! And Susan Boyle! Wow, they must all really care about Haiti”. It would make a much greater statement  as a charitable deed if he actually didn’t seem to be getting shitloads of publicity out of it at the same time.

But the real reason that ‘Everybody Hurts’ grates is the insensitivity of the message. ‘Everybody hurts’, yes, everybody experiences a devastating natural disaster in their stricken country at some point or another. It’s just part of life. Only a song like ‘Shakin’ All Over‘ or ‘I Feel The Earth Move‘ could be more crass and offensive. The Quietus wrote a typically excellent feature on this at the time:

A humanitarian disaster of unimaginable proportions has hit a country long buckling from centuries of corruption and poverty. And what is pop’s response? Everybody hurts. It’s not just you, poor, things. We poor creatures hurt too. “When the day is long” – hey, we sympathise, those aftershocks must be a right bitch, especially when you don’t know when they’re going to bury your family home deeper in debris – and “the night is yours alone” – especially when your wife and children are dead, and you haven’t got any food or water, that must be a right bummer – well, “hang on”.

That’s what pop says: “hang on”. The temerity of that lyrical twist, its jaw-dropping tastelessness, telling people that have had to hang on already, forever, to just bolster their spirits in the face of devastation – a state unknown to pop stars who wouldn’t piss in a bottle for less than ten grand – makes it pop’s grimmest moment of all time. Not only does it rip the soul out of a song that had something to say, but in the warbly throats of Cowell’s Cabal, it turns ‘Everybody Hurts’ into a surreal, empty ode to positive thinking, performed by people who’d have a tantrum if their tea wasn’t served in bone china.

That perfectly sums up the problem I have with this song. There’s so many reasons to object to this as a charity single but the sheer idiocy of the message is the most galling. Why is a charity single necessary anyway? Is that what it takes for people to donate to the cause? The guarantee of a tasteless, pisspoor cover version in return for a good deed? Maybe so, but there’s something seriously wrong with that.

Comments on the YouTube link below suggest that this actually is the case -

the 28 people that liked this are the kind of people that get kick out of kiking puppys

how could you even hover over the dislike button!!

Idiot.

Musically and lyrically it might not be the worst song of the year, but in the context of its meaning it wins this dubious title by some distance. At least when Akon is prattling on about trying to find the words to describe a girl without being disrespectful he’s not doing any harm – except to common sense.