Hit Parade: The Charity Megasingle Edition

you're listening at free on Amazon Music. Welcome to Hitbury, a podcast of pop chart history from slate and panoply about the hits from coast to coast. I'm Chris Mulanfee, chart analyst, pop critic, and writer of Slates, why is this song number one series? On today's show, 32 years ago, a plethora of music stars put on the largest concert event in history in two cities on a single day, July 13, 1985. The event was called Live Aid, and the benefit for Ethiopian famine relief was watched by billions around the world. Build as a global jukebox, Live Aid featured some 70 music superstars at Wembley Stadium in London, and JFK Stadium in Philadelphia. A few of the day's performances are now considered immortal, such as those by Queen, U2, Mick Jagger, and Tina Turner. But each of the two Live Aid concerts ended not with a galvanizing rock band, but with a shambling sing-along. London's concert closed this way, with a Christmas song in July. And the Philadelphia Live Aid show ended this way. It's not unusual to close a multi-artist concert, particularly a benefit show with a communal sing-along. But what made these two songs unusual was they were conceived and recorded from the start for big group sing-alongs. Even stranger, both were enormous hits, just months before the concert. Indeed, they were the spark that ignited Live Aid in the first place. The singles Do They Know It's Christmas by UK Supergroup Band-Aid, and We Are the World by USA for Africa, topped the charts in their respective countries, and still rank among the best-selling singles of all time. Do They Know It's Christmas, and We Are the World, would be the first and the last mass celebrity charity mega-singles to do as well as they did. They spawned roughly a dozen other celebrity mega-singles from the high-minded to the ill-defined and even intentionally vague. With hindsight, then, it's fair to ask not why no other singles did as well as these two songs, but why these two did so well in the first place. Here in America, We Are the World wasn't just a best-selling single. It dominated the radio, too. This pervasive airplay helped make the USA for Africa song a national event and pushed it to the top of Billboard's Hot 100 chart in under a month. In the spring of 1985, if you flipped on the radio in most of the country, there was a good chance you'd hear big stars belting their lungs out. We Are the World, we Are the World, we Are the World, we Are the One, we Make America, so they are my kids. We Are the World is a series of vocal explosions. All of your favorite singers taking their turn as our momentary American idol. And if that wasn't enough, the song claims it will save the world. It is all good intentions and power-kitsch and infectiousness and schmaltz. Today on Hit Parade, we'll consider the unusual set of circumstances that made it possible for a seven minute, shouty, schlocky, but stellar single to do what no other mass charity single has done before or since. And that's where your Hit Parade marches today, the week ending April 13th, 1985, when We Are the World by USA for Africa began a four-week run at the summit of the Hot 100. The statistics for We Are the World in 1985 alone were staggering. It was the first single in U.S. history to be certified multi-platinum for sales of four million. Globally, total sales for world are estimated at more than 20 million. An accompanying album also called We Are the World Topped Billboards album chart and went triple platinum. And the following year at the 1986 Grammys, We Are the World, one record of the year and song of the year. First, I'd like to thank God, and I'd like to say thank you for choosing Lionel and myself to write We Are the World. I thank Quincy Jones who is the greatest producer to me. I also like to say when you leave here, remember the children. Speaking of awards and big multi-artist concerts, to understand how we arrived at this Grammy moment, let's go back about a dozen years to the early 70s. And let's talk about a Grammy-winning album whose opening track sounded like this. That's Citar Master Ravi Shankar and Saurad player Ali Akbar Khan with the first music you hear on the live triple album The Concert for Bangladesh. And like USA for Africa, this album was billed to a one-time only group name, George Harrison and Friends. Released in late 1971, the album captured an all-star concert which was conceived to benefit the starving people of the former East Pakistan and was mounted by a former beetle. On our last episode of Hit Parade about Elton John and George Michael, we discuss the concept of an artist's imperial period, that peak career moment when he can pull off virtually anything and see it embraced by the public. Say this for George Harrison. He used his imperial moment well and he used it to do good. For a brief period just after the spring 1970 breakup of the Beatles, Harrison was momentarily the most popular former beetle. Within the first year of the fab force split, his triple LP set, All Things Must Pass, was a chart-topper in both the US and UK, outselling his former bandmate Paul McCartney's solo debut McCartney, as well as John Lennon's plastic Ono band. And Harrison scored the first number one single by any ex-beetle, reaching the top of the chart in America, England, and more than a dozen countries around the world with the timeless, and as it turns out, blatant ripoff of an earlier chiffon's hit My Sweet Lord. My Sweet Lord hit the top of the charts at the start of 1971, kicking off arguably the biggest year of George Harrison's career. That August, he used his clout to organize the concert for Bangladesh as a live show at New York's Madison Square Garden. Harrison rounded up a half-dozen other superstars, in addition to Shankar and Khan, performers included Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Billy Preston, Leon Russell, and Harrison's old bandmate, Ringo Starr, as well as star players from such bands as Badfinger and Delaney and Bonnie. It was the first large-scale benefit concert of its kind, essentially inventing the form nearly a decade and a half before Lively. For a year and a half after the concert itself, its offshoot projects would continue generating funds for the cause of Bangladeshi refugees, raising a quarter million dollars in the first year, and ultimately some 12 million dollars. These offshoots included a documentary film that was a solid box office hit in 1972, and a triple album that hit number two on the Billboard album chart and went on to win album of the year at the 1973 Grammys. Ringo Starr accepted the award on behalf of Harrison and friends. As star implies in his speech, just issuing the live album had proven a challenge. The release pitted several record labels against each other to clear the rights for their performers to appear on the set. And anyway you sliced it, the concert for Bangladesh was an odd album to win the top Grammy, especially in the 1970s, the premier decade for consensus monocultural Grammy wins. From 1970 to 1979, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences picks for album of the year were almost entirely undeniable pop blockbusters. This was the decade when three classic Stevie Wonder albums took home the big prize, "Inner Visions," "Fulfilliness First Finale," and "Songs in the Key of Life." Paul Simon took it twice, once with Art Garfunkel for their final album "Bridge Over Troubled Water," and once for Simon's solo smash, still crazy after all these years. And the award went to such mega blockbusters as Carol King's tapestry, Fleetwood Max Rumors. Billy Joel's 52nd Street and the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. All nine of these other winning albums were million or multi-million sellers, eight of the nine topped the Billboard album chart, and all spawned enormous hit singles. Concert for Bangladesh was the outlier of the bunch. It was a modest seller for a 70s Grammy winner. The set spent about nine months on the Billboard album chart, a very respectable stay, but the shortest of any of its 70s prize-winning peers. By Grammy Night in 1973, Bangladesh had already been off the charts for months. The album also lacked big radio hits, even on the album-oriented rock format. Before the album's release, Harrison did score a minor hit single called Bangladesh, but it was a studio recording not taken from the concert LP. Though it remains a respected album, Concert for Bangladesh was never certified platinum, and to this day, it's a modest seller. Even after a 2005 reissue on compact disc, Nielsen reports its sales at just 163,000 copies in the sound scan era. So why did this unusual album win the big prize? Obviously, there is the music. From Billy Preston's, that's the way God planned it. To Leon Russell's lively medley of Jump in Jack Flash and Youngblood. To an entire set by Bob Dylan, whose live appearance was his first in five years. As good as these performances were, they don't explain Bangladesh's Grammy win. Other even more famous all-star concerts, such as the bands The Last Waltz, didn't take home Grammys. Of course, nothing galvanizes the public like a former beetle. Then again, Paul McCartney never won the big Grammy with or without wings, and John Lennon only won it after he died. Boiling away all of these possible rationals, we must conclude that the recording academy was rewarding two things. Harrison's good intentions and his cavalcade of stars. What made the concert for Bangladesh vital was the template it created for the all-star charity recording project. Harrison would later advise Band-Aid co-founders Bob Geldoff and Midge Err to find a good accountant after experiencing difficulty delivering the Bangladesh project's proceeds to its intended beneficiaries. But at the time, the album made the public feel good. Consumers felt good for buying it, Grammy voters for voting for it, and it offered notoriety on steroids, a musical project nominally about celebrity sacrifice, but ultimately about celebrity aggregation. Who knows how much bigger Harrison's project might have been if he'd rounded up his headliners for a big sing-along? The concert did feature a pile-up of lead guitarists, but as prescient as it was, Bangladesh only hints at the form charity mega-events would ultimately take. So we have to look to other four runners. I mentioned the last Waltz a moment ago. That's the Farewell Concert by Canadian-American Roots Rock Group, The Band. Recorded live on Thanksgiving Day 1976 at San Francisco's Winterland Ballroom and filmed for a documentary by director Martin Scorsese. The last Waltz was not a charity event, but it did feature more than a dozen guest superstars from Van Morrison to the staple singers to Joni Mitchell and Neil Young to, once again, Bob Dylan. And unlike George Harrison's concert for Bangladesh, the last Waltz climaxes with an all-star sing-along, a rendition of Dylan's "I Shall Be Released." As they gather around the microphones, the sheepish smiles on the faces of the coke-addled, post-hippy rock stars begin to hint at the final form. But in addition to lacking a charitable cause, the last Waltz, notwithstanding the presence of Neil Diamond, also lacks the kitsch element. For that, you have to jump ahead another five years to the bizarre TV special Get High on Yourself. It was the brainchild of Robert Evans, the legendary Hollywood movie producer who produced Love Story and The Godfather and was immortalized in the 2002 biographical documentary The Kid Stays in the Picture. In 1981, Evans had been busted for purchasing $19,000 of cocaine and was ordered by a court to produce a public service TV special as community service. So Evans rounded up more than 50 of his famous pals, from Bob Hope to Andy Gibb to Happy Day's Henry Winkler and Scott Bale, to record an anti-drug song, a cloying, rancid, and oddly infectious ditty written expressly for TV. Get High on Yourself, which one blog aptly calls an anti-drug celebrity clusterfuck, was not actually a single event, but a series of video bumpers NBC ran between its programs for a week in 1981. Very few of the participants were singers, most were chosen for their celebrity profile and their ability to look whin some, bopping along next to a children's chorus. But the ghastly spectacle will look familiar to anyone who recalls the more renowned charity singles later in the 1980s, a gaggle of famous people behind a handful of microphones harmonizing for the cameras. Here on Get High on Yourself, the celebrity mega event begins to take shape, a veneer of social justice, a dose of camp, a vibe of aw-shocks, let's put on a show, a check your egos at the door spirit that nonetheless boosts the participant's star profiles, and an emphasis on rewatchability. There is no evidence Bob Geldoff ever saw the cheesy and very American Get High on Yourself. Geldoff was a sardonic Irishman who fronted the Boomtown rats, a post-punk group that, in the late 70s and early 80s, scored a string of UK top 40 hits, including their grandiose chart-topper about a mass shooting I don't like Mondays. In the fall of 1984, Geldoff was moved by a BBC TV report on the devastating famine in Ethiopia. In just over a week, Geldoff and his girlfriend, Paula Yates, had reached out to another UK pop star, midge-ear of the band UltraVox, famed for the stately British smash, VNN. Together, Geldoff and Ear decided to mount a single in time for the holiday season of 1984 to raise money for famine relief, and they determined that the best way to do so was not to record a pre-existing Christmas Carol, which might require royalty payments, but to write one of their own. So, they adapted a song Geldoff had been working on for the Boomtown rats, originally called It's My World. Adding a Christmasy melody Ear came up with, they transformed it into a song titled Do They Know It's Christmas. The record came together rapidly, as Geldoff and Ear prepared for a recording date in late November. Starting with the police's sting and Durandoran's Simon Lebon, Geldoff began phoning up all the leading British pop stars of the day, including culture clubs boy George, Wams George Michael, and U2's Bono. All of these singers would have solo showcases on the final recording of Do They Know It's Christmas. Indeed, this is what's most interesting about the composition and ultimate arrangement of Do They Know It's Christmas. Geldoff and Ear wrote it to provide the maximum sonic wallop. If you recall the song, your first memory is likely of its closing refrain, the mass choir of moost and mascarid pop stars making a joyful noise in a big group singing. But the truly innovative, diabolical genius of the song is actually in its first half, which is packed with solos. There is no real chorus for more than 24 bars, as a procession of pop stars take a line or two each. In the song's first two minutes, 11 pop deities take a verse, either solo or in pairs, including Stingh, who shares his verses with Lebonne, and Spandau Ballet's Tony Hadley. Plus, there are drum kit close-ups of Phil Collins, who gets a symbol crash entrance of his own. The verses change cadence enough times that it's actually difficult to picture one person singing all of the parts. Finally, after almost two full minutes have elapsed, blue-eyed soul singer Paul Young deploys its refrain more than halfway through the song's running time. That refrain is only sung twice on the whole track, a pair of shoals abutting a tiny bridge, hears to you, hears to them, before the final sing-along. The song in short is virtually all solo or mantra. Like a modern skyscraper, designed to provide as many windows as possible so every executive in the company can boast of a corner office, do they know its Christmas was built to showcase? Of course, this was the point. Geldoff had absorbed the idea that a mass display of pop stars could draw attention to a cause. Emphasis on the word display. What makes 1984 the moment when the charity mega-single achieves its final form was the fact that the music video era was in full flower. The only thing concert for Bangladesh, the last waltz, and get high on yourself had in common was they were all captured on camera. On that chilly November day in West London, when Geldoff's army of pop stars all arrived at the Sarm West studios in Notting Hill, they were greeted by cameras both outside the building and inside the studio itself. When the single was issued in early December, barely a week after its recording, its music video and a making of video were issued virtually simultaneously, not unlike Michael Jackson's thriller video the year before. All the elements were in place, not just the round robin sing-along, not just the humanitarianism, but a commonly available visual medium that packaged a recording as a rewatchable event. Do they know its Christmas sold more than three million copies in the UK alone and topped their chart for five weeks? The band-aid single remains one of the two best-selling singles in UK chart history, topped only by Elton John's Princess Diana tribute candle in the wind 1997. In America, while not nearly as big a hit on our hot 100, do they know its Christmas managed to nearly equal its UK sales, racking up 2.5 million stateside by 1985. Of course, we Americans like a challenge. No country outspecicles us and gets away with it. Ken Cregan, the manager and fundraiser who spearheaded what became USA for Africa with music legend and longtime activist Harry Belafonte openly admitted that band-aid inspired America's own multi-superstar charity single. On the night of January 28, 1985, literally hours after the end of the televised American Music Awards, which had gathered dozens of music superstars to LA. Cregan, Belafonte, and producer Quincy Jones gathered some 50 recording artists to A&M studios in Hollywood. In a line that's now become a cliche, Quincy Jones instructed the stars to "please check your egos at the door," whether they were music legends like Ray Charles or Whalen Jennings, relative newcomers like Sheila E or Moonlighting actors like Dan Ackroyd. We are the world was co-written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie, a pair of Motown nurtured pop gods who were each at the apex of their respective imperial periods. Jackson had just come off of Thriller, the top-selling album of all time, and the top concert tour of 1984, the Jackson's victory tour. And Richie was coming off the octuple platinum cat slowdown, which would go on to win "Album of the Year" at the Grammys in early 1985. If Bob Gueldoff and mid-yearr had just penned a Christmas carol, Jackson and Richie wanted to create an anthem. Jackson had dabbled in anthems with his brothers, co-writing the minor hit Can You Feel It in 1981. Lionel Richie had some experience with writing grandiose hits too. Around the same time, Lionel had written a duet for himself and fellow Motown star Diana Ross that topped the charts for three months in 1981, the ostentatious power baller endless love. For their 1985 anthem, Jackson and Richie drew elements of these prior lavish hits while also adapting the Band-Aid template. Not to the letter, one key structural difference between We Are the World and its British forefather was Jackson and Richie wrote a full traditional chorus, which is deployed by Jackson and Diana Ross when the song is just over a minute into its running time. This roots "We Are the World" in something closer to an American tradition, as that chorus recurs later in the song as a gospel-style refrain. But even with this more distinct chorus, the overarching Band-Aid structure remains unaltered, series of solos in front, choir of angels in back. In fact, team USA basically just supersized the Geldov template. The running time nearly doubles from Christmas's under four minutes to worlds seven minutes and five seconds. And the team of about a dozen British soloists on Christmas swells to 19 American soloists in the first three minutes of We Are the World. Many of the singers, very much in an American soul tradition, take great liberties with the melody. These include such strange pairings as "A Sultry Deon Warwick" followed by a loping Willie Nelson. A one-time only trio of male soloists, Kenny Loggins, Journeys, Steve Perry, and Daryl Hall. And just before the big chorus, a star turn by the second youngest soloist in the room after Michael Jackson, an explosive interpretation on the bridge from Miss Cindy Lopper. This series of solos at the front are augmented by five bonus solos later in the song. By Bob Dylan, Ray Charles, James Ingram, Stevie Wonder, and Bruce Springsteen. The last two in a rousing pod de deux, one of the single's best moments. This skyscraper comes not only with corner offices but extra penthouses. For more than three decades, do they know its Christmas and We Are the World have provoked reams of debate over which is the better cultural artifact. Or, for you cynics and critics out there, which is worse, more self-serving, more tone deaf, more vapid. Many of my fellow music critics have taken sides in the Christmas versus world wars. In the spring of 1985, Dean of American Rock Critics, Bob Kristgaugh wrote, quote, "By any reasonably objective critical standard, USA for Africa's We Are the World is a good, maybe great record, where band-aids do they know its Christmas was a bad or terrible one." Meanwhile, on his blog about the history of the charts, British pop critic Tom Ewing claims band-aids hit, quote, "has stuck it out better than I thought it would, mostly because it's become a record about Christmas, not a record about tragedy." While of USA for Africa, Ewing writes, quote, "Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie play things a lot safer. It was so long and cumbersome," unquote. But I'm not interested in taking sides in a parochial transatlantic war or exploring the superiority of one of these records over the other. Mostly, I'm interested in the radio. Both Christmas and World got significant traction on the airwaves. They had notoriety and genuine charitable impact in their favor. But topicality alone doesn't make a song a hit. To get on the radio, you need the musical equivalent of the movie trailer moment, and both Christmas and World have those in spades. In the band-aid single, there are several outsized moments. Not least, when you choose Bono has his star-is-born solo, the now-infamous lyric that a cynical Bob Geldoff insisted the wary U2 frontman deliver as written. That moment may have bothered some listeners, but there are other memorable fireworks, such as a note-perfect George Michael nailing his bars, or the loose Simon LeBon slithering through his. On We Are the World, in addition to that beloved Cindy Lauper star-turn, there's the moment Michael Jackson ramps up his power bridge. Or the moment Bob Dylan does his hilarious Bob Dylan impression. As I said earlier, these songs were quite literally conceived, structured to provide such showcases. The stars delivered, the single sold, the DJs followed suit, especially in America. One major difference between the Billboard Hot 100 and the British charts is that Airplay is a factor on our hit parade, but event records like these are ungainly on the airwaves, and yet We Are the World was an enormous, power-rotated radio smash. Given the single's seven-minute running time, you might suspect that We Are the World would be a huge sales hit, but only a modest radio hit. This is often the pattern with charity records. But that wasn't the case with We Are the World in 1985. The week had began its four-week run atop the Hot 100, it was both the top seller, and the most reported Airplay record. This was considerably better than the Band-Aid single did in America at the time. Its Airplay was seasonally limited. Rush released in December '84, just a couple of weeks before the holidays, do they know its Christmas had little time to a mass U.S. Airplay? If Bob Geldoff had somehow managed to complete, do they know its Christmas one month earlier, catching America's Thanksgiving holiday, it's easy to imagine it reaching the U.S. Top 5. But the song peaked on the Hot 100 in mid-January 1985. During the United States so far, the record is so more than a million copies, and it's still selling as it climbs two notches this week in number 13. As the Christmas spirit goes on, here's Band-Aid, and do they know its Christmas? Its no surprise Christmas was off the Hot 100 in just two months. But even We Are the World had a fairly short shelf life. It was certified quadruple platinum in April 1985, but it was largely off the radio by June. In fact, the day of Live Aid in July 1985, World was down to number 92 on the Hot 100, two weeks away from falling off altogether. Still, even if they weren't long-lasting radio hits, Band-Aid and USA for Africa were hugely influential, they immediately spawned other imitators. One of those imitators was even in record shops simultaneously with We Are the World. Canada's famine relief offering tears are not enough, recorded in Toronto just weeks after World by a 50-conuck supergroup dubbed Northern Lights. Co-written and arranged by Canadian super producer David Foster and rock star Brian Adams, tears are not enough, was classic Canada. The melody is remarkably sturdy, and the production is extra cheesy. If Dylan and Springsteen seemed like improbable charity singers with USA for Africa, the roster of Northern Lights offered even greater surprises, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and Russia's Getty Lee all took a verse. Tears are not enough, did not chart in America, although it was an album cut on The We Are the World album. Of course, it did top the charts in its home country. In fact, in typical Canadian, nice to everybody fashion, Canada was the one country where all three of the national pride charity singles. Do they know its Christmas, We Are the World, and tears are not enough, hit number one. The Canadians were smart to drop their record alongside USA for Africa's, when global attention for the Ethiopian famine was at its peak. Hereinade was not so lucky. This hard rock mega-group was mounted out of both compassion and resentment. After the members of the metal band Dio, noted that both band-aid and USA for Africa pointedly excluded metal acts. Redressing that snobbery, they gathered an army of headbangers in May 1985 to record the single Stars, which featured eight solo vocalists and nine solo guitarists. The chorus on Stars featured more than 40 hard rock screeners, including members of Quiet Riot, Judas Priest, Dockin, and Queenswright, plus two members of Neville Paradise's spinal tap, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer, dressed up as their metalhead characters David St. Hubbins and Derek Smalls. Unfortunately, Stars went unreleased for more than half a year, amid contractual disputes among the rocker's respective labels. When it was finally issued in early 1986, it missed the Hot 100 entirely, and managed only a number 39 peak on Billboard's album Rock Chart. The three-year famine in Ethiopia had by then entered a more complex, less headline-friendly period, demanding political and military intervention more than direct aid. But that's around the time the massively multiplayer mid-80s Goodwill single morphed beyond North African famine to embrace an array of other causes. Often simple awareness, rather than feeding the world, was the only goal. This second wave kicked off auspiciously toward the end of 1985, with the most critically acclaimed multi-artist charity rapper. Little Stevens artists united against apartheid was not only a symbolic protest against South African ethnic separatism. On a narrower scale, it drew a line in the sand against Western artists performing in Sun City, a segregated resort in Baputaswana. Sun City, the song, drew the most intriguing and diverse array of music stars. Rappers and punks and jazz grates, from run DMC to Ruben Bladis, Lou Reed to Miles Davis, Joey Ramone to Darlene Love, Pat Benatar to Bobby Womack. The lineup even included artists who had appeared on the first wave of charity singles, and appeared to be having a better time on this one. Bruce Springsteen, Holland Oats, and Bob Dylan, all fresh off USA for Africa, and you choose Bono, a year past band-aid. Looking to neutralize his infamous thank god it's them star-turn, Bono offered a more politically pointed, rageful solo showcase. Most commemorations of Sun City imply that the project was a noble failure since it only reached number 38 on the Hot 100. Like band-aid, Sun City was a greater success on the sales side and was indeed ignored by most pop radio programmers. But that glass is more than half full. This crazily eclectic, catchy single scored strong MTV play, and unlike the northern lights or hearing aid singles, it was enough of a hit to be counted down by Casey Kason. I'm Casey Kason. Here's the hit record featuring 54 recording artists, including, and you'll hear them in order on the first verse, David Ruffin, Pat Benatar, Eddie Kendrick, and Bruce Springsteen. They're saying apartheid in South Africa must go. Up on odds in number 38, artists united against apartheid with Sun City. As Little Stephen would point out years later, the song succeeded in its fundamental mission, making it socially unacceptable for artists to perform in Sun City. At years end, the song was hailed by critics and tastemakers as one of the best recordings of the year. It topped the 1985 Village Voice Paz and Job Pull, and the Sun City album made the polls top five. No other charity mega-single for the balance of the 1980s, equaled artists united against apartheid's combination of a decent commercial showing and a sense of mission. Some did, respectively, but all lacked the standout moments of Band-Aid and USA for Africa, the Bono, Cindy, Stevie, and Bruce fireworks that might have made them stickier hits. In 1986 alone, charity mega-singles were all over the map. In addition to the belatedly released stars by Heronade, the early part of the year saw the release of the King Dream Chorus' "King Holiday." It was the first year Martin Luther King Day was observed as a national holiday in America, and King Holiday was an awareness-building celebration produced and co-written by rapper Curtis Blow. The King Dream Chorus featured a slew of R&B singers and hip-hop stars from El Zebarge to new addition to the Fat Boys. The song managed to reach number 30 on Billboard's Hot Black singles chart, likely propelled by its star attraction, Whitney Houston, who wasn't yet popular enough in early 1985 to be considered for USA for Africa, but at the dawn of 1986 was the centerpiece of King Holiday. On the schlockier side was Ken Craigens' follow-up to USA for Africa. Craigens was the manager who helped bring together Harry Belafonte, Quincy Jones, and the range of megastars who sang "We Are the World." His 1986 project was a grand-scale hunger and homelessness effort called "Hands Across America." It arrived on a wave of hype, centered around a nationwide human chain that, despite best efforts, had large, humanless gaps in the West. The titular single is utterly dreadful. Erzatz John Mellon camp "Hack Americana," credited to the voices of America. Several personalities, such as Kenny Rogers and Don Johnson, lip sync in the video, but no recognizable singer takes an interesting vocal line that might redeem the song. It managed a number 65 Hot 100 peak. The charity mega-single even went on to have an impact on rap's first golden age, and its first coastal rivalry. New York rapper KRS-1 founded the Stop the Violence Movement in 1987. After a young fan was killed at a show, headlined by his crew, boogie-down productions, and public anime. In early 1989, KRS-1's collective released its first All-Star single, Self Destruction, featuring around a dozen East Coast rappers from Heavy D to Flavor Flave. It reached number 30 on Hot Black singles. One year later, N.W.A.'s Dr. Dre produced his own anti-violence record. The West Coast rap All-Stars were all in the same gang, sporting an even larger array of luminaries, including pop rappers like Hammer, and early gangsters like EZE. In this East Coast vs West Coast competition, the Westerners were the winners. We're all in the same gang, made the Black singles top 10, and scraped the pop top 40, higher on both charts than the Stop the Violence Movement single. But in a way, both were winners. Both Self Destruction and Same Gang were certified gold, at a time when retailers were still under-reporting rap sales to Billboard. Appropriately for two singles that are about preventing violence, the rivalry remained friendly. In fact, the most pointed head-to-head rivalry among do-good-or-singles occurred in 1991, in the run-up to the first Persian Gulf War. Two groups of awareness builders rounded up dozens of superstars for a pair of competing singles, both commenting on President George H.W. Bush's military campaign. But their allegiances were a bit muddy. Representing for the anti-war corner were John Lennon's offspring, actual child Sean Ono Lennon, and self-styled child Lenny Kravitz, with an all-star version of Dad's Anthem Give Piece of Chance. Co-organized by Yoko Ono's and credited to The Piece Choir, the new single featured more than 40 eclectic acts, from MC Hammer to Axel Rose to Peter Gabriel to Iggy Pop to Michael McDonald. The recording also sported an all-new set of verse lyrics, some fine singing, and an almost unlistenable pile-up of stitched-together vocals. Give Piece of Chance 1991 was the logical end product of years of post-bandaid singles that loaded up on solo star turns. Practically every singer gets a single line or even half a line. It would be nice to report that Piece 1991 has aged well, but Adam Ants' gene overalls in the video say it all, and in the other corner was the pro-troupes if not quite pro-war voices that care, by a group also calling itself voices that care. Produced by David Foster, the man behind Canada's Northern Lights a half decade earlier, voices that care is the ultimate product of the early 90s, featuring prominent Michael Bolton vocals and a Kenny G. Saxolo. Determined not to offend, voices that care featured more non-singing luminaries than usual, and its politics were vague enough that famous lefties like Sally Field and Wuppie Goldberg could vocalize alongside conservatives like Wayne Gretzky without anyone harming their public profile. As for the rivalry between the songs, no one from the Piece Choir's Give Piece of Chance reappeared on voices that care other than a probably confused little Richard who did both. The two singles debuted on the charts literally a week apart in March of 1991, which considering Gulf War I hostilities ended in February 1991 made both singles even less eventful. On the charts, Benal and Veig won out over Benal and Groovy. The Piece Choir single petered out at number 54 and was off the hot 100 in a month. Voices that care came just one spot shy of the top 10, peaking at number 11, and it hung in just shy of four months and went gold. If Piece vs Voices proved anything, it was that at the dawn of the 1990s, the charity mega-single had gone from resilient fad to self-perpetuating cliche. It was a fat enough comedic target that a January 1992 Simpsons episode titled Radio Bart took dead aim. Sting cameoed alongside Krusty the Clown on the imagined benefit single "We're Sending Our Love Down the Well." It was both a well-executed parody. Krusty's yowling counterpoint vocals are a savage touch. But it was also a pointed critique. Simpsons showrunner Mike Reese later revealed in a DVD commentary that their parody was inspired not just by We Are the World, but more specifically by Voices that care and the apparent meaninglessness of its pro-troops "Late to the War" lyrics. This Simpsons musical charity parody premiered on TV the same week in 1992 Nirvana topped the Billboard album chart. Indeed, the decade of irony would not be kind to the earnest superstar mega-single. The form essentially went into hibernation and near-extinction for the rest of the decade. It only briefly re-emerged in 2001, right around 9/11, in the form of a cover of Marvin Gaye's What's Going On, produced by Jermaine Dupri and executive produced by Bond. Recorded before the 9/11 attacks and originally meant to benefit AIDS research, the single was later shared with the Red Cross in the wake of the attacks. Boasting such mega-stars as Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, In Sink, Missy Elliott, Naaz, Gwen Stefani, and Jennifer Lopez, what's going on barely scraped Billboard's top 30 and sold poorly. The shift in the song's beneficiary was telling. Now, the actual mission of a charity record was less important than its very existence. Eight years later, when the original team behind We Are the World, Ken Craygan and Lionel Richey decided to mount a new version of the single, they were motivated largely by the song's 25th anniversary. Only after a magnitude 7.0 earthquake devastated Haiti in January 2010, did the new version of We Are the World have a point. The new single was titled We Are the World 25 for Haiti, and it led off with vocals by Justin Bieber and the pussycat doll's Nicole Scherzinger, as well as an awkward Will I Am rap break. The song made an explosive debut on the Hot 100, all the way up at number two, higher than the original We Are the World debuted in 1985. However, that debut was a bit of a mirage, fueled almost entirely by downloads. We Are the World 25 was the first major charity single of the iTunes era, and with digital sales now incorporated into the Hot 100, the single's opening week was propelled by a quarter million in first week downloads, to the kind-hearted and civic-minded, and probably an army of rabid believers. We Are the World 25 for Haiti generated little radio airplay, and the song was off the Hot 100 within a month. More than three decades after the original We Are the World, no single has matched its combination of zeitgeist and vocation, and none has matched do they know its Christmas for sticky persistence, including the three remakes Bob Geldoff later produced in future years, all of which briefly topped the British charts, but none of which is regularly played on the radio. In America, do they know its Christmas took a back seat to We Are the World on the charts 32 years ago? But in the present day, the two songs have reversed positions. Band-aid is now the perennial radio gold. According to Neilson Radio, We Are the World does decently as an oldie. Last year, terrestrial U.S. radio played World nearly 400 times nationwide. But do they know its Christmas? It was played a staggering 19,900 times in 2016 alone. And those nearly 20,000 plays are all concentrated into the last two months of the year. This is no surprise. For the last decade, Billboard has published a special holiday airplay chart, and do they know its Christmas makes the list every year? Some years, it even reaches Billboard's Holiday Top 10 alongside the likes of Jingle Bell Rock and Feliz Navidad. Will anyone in the modern era of streaming music and digital hits attempt anything on the scale of these two singles again? Maybe not for charity. If the 2010 edition of We Are the World for Haiti is any indication, matching a moving cause to a moving song is difficult in our fractured media landscape. In 2017, the closest thing to a multi-artist mega-single on the radio is led not by Quincy Jones, but by rap producer DJ Khaled, whose summer smash I'm the One credits no less than five artists, himself, chance the rapper, Lil Wayne, Quavo, and most prominently, our era's most ubiquitous hitmaker Justin Bieber. In the 1980s, critics complained that the charity mega-single was more about the Western recording artists committing their time and their pipes than it was about the beneficiaries of their good intentions. But on "I'm the One," the song is literally about the singers. DJ Khaled's hit might as well be called "I Am the World." As for We Are the World, with its modest perennial airplay, it is enjoyed today mostly by 1980s nostalgiaists and lovers of bygone pop culture. But it's also a rousing sing-along. When the song closed live 832 years ago, the cameras in Philadelphia showed thousands of concert goers at JFK Stadium singing along. These days, the only man regularly revisiting We Are the World in public is the man who co-wrote it, Lionel Richey. When performing the song he co-wrote with his dear departed friend Michael Jackson, Richey must sing the entire lead vocal by himself. Fortunately, he also gets some help from a few thousand friends. I hope you enjoyed this episode of "Hit Parade." My producer is Chris Baroube. The executive producer of Slate Podcasts is Steve Licktie. Panoply's chief content officer is Andy Bauer's. Check out their entire roster of podcasts at panoply.fm. A housekeeping note. We are taking the month of August off and coming back with more Hit Parade goodness in the fall. Thanks to the many of you who've told us via Twitter and email, you enjoy the show and you want to hear more. We plan to come back stronger after our late summer break. Thanks for listening and I look forward to leading the Hit Parade back your way. Until then, keep on marching on the one. I'm Chris Maleff. [Music]