Date: Jan 18, 1986
Weeks: 4
I'm not why this song is credited to "Dionne & Friends," other than that perhaps the 1980s wasn't quite ready to handle "Dionne Warwick featuring Elton John, Gladys Knight, and Stevie Wonder." I really loathe this song. It's like a blander version of "We Are The World" (#566). I was originally going to say "but without being for a cause," but a quick glance at Wikipedia reveals this song's proceeds benefited AIDS research. Even so, everyone involved deserved a better song than this. With 3 very talented singers, plus Dionne Warwick, you would think the results would have been better.
Something about Dionne Warwick's voice bugs me. She sounds insincere and unspontaneous and overly practiced. I admit that if you put her in the right song, the problems I have with her voice are minimized somewhat. But this song is not the right song.
The song's biggest problem is that it's so gentle, so synthesized, and so light that it sounds like a karaoke song. It sounds like the 8-bit adaptation of itself. There's almost nothing organic and natural about the music. I'm sure there's real sax, piano, drums, and even light guitar involved here, but they are so slight that they might as well me synthesized. Oh, but I do like the harmonica okay.
The next biggest problem is that while the music is too gentle, Stevie Wonder, Elton John, and Gladys Knight are overdoing it. These are three very talented singers, but they are completely overpowering the music. It's a terrible match. Part of me wonders if they thought they were going to be performing this song over another, much better instrumental accompaniment. To be fair, Dionne Warwick's performance does match the music. And the song does seem a bit warmer whenever she is singing.
The lyrics are so padded out I almost expect to find styrofoam peanuts in them. They're just a little too warm and cheesy and full of casual use of the word "love" for me. "Keep smiling, keep shining." The smiling part is fine, but the "shining" part is filler, with no context to explain it. I suppose I must concede that the lyrics make a bit more sense with the AIDS context, if you imagine this is a conversation between two friends, one of whom is dying from disease. Still, that meaning isn't exactly explained within the song. Overall, the lyrics are fine, I guess, but they are so bland and generally devoid of meaning that I don't care for them.
My verdict: Don't like it. It's obviously trying to imitate "We Are The World," which wasn't a very good song itself, but it can't even live up to that standard.
Well-played harmonic adds an element of awesome to most things.
ReplyDeleteIn that video, they look they're just faking at having a good time, not actually having one.