When We Are The World came out was it seen as a great song or super corny?

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PrinceFan72@reddit

I'm in the UK and thought it was cringey and too "American" / look at how much we care. I was also annoyed that Prince wasn't in it.

FatWankerWankFatter@reddit

'85 grad, too. Commencement speaker at my graduation read the lyrics as part of his speech and thought he was profound AF.

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ssk7882@reddit

Corny as hell, but it stayed on the pop charts for a good long while, so someone must have been buying the single.

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73rd-virgin@reddit

I don't remember feeling one way or the other about it.

Over the years, I enjoyed the piss-take that MOD took with "Aren't You Hungry".

A tounge in cheek look at the average blue collar American's attitude about Third World poverty, as well as the telescopic philanthropy of celebrities.

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B-Town-MusicMan@reddit

It made me wanna puke.

I was a senior in high school.

Hahaha - I believe it! I just remember some teacher put a 45 of it on a phonograph and played it on repeat in the front hall of the school one day. She probably thought it was “inspirational.”

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It was America’s version of Britain’s Feed the World/Christmastime/BandAid, which is still an awesome time. We are the World is okay. It was received as a decent song, not great but not corny, at least at the time. They are both time capsules of singers of the time, many who have passed away.

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negcap@reddit

I thought it was a shitty ripoff of Do They Know It’s Christmas.

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ChadTitanofalous@reddit

Amonst my friend group, we thought it was corny, pretentious, self-indulgent, and just a bad copy of the Bob Geldolf/Midge Ure song, which has itself aged poorly, but still is a much better song.

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Different_Victory_89@reddit

It gave my parents another place my food could go if I didn't clean my plate

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Ok-Pomegranate2000@reddit

good cuz "we cared so much' without having to do anything for the feel-good

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Barragin@reddit

Corny but for a good cause.

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fwambo42@reddit

I personally thought it was pretty cool that they got so much star power in one room.

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technicallysupportiv@reddit

Same here.

The Netflix documentary from a couple of years ago is great. Lionel Richie discusses the whole process of making the song, the logistics of getting all the performers together and assigning parts based on the strengths of the individual singers .

I highly recommend!

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Temporary_View_3303@reddit

Super Duper corny.

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discoprince79@reddit

Both

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Practical-Panic-8351@reddit

Corny as hell.

remember gangam style, or the macarena?

it was like that but with a bit more righteousness. i was around 13 or so and in my circles it was corny as all hell, but you could not escape it.

that said, it did bring awareness to the cause, same as band aid did with that christmas song, which was also insufferable after the umpteenth time you had it played at you.

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doompines@reddit

https://i.redd.it/38eic3btdjyg1.gif

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cometshoney@reddit

As far as music for a cause went, the Sun City song was a far better song when it came to lyrics, but the star power in We Are the World was a bit brighter. Do They Know It's Christmas has lyrics just as corny as We Are the World, but the music itself is better. I would put We Are the World at the bottom of the three as far as music and lyrics are concerned.

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jprennquist@reddit

Listen to the drum part on "Do They Know It's Christmas?" next time you hear the song. Phil Collins, man. So fucking great.

We are the world had so many great vocal performances. And it's not really possible to judge it outside the context of literal days and weeks when it came out. Also the diversity of who was on it. Willie Nelson. Bob Dylan. Lionel Richie (co-writer). And many others already mentioned. The heaviest lift was getting all of those people in the same room and studio for the night. And the urgency was real.

It was never really about being a great song that was going to fill up dance floors and win over the critics. People were greatly moved by images coming out of the drought in Ethiopia. And it was the cold war so the great powers were much more concerned about the alignment of political leaders rather than the farmers and regular citizens, including children, that were literally starving to death. One photographer out out a photo of a little kid who was so starved that they seemed ready to fall over and die any second. There was a vulture nearby opportunistically waiting to feed in his/her skin and bones. Absolutely enraging and heartbreaking.

So the artists were like: I don't exactly know what is going on, but I've got a voice or I can play the drums or I know how to write a song and I'm going to do something. And people bought the records. And radio played the shit out of them. And the money came. And to a certain extent the politicians and leaders followed. I live in a Great Lakes port town. We literally saw the ships headed out full of Midwestern grain going to the horn if Africa to feed the kids.

One of those programs, USAID, is gone now. Again, the politicians decided that we don't need to be "wasting" money on other people's problems.

Interesting that you mention "Sun City" which was a great project and I have both the CD (early CD) and cassette if that. I do feel like that one was suppressed a bit in popular culture or maybe people were a little fatigued by musical activism. But that one was about the boycott of South Africa because of legally forced segregation/apartheid. South Africa was politically aligned with the United States/NATO. But some of the opposition leaders, including Nelson Mandela, had socialist views or inclinations. And they were a nuclear weapon state. Plus, that song was calling out the hypocrisy of artists who were playing Sun City a venue/resort for whites only under an explicitly and openly white-supremacist regime. That's another great conversation about why that song wasn't bigger at the time. The U.K. was literally a former colonizer of South Africa. The U.S. (also a former British colony) also struggles with a legacy of trans-Atlantic slavery, racial segregation, and genocide of original peoples. "Sun City" was a little too close to looking in a mirror.

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cometshoney@reddit

Just out of curiosity, what was it about my comment that made you feel I had never heard these songs or seen their accompanying videos? There's nothing I love more than AI mansplaining shit to me like I wasn't there.

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W51976@reddit

Glad to see Paul Hardcastle’s 19 ended its reign at number 1.

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KurtStation68@reddit

I felt it was kind of corny, just like Do They Know It's Christmas... almost felt like it was a gospel song/anthem that was over saturated and felt it was being forced.

It got so overplayed, overexposed so fast. We had to sing it in school assemblies several times. It didn’t take long as an ‘80s kid to be DONE with it.

Or....it was incredibly cringe-worthy.

For some reason, the US version seemed a lot worse in that regard than the UK offering.

It may be because the aingers chosen, & the US music scene was a lot more schmaltzy at the time

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Definitely corny. I was 12 and the entire Catholic grade school of 250 kids went to the church to sing it one day , without any prior announcement, and I don't recall any speech given. The whole thing felt forced on us by the self important school music teacher.

Things we were never taught about world hunger in school - greed -warlords -facts

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Zeverian@reddit

Corny, but inspiring. Like there was hope even if it was cheesy. Too bad we were so wrong.

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Gullible_ManChild@reddit

The british Band-Aid Christmas song hit first. We Are the World didn't seem as innovative or as interesting and seemed less genuine, and much much much cheesier.

CharleyLH@reddit

Oh yea, I was way into British music then so it was a bad rip off to me. I’m actually glad Madonna (who was passed over for Cyndi Lauper like they were a choice) and Prince (who shined it on and sent Sheila E.) didn’t take part.

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crystallyn@reddit

Soooooo corny.

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seigezunt@reddit

Hey, at least it inspired one of the more embarrassing moments in Doctor Who history

https://youtu.be/ege9lQecazo?si=daxB0dR3u3etNgJ5

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seigezunt@reddit

Extremely corny. But it didn’t keep me from getting up at 4 AM so I could watch, from Germany, Bob Dylan‘s performance at Live Aid.

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Big_Bet_2019@reddit

There was an earnestness to it that is hard to explain. We’ve seen so many similar attempts over the years that it seems trite and cliche and tone-deaf. But at the time it was huge. And it raised a lot of money. It’s hard to explain to people these days what it was like to have that kind of hopefulness, especially in such dark times

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ConcertinaTerpsichor@reddit

Bang on.

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GoobyGrapes@reddit

Metal artists were conspicuously absent (read not invited) from both Do They Know it's Christmas and We Are the World, so Ronnie James Dio and 2 other Dio band members created Hear 'n Aid and the song Stars. While not nearly as successful or well known as the other two songs, they still raised $3 million for African famine relief. \m/

It was super corny. I vividly remember making fun of the lyrics which were terrible (along with "Do they know it's Christmas?" which is such an odd thing to ask about muslim nations.)

Sun City was much, much better. It had better lyrics, a better tune and arguably a bigger range of stars which covered a wider scope of genres. We Are The World had top 40 pop well and truly covered but Sun City had Springsteen, Bono, Pat Benatar, Hall and Oats and Dylan along with big names from rap (Run DMC), funk (George Clinton), Punk (Joey Ramone), Reggae (Jimmy Cliff) and Jazz (MIles Davis) along with members of The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Temptations and The Beatles.

Any song which features Miles Davis, Lou Reed, Peter Garrett and Silvio Dante is automatically cooler than anything else in the room.

It raised awareness and also had a confronting video and the guts to call out Reagan. It's just a shame that it didn't include the orginal lyrics which called out Queen and others for playing Sun City and tacitly supporting the apartheid regime.

Some folks legitimately loved it. I think I was mildly entertained for a minute, seeing all of those well-known names (Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles, etc.), but after the video had been played on MTV a hundred thousand times, I was over it.

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nadiaco@reddit

It sucked and still does. Horrible song

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OGREtheTroll@reddit

Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, and Quincy Jones all had major parts to play in it.

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AggravatingBobcat574@reddit

It was popular, and it was for a good cause. But musically, no one thought it was a great song

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zalurker@reddit

It was seen as corny

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InstantlyTremendous@reddit

I thought it was super cheesy and just not very good, but a lot of people liked it. It was designed for mass market appeal.

Something something, lowest common denominator, something something

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mfelzien@reddit

I thought it was corny. But I’ve never been into popular culture

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Zestyclose_Pickle511@reddit

It was massively popular.

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Leftbackhand@reddit

Well America thought it was the world back then. It doesn’t really say we are Palestine anymore.

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Old_Association6332@reddit

I am slightly too young to remember properly, but I do remember there seemed a lot more idealism and optimism then that we could make a positive change, could make a better world, so I think songs like that tended to get a better reception than they would now. I remember thinking Michael Jackson's "Heal the World" was such a powerful, moving and beautiful song when it was released a few years later. I still do, I will defend that song any day, but it did hit me differently back then, and I think it was due precisely to that kind of optimism and idealism many had that we could make a better world

There was, of course, still a lot of cynicism in certain quarters about it. The Simpsons spoofed the concept in one of their early episodes back in the '90s'. But I don't think it was as widespread as it would be today. Don't forget that the most significant generation during that era were the baby boomers, many of whom grew up with the kind of hippie idealistic ideals of the 1960s, and this kind of song and sentiment tapped into that in many ways. It went No. 1 in many places around the world, so it was obviously well-received globally back then.

I was into hard rock/metal at the time, so it just seemed trite and lame to me.

Emergency-Big-1503@reddit

Corny as fuck.

All the girls in my class loved it.

All the guys mocked it.

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Putrid-Bath-470@reddit

A bit on the side of cringe/cheesy with extra cheese, but there was an earnestness about it, like they were all going to solve world hunger. Lofty, but noble intentions. However, I did enjoy certain performances. I thought Daryl Hall, Steve Perry, Heuy Lewis, and Bruce Springsteen sung their parts well.

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uncivil_society@reddit

It came out when I was 11 and I remember thinking the song was terribly corny. That being said, watching the video was fun because of being able to see all these stars in one place doing their thing.

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BasementCatBill@reddit

Boomers loved it.

Gen X... not so much.

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PreferenceExtra330@reddit

I was 11 and easily impressed, I thought it was cool.

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Spiritual-Theory@reddit

I just saw the video again, it was an amazing accomplishment, thank you Quincy Jones. It was fun to try to name everyone.

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BustinMakesMeFeelMeh@reddit

I was 9. We were presented it like it was really important and great. And we didn’t give a shit about it. You never saw anyone singing it or dancing to it. No shirts or anything, which were super popular at the time. I’d compare it to a movie like On Golden Pond or something. Apparently it was good, but kids didn’t care. I think that says a lot when Michael Jackson was involved. He was just past the height of his powers, but still a cultural juggernaut.

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AquaGB@reddit

I don't think that time frame would be considered PAST the height of his powers. Technically, yes, it took place after the ultimate peak of Thriller, but Bad was still peakish. He may have plateaued a bit, but he was still very much way way up at the top.

A cashgrab - for African famine relief?

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dewihafta@reddit

The popularity of anyone in that video totally skyrocketed after that. Okay, so maybe not literal cash, but…i guess a famegrab? Or kudosgrab?

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A_Tom_McWedgie@reddit

What the hell are you talking about?

It was just another 60's hippy boomer thing, one in a long series of this type of stuff--band aid, farm aid, live aid, comic relief, etc.

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It gets a lot of flak from people who seriously need to fuck the fuck off.

It raised money to literally save the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.

kevdog71@reddit

It was very corny, but the interest was the spectacle of getting all those American stars together at once to attempt to equal what Band Aid had done.

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One-Hand-Rending@reddit

The corniest thing on the planet at the time. The Band Aid thing came first and it was kinda cool cause it had David Bowie and Duran Duran etc.

i was 12 and it was so corny. even worse than 'do they know it's christmastime?' from the previous year.

Do they know it’s Christmas was the British bunch.

I was 9 at 1985. Our teacher made it a class project. Half of us felt it was cringe. We great up with thriller and this was a weird step into a different direction from my perspective.

I loathed it - and at the same time, even though it was a very corny school performance, I was not prepared for the teary eyed parents that left the seats in that small theater room afterwards.

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Impedimentita@reddit

I was in 5th grade when Do They Know it’s Christmas came out and it seemed so weird and rude. Everybody made fun of it.

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epicgrilledchees@reddit

I was a sarcastic metal head teenager at the time. It was corny.

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ProperCap5400@reddit

Frank Zappa was once asked if there was any song he wouldn't want his kids to listen to, and he said "We Are the World ".

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dirtytounder@reddit

Colonel Bruce Hampton once said he hadn't been the same since the cars broke up while laughing.

Pretty sure he would have agreed with zapoa on this one

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Character-Yak-4084@reddit

In short: yes.

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PomegranateReal3620@reddit

I wasn't a fan back then, but it came up in my feed a few months ago. The thing that strikes me is how each voice is unique and easily recognizable.

Dumb song, amazing collection of vocal talent.

NotTHATPollyGlot@reddit

Same. I was 10 and it was a big deal with all those wildly popular performers.

https://youtu.be/G5H94GHb-10?si=ZgS5Nk-DtO-l5DR7

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gabrielroth@reddit

The documentary about it is terrific, very funny and quite moving for reasons that have nothing to do with famine. There’s a moment where Bruce Springsteen says, basically, “it didn’t have to be a good song.”

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DagnyLeia@reddit

I was in middle school. I remember because we had a whole all school sing along, sitting on the gym floor holding hands.

SomeGuyClickingStuff@reddit

Not song related, but a zoomer coworker asked me if Bob Barker was Travis Barker’s dad.

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FightPhoe93@reddit

It’s a combination of corny and also amazing. Amazing because it’s one of the greatest assemblies of legendary music talent to collaborate on a pop song.

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sobuffalo@reddit

Don’t forget Hear’n Aid

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CharleyLH@reddit

Did you like the one done by Hear N’ Aid?

I was about 10 or 11. Every kid I knew (including me) thought it was the best song ever made.

It had everyone on it so that was cool. but the song wasn't great.