Hit Parade: The Charity Megasingle Edition

Slate Culture

Slate Podcasts

Arts, Tv & Film, Music

4.4 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 28 July 2017

⏱️ 67 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the mid-1980s, “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” and “We Are the World” gathered dozens of the biggest stars in music to put on a show for a good cause. The two songs spawned imitators, but today, the charity megasingle is a relic of pop music’s past, except around the holidays. This month, we examine how good intentions, pique, excess, and vanity led to the rise and fall of the do-gooder celebrity pop song. Email: [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Hitbury, a podcast of Pop Chart history from Slate and Panapley, About the hits from coast to coast.
0:14.3	I'm Chris Malampi, chart analyst, pop critic, and writer of Slate's
0:18.4	Why Is This Song Number One series.
0:21.0	On today's show, 32 years ago, a plethora of music stars put on the largest concert
0:27.8	event in history in two cities on a single day, July 13th, 1985. The event was called Live Aid, and the benefit
0:38.1	for Ethiopian famine relief was watched by billions around the world.
0:43.0	We are champions for friends.
0:50.0	And we don't even fighting till the end.
0:59.0	Build as a global jukebox.
1:02.0	Live Aid featured some 70 music superstars at Wembley Stadium in London
1:07.9	and JFK Stadium in Philadelphia. A few of the day's performances are now considered immortal such as those by Queen,
1:16.3	You Two, Mick Jagger and Tina Turner. But each of the two Live Aid concerts ended not with a galvanizing rock band but with a
1:24.7	shambling sing-along. London's concert closed this way with a Christmas song in
1:30.7	July. July. Sing it to the world.
1:34.0	Be the world.
1:37.0	Oh, Oh, a friend.
1:40.0	Oh, and And the Philadelphia Live Age show ended this way.
1:47.0	We are the children. We are the ones to make the right of the day, so let's start giving.
2:00.0	Great. It's not unusual to close a multi-artist concert, particularly a benefit show with a communal sing-along.
2:12.0	But what made these two songs unusual
2:15.0	was they were conceived and recorded from the start
2:19.0	for big group sing-alongs.
	...

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