Now, the charity record is a noble beast. A group of musicians coming together to create something that will make someone’s life better somehow. It’s just a pity that so many of them are so dull – contestants from reality TV shows rehashing old classics in a more soulful way. And every so often, there’s a charity single that crosses the border from mediocre to bad…and that’s what we’re looking at here.
The natural home of the novelty single is Britain, where the 1980s and 1990s were peppered with frequent collaborations between bands and comedy acts to produce cover versions that made you want to peel your ears off. If you’re not from Britain, you may never have heard of some of the efforts here…but listen to them at your peril!
10. Band Aid 20 – Do They Know It’s Christmas?
The original Band Aid single in 1984 was the first huge charity single and it was a good one – the most famous names of the day, singing an anthemic tune that really made a difference. But the second version in 1989 was a bland, shiny effort by the Stock, Aitken and Waterman artists and the 2004 version (Band Aid 20) was blander still, featuring singers like “someone who used to be in All Saints” and “someone who used to be in S Club 7”.
The atmosphere surrounding the recording hardly evoked the charitable intentions of the original either, with Bono and Justin Hawkins (The Darkness) squabbling over who got to sing the line “Tonight thank God it’s them instead of you.” If that wasn’t all bad enough, they also got Dizzee Rascal to add a rap over the top. An insult to the name of Band Aid.
9. Pat and Mick – Use It Up and Wear It Out
A typically British affair, this single was fronted by radio “personalities” Pat Sharp and Mick Brown. They covered the disco classic, originally by Odyssey, and Stock, Aitken and Waterman (they turn up a lot, it seems) turned it into a pop-tastic dance tune. The song was fairly awful, but it was the music video that made it truly terrible – mullet-ed Pat and cheesy Mick dancing around with huge grins on their faces, flanked by dancers in typically tasteful 1990-era clothes. (For those not in the know, fashion in 1990 was just like the 80s…but worse) And don’t even get me started on Mick’s suggestive finger-waggling. Still, it raised some money for “Help a London Child”, so it was probably worth it…
8. Shane Richie – I’m Your Man
And there’s more cheesiness next, with TV presenter Shane Richie turning his hand to the world of music, with this 2003 offering. Originally a Wham! hit, it featured Richie posing in George Michael-fashion, slicking down his eyebrow with his finger. It wasn’t funny enough to be a parody or musical enough to be a serious cover version…yet it somehow got to number 2. Maybe because it was raising money for Children in Need, which is a huge charity in the UK. Maybe because Shane Richie has a long-running part in Eastenders, also huge in the UK. But however much money it raised, no-one could pretend that this added anything good to the music world!
7. Patsy Palmer & Sid Owen – Better Believe It
Eight years before Shane Richie released his single, other Eastenders actors were attempting to bother the charts in the name of charity. The actors in question were Patsy Palmer and Sid Owen, who had played on-off lovers Bianca and Ricky. Bianca was chiefly known for her foghorn-like, piercing voice so it was somewhat alarming when that same voice was wrapping itself around a schmaltzy ballad (along with obligatory video of small children looking sad and/or less sad than they used to be before Patsy & Sid’s intervention). Not even the 4 remixes on the single (including the karaoke version, and the intriguing-sounding “Eat Your handbag” mix) could help push sales, and it stalled at number 60 in the charts. It didn’t stop Sid Owen trying again, and he hit number 14 in 2000 with “Good Thing Going”.
6. Northern Lights – Tears Are Not Enough
It’s not just the Brits that produce cheesy charity records. While the mammoth Band-Aid effort was tailing off after its huge sales of Christmas 1984, this Canadian version popped up. Same idea – assemble the big names of the day (by Canadian standards) and use images of the Ethopian famine in the music video. But it’s just a bit rubbish, from the spoken-word intro to the 80s synth drenching everything. Not even the renowned Joni Mitchell could save it, musically speaking. But it did raise $3.2million for famine relief, so it’s hard to be too dismissive of it. Interestingly, many of the names who sang on it were known as actors rather than musicians – Eugene Levy, John Candy and Catherine O’Hara among others. Eugene Leve and Catherine O’Hara would later sing together again in the 2003 film “A Mighty Wind“.
5. Westlife – Uptown Girl
Back to the UK for another cover version that left fans of the original clutching their ears in despair. “Uptown Girl” was an unchallenging, easy to listen to but joyous hit for Billy Joel. The Westlife version was boy-band shiny and took the grit out of the original with their sanitized harmonies. The music video added on some kind of skit at the beginning – featuring Notting Hill actor Tim McInnerny among others – which made the English look like caviar-swilling idiots, while the plucky Irish lads were the cool kids (although they were working in an American diner, so maybe they were meant to be American?). Claudia Schiffer also appeared, as the titular girl who ends up walking off with the boys (of course). Crimes against music didn’t seem to bother Westlife’s massive fanbase, who bought shedloads of copies sending it to number one straight away. Luckily, Comic Relief benefited from it all!
4. Wet Wet Wet – With a Little Help From My Friends
Now, this 1988 single for Childline starts as a pleasant enough cover of the Beatles’ classic – a little bland, but nothing much to complain about. Then, at around a minute in, the band get a little overconfident, and start adding in some extra bits. It starts at the end of the middle 8, where the last line magically turns into “I need somebody to love-ove-to-love-ove-to-love”. If I’d owned the vinyl, I think I would have assumed it was skipping at that point. But it gets worse, as they descend into the kind of vocal gymnastics normally performed by the likes of Mariah Carey. The original melody is not so much lost at sea as packaged up and thrown overboard with a grin. Again, not one for purists…
3. Stop The Violence – Self-Destruction
This 1989 single is for another noble cause – stopping the violence that frequently erupted between rap fans – but the music was the kind of corny pop-rap made popular by Will Smith, and it featured such cringe-worthy rhyming couplets as “Not negative cause the way we live is positive/
We don’t kill our relatives” It was a worthy effort to try and stop black-on-black crime, but a song wasn’t going to help sort out a complicated and long-running history of rap violence and it rumbled on into the 90s – only it would soon become the hip-hop stars that were dying rather than just the fans….
2. Gareth Gates and the Kumars – Spirit in the Sky
On a lighter note, here’s more Comic Relief silliness, featuring a comedy act and a pop star in cringe-inducing crossover. In 2003, it was “Pop Idol” runner-up Gareth Gates who took his turn to release a Comic Relief single, along with the cast members of Asian comedy show “The Kumars at No 42”. The result was a cover of “Spirit in the Sky”, complete with Bollywood dancers and Indian-tinged music. It’s hard to say what exactly makes this quite so bad – whether it’s the religious clash between Asian images and a song that references Jesus, or just once again that an interesting song has had all the edge taken out of it by a smooth popstar. Whatever it was, the bad acting and Gareth’s “comedy hair” in the video certainly didn’t help…
1. Hale and Pace – The Stonk
But the ultimate bad charity song award has to go to the 1991 Comic Relief song, as performed by two mediocre comedians, way past their best. The comedians were Hale & Pace, and the song was “The Stonk”. It wasn’t just a song, it was a dance. You did the Stonk to the rhythm of the…honky tonk…before sticking a red nose on your “conk” (a little-used British word for nose)..and so on. It was a sensation with the schoolchildren of Britain and as such is a natural contender for one of the most irritating songs of all time. It has to be heard to be believed but it reached number one and raised £100,000 for Comic Relief and endures in the memory of anyone who ever had to hear that “ooh stonky-stonky” outro, before being asked “why be a plonker when you can be a stonker?” A classic example of a terrible charity song.