For Haiti’s Benefit, They Are the World
Jon Pareles is an American journalist who, in the 1970s, was an associate editor of Crawdaddy!, and in the 1980s he was a contributing writer and editor to Rolling Stone and The Village Voice. He played jazz flute and piano, and graduated from Yale University with a degree in music. He currently reviews jazz and popular music in the arts section of the New York Times.
In Pareles review, “For Haiti, They Are The Remake”, Pareles introduction doesn’t really grab your attention, a weak led. He starts by talking about the original version of the “We are the World” single, recorded in 1985, to benefit famine relief in Africa and comparing it the 2010 version, to aid earthquake victims in Haiti.
Throughout the entire piece he compares various popular artists of today to the legendary artists who’s parts there tried to imitate. His tone is critical yet it seems as though he’s holding back because the song was remade for a good cause. It’s a bit “wishy-washy”, it is almost as if he wants to say he loved it and the effort the artists and producers put forth, but they fell short.
In the first paragraph when critiquing Lil Wayne’s part, originally sung by Bob Dylan, and his use of auto-tune he ends it with: “Lil Wayne, you’re no Bob Dylan”. He calls this poor casting for the single “one measure of the slippage between the original and the remake.” He goes on to downsize the line up of artists how some seemed to be mimicking the original artists saying they were “daunted “ by their predecessors. Pareles goes on to name the various artists in the original 1985 and their performances, so one would have to be familiar with the original version to understand the power the song had in ’85.
Jon Pareles sees it as gimmicky, a goo effort, in the last paragraph he starts with: “It’s as dutiful as it is sincere, but it’s not a peak.” All together he covers every part of the performance and comments on the video including clips of people in Haiti. Again it seems like he wants to like the performance but can’t ignore the negative parts of it. He’s torn.
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