I feel like I do when a beloved celebrity dies. While looking for images to use as a thumbnail for this article, I did an image search for "We Are The World," and was horrified to learn that they remade the song sometime in the last decade or 2 for earthquake victims in Haiti. You mean, they sang it.... twice? "We Are The World" is the original celebrity virtue signal. Dozens of smiling A-listers posturing for the camera while singing one of the worst songs ever written. Rest in peace, Norm MacDonald. Heartbreaking.
Why is it one of the worst songs ever written? Because it breaks the most important rule of songwriting:
Songs with the most widespread appeal are written for an audience of one.
Like all artistic rules, it's more of a guideline than a rule. You don't have to follow it. Like all artistic rules, it exists to be broken, and it has been. Thousands of times. Narrative storytelling songs, fight songs, materialistic ego-tripping street poems, fake religious music, real religious music, drug music, national anthems, political songs, protest songs, the furious solid-state demon puke of the various submetals, all these categories and more contain impersonal songs that appeal to large numbers of people, and which will appeal to large numbers of people for decades. That isn't the question. The question is, are these songs dated, or timeless? Time will tell. But in the vast urban sprawl of songwriting styles, each with a different zip code, language, and selection of acceptable hairstyles, the rule stands regardless:
The most timeless songs are written for an audience of one.
It's an ironclad rule, more or less. The reason "We Are The World" is so bad is because it actually patronizes and attempts to manufacture its audience. It is making an actual effort to appeal to the entire world. And even though it appears "loving" on the surface, it's only loving in the way that fake Christian music is loving. Which is to say, it is loving in the most egomaniacal, self-centered sense. It sounds loving, but it's actually commanding the audience to submit to it. The question begged by the fake sentiment expressed in the song is actually a sideways, passive-aggressive threat. If "we are the world," then who the hell are you?
You're one of us, right? Or are you some kind of misanthropic troll? A leper? An untouchable? One of them?
The horror.
It beats its audience over the head with platitudes and mediocrity and warnings to comply or else. It sounds like a shout of solidarity with dying children, but like fake Christian music that sounds like it's about Jesus but is really about the ego of the songwriter, that's not what it is at all. It's actually a passive threat. It screams between the lines: You're part of the world, aren't you? You don't think you're better than us, do you? Because if you do, we will impose our will on you by exiling you to the outer darkness, which is totally humble and not self-righteous at all. We're saying something undeniably positive, therefore it is above reproach. Who would disagree? Do you think you're not part of the world? Who do you think you are?
This is an artistic sin of the highest order. Not only is it incredibly condescending, but as a method used to achieve a halfway decent song, it fails completely. No artist worth their salt is actually trying to tell the audience to align themselves with the sentiment expressed in their work. That's what content is for. I do it on occasion in this blog. But never in song.
Never.
The artist isn't concerned with audience response. The artist isn't thinking about how people will receive his or her work. The artist is concerned with only one thing:
Expressing his or her own individual experience as accurately and honestly as possible. Especially honestly. Accuracy takes craft (and therefore time), but honesty can be dumb, instantaneous, and brilliant.
It doesn't have to be big. Probably, the smaller the sentiment, the more personal, quirky, and maybe even embarrassing it is, the more likely it will be to resonate with greater numbers of people.
And this can never be the goal. The goal can only ever be:
Tell the truth.
Tell it slant, if you like, but tell the truth nevertheless. Not your truth. The truth. The "your truth" crowd is drunk on a spiritually-diluted delusion. They get super wasted on half a glass of 3% beer from Utah. Avoid that self-consuming scene. It's pure ego, and has no place in art. Get out of your own way if you have to, but tell the truth.
And if you become Miles Davis or Picasso, 2 of the most brilliant, least-humble people to ever have lived, it will only be because you have earned it.
Your ego will not be the starting point. Unless, of course, you're content with being a content creator.
What's more universal, "We Are The World," or John Lennon's "God?" Even as a Christian, this song which openly rejects Christ (among many other things), is infinitely more relatable to me personally, than anything sung by a pack of famous wolves with gleaming teeth.
Because it's true. Even if it isn't strictly true.
You know what I mean?
Tell all the truth but tell it slant—
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind—
Emily Dickinson
