Post by Prole Hole on Nov 8, 2015 9:33:51 GMT -5
Hatesong: Toto - "Africa"
Fictional Interviewer: So why pick "Africa"?
PH: Oh, because it's awful.
Fictional Interviewer: Perhaps a little more specifically...?
PH: Because it's really, really awful?
Fictional Interviewer: *sighs* Because...?
PH: Well, if music exists for something, for anything, it should I think be to provoke a reaction from the listener. Sometimes that reaction will be something as simple as wanting to get up and dance, sometimes it will be something of devastating emotional complexity, sometimes it will just make you smile. Whatever. The type of reaction music prompts isn't the issue, it's much more that it should just prompt something. Genre isn't important, style isn't important, reaction is. That is, to me, the essence of what music is for. "Africa", then, is pretty much the binary opposite of what music is, because it commits the single worst sin any piece of music can commit. It's boring. Really, brain-crushingly, time-stretchingly, pointlessly, achingly boring. Even just hearing those first three chords on that organ - an organ sound that even the staunchest and most joyless of Puritan ministers might suggest needs brightening up a little - is enough to induce torpor. Already my eyes are getting heavy just thinking about it. It's Just. So. Dull. If the music is so tedious as to actively remove the listener from wanting to hear it, what chance does it have to succeed as a piece, and what point is there to its existence?
Fictional Interviewer: Isn't there an argument that in provoking boredom from you it's still producing a reaction? Boredom is a reaction too, even if it's not a positive one.
PH: You could argue that, but only if you think that the song was setting out to intentionally generate that response in the first place, and it clearly isn't. Not that the reaction a song provokes needs to be the specific one the writer was going for, but there needs to be some kind of reaction, and for boredom to be that reaction it needs to be something you specifically aim for. There are examples of what you mean - Pet Shop Boys "Being Boring", for example, is basically a boring song about being boring, but it's able to square the circle by clearly setting out its stall in the first place. It's engaging with boredom as a concept then trying to analyse it from a lyrical perspective ("We were never being boring / we were never being bored") in addition to its ruminations on the devastation of the AIDS crisis. It's actually about something, there's a purpose to it, and a function. It's not their greatest work or anything, but it's a song with a specific conceit and it follows through on that. "Africa" does not have that - it's just utterly uninspiring. This article might be called "Hatesong" but in fact "Africa" is almost too dull to even garner much anger towards it. I can reel of a list of Phil Collins songs that I despise more than "Africa" but at least they're generating a response, albeit not the one Mr Collins is presumably going for. The reason for choosing "Africa" is not because it provokes an extreme of anger or hate, but because it really, genuinely represents the opposite of music for me.
Fictional Interviewer: So what makes it quite such an act of tedium?
PH: Well, the 80s production doesn't help, obviously. Everything is mixed horribly - it sounds like it was recorded inside a biscuit tin, shallow, cheap and tacky without that ever being the point of the song. That organ. Oh Rassilon, that organ. The NHS could save a fortune on anaesthetic by just playing that song to patients until they pass out (though the down side is they may never want wake up again). David Paich's vocals are either too quiet (the verses), too loud (the overly-effusive, self-important, fussy chorus), but never come close to being at the actual right volume, another symptom of poor production. The single version is about four and a half minutes long, which isn't excessive for a mid-80s single, but it feels like so much longer. Apparently there's a seven minute extended version of the track, which scarcely bears thinking about - it must feel like about a decade slips past listening to it, some kind of musical time-wormhole. And...
Fictional Interviewer: Ok, yes, I think we've covered that bit. Other things that make is so bad?
PH: Well to be honest, I've always thought it felt somewhat exploitative, and I'm old enough to remember it being released the first time round. Africa was a big subject in the 80s, and quite rightly so, but this song has nothing to say about Africa itself whatsoever, despite straining to do so. It references it. It uses imagery from the continent, though often in the most hilariously clumsy way possible: sample lyric, "As sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti / I seek to cure what's deep inside", which sounds less like someone trying to express the sheer depths of raw emotion and more like they have a tapeworm. But it's not meaningfully about Africa at all, it's just uses borrowed iconography to try and strain for meaning the lyric itself can't convey. The repetitious chorus, "I bless the rains down in Africa" just sounds patronising, and the more often it's repeated (which is a lot), the more patronising it seems, especially while being sung by the whitest of white sounding voices. Really, there are a lot of singles whose success in the 80s is inexplicable, but this was released in 1982, and became a hit in 1983 on both sides of the Atlantic (a number one hit in the U.S., no less) and still seems pretty difficult to explain.
Fictional Interviewer: How do you account for that then?
PH: How indeed? It's baffling. I mean, it's not like anyone looks at the 80s and thinks of them as a pinnacle of good taste - quite the reverse - and if you look at the UK charts for the week "Africa" peaked (it reached Number 3) there's a lot of fairly terrible music. The Number 1 slot is held by perennial 80's punchline Kajagoogoo with "Too Shy", and in the top twenty we also have such deathless works of art as Men At Work's "Down Under" and Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse Of The Heart" (oh, and "Wham Rap" is in there too. When "Wham Rap" proves to be more political than a song called "Africa" you know you're doing something wrong). None of them are great songs, though Our Bonnie at least provides a camp classic for the ages. But there's some decent stuff in the mix too. The number two position is "Billie Jean". The number twenty position is the glorious "Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)". Fun Boy Three are at Number 11 and Madness are at Number 9! And wedged in there, like the boredom filling of a musical sandwich, is "Africa". Still, "Africa" is indescribably bland, and so is Kajagoogoo and, one amusing lyrical aside excepted, so are Men At Work, so maybe really boring stuff was in during 1983? In the U.S. "Africa" kept Men At Work off the Number 1 spot for the first week, then Men At Work took it, so it's not an unreasonable conclusion to reach.
Fictional Interviewer: Are the charts any indication of anything though?
PH: Well they're an indication of what sold. Clearly. Obviously there's no meaningful correlation between popularity and quality, otherwise we'd have to regard the Tellytubbies as one of the most significant recording artists of the 1990s simply off the back of them scoring a number one hit (though in honestly I'd rather listen to "Tellytubbies Say Eh-Oh" a hundred times than suffer through "Africa" again). But if they are of any use then it's probably more as an indicator of broads trends than of specifics, and what that list of singles above shows is that there's a clear dividing line between the types of singles which are successful in early 1983, with a fairly even split between what we would call "quality" artists (Eurythmics, Fun Boy Three, Madness, Michael Jackson) and the sort of vaguely-remembered-but-bland hits that prop up endless I-Love-The-80s-type TV nostalgia shows (Bonnie Tyler, Kajagoogoo, Men At Work and, yes, Toto). Obviously there was a market for whatever trend it is "Africa" represents. A boring, boring trend. I would like to think/hope this trend has passed. I most certainly hope so.
Fictional Interviewer: Any final thoughts?
PH: I have spent far too long thinking about this song. Without the benefit of wine, no less, something I am now going to correct.
Fictional Interviewer: So why pick "Africa"?
PH: Oh, because it's awful.
Fictional Interviewer: Perhaps a little more specifically...?
PH: Because it's really, really awful?
Fictional Interviewer: *sighs* Because...?
PH: Well, if music exists for something, for anything, it should I think be to provoke a reaction from the listener. Sometimes that reaction will be something as simple as wanting to get up and dance, sometimes it will be something of devastating emotional complexity, sometimes it will just make you smile. Whatever. The type of reaction music prompts isn't the issue, it's much more that it should just prompt something. Genre isn't important, style isn't important, reaction is. That is, to me, the essence of what music is for. "Africa", then, is pretty much the binary opposite of what music is, because it commits the single worst sin any piece of music can commit. It's boring. Really, brain-crushingly, time-stretchingly, pointlessly, achingly boring. Even just hearing those first three chords on that organ - an organ sound that even the staunchest and most joyless of Puritan ministers might suggest needs brightening up a little - is enough to induce torpor. Already my eyes are getting heavy just thinking about it. It's Just. So. Dull. If the music is so tedious as to actively remove the listener from wanting to hear it, what chance does it have to succeed as a piece, and what point is there to its existence?
Fictional Interviewer: Isn't there an argument that in provoking boredom from you it's still producing a reaction? Boredom is a reaction too, even if it's not a positive one.
PH: You could argue that, but only if you think that the song was setting out to intentionally generate that response in the first place, and it clearly isn't. Not that the reaction a song provokes needs to be the specific one the writer was going for, but there needs to be some kind of reaction, and for boredom to be that reaction it needs to be something you specifically aim for. There are examples of what you mean - Pet Shop Boys "Being Boring", for example, is basically a boring song about being boring, but it's able to square the circle by clearly setting out its stall in the first place. It's engaging with boredom as a concept then trying to analyse it from a lyrical perspective ("We were never being boring / we were never being bored") in addition to its ruminations on the devastation of the AIDS crisis. It's actually about something, there's a purpose to it, and a function. It's not their greatest work or anything, but it's a song with a specific conceit and it follows through on that. "Africa" does not have that - it's just utterly uninspiring. This article might be called "Hatesong" but in fact "Africa" is almost too dull to even garner much anger towards it. I can reel of a list of Phil Collins songs that I despise more than "Africa" but at least they're generating a response, albeit not the one Mr Collins is presumably going for. The reason for choosing "Africa" is not because it provokes an extreme of anger or hate, but because it really, genuinely represents the opposite of music for me.
Fictional Interviewer: So what makes it quite such an act of tedium?
PH: Well, the 80s production doesn't help, obviously. Everything is mixed horribly - it sounds like it was recorded inside a biscuit tin, shallow, cheap and tacky without that ever being the point of the song. That organ. Oh Rassilon, that organ. The NHS could save a fortune on anaesthetic by just playing that song to patients until they pass out (though the down side is they may never want wake up again). David Paich's vocals are either too quiet (the verses), too loud (the overly-effusive, self-important, fussy chorus), but never come close to being at the actual right volume, another symptom of poor production. The single version is about four and a half minutes long, which isn't excessive for a mid-80s single, but it feels like so much longer. Apparently there's a seven minute extended version of the track, which scarcely bears thinking about - it must feel like about a decade slips past listening to it, some kind of musical time-wormhole. And...
Fictional Interviewer: Ok, yes, I think we've covered that bit. Other things that make is so bad?
PH: Well to be honest, I've always thought it felt somewhat exploitative, and I'm old enough to remember it being released the first time round. Africa was a big subject in the 80s, and quite rightly so, but this song has nothing to say about Africa itself whatsoever, despite straining to do so. It references it. It uses imagery from the continent, though often in the most hilariously clumsy way possible: sample lyric, "As sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti / I seek to cure what's deep inside", which sounds less like someone trying to express the sheer depths of raw emotion and more like they have a tapeworm. But it's not meaningfully about Africa at all, it's just uses borrowed iconography to try and strain for meaning the lyric itself can't convey. The repetitious chorus, "I bless the rains down in Africa" just sounds patronising, and the more often it's repeated (which is a lot), the more patronising it seems, especially while being sung by the whitest of white sounding voices. Really, there are a lot of singles whose success in the 80s is inexplicable, but this was released in 1982, and became a hit in 1983 on both sides of the Atlantic (a number one hit in the U.S., no less) and still seems pretty difficult to explain.
Fictional Interviewer: How do you account for that then?
PH: How indeed? It's baffling. I mean, it's not like anyone looks at the 80s and thinks of them as a pinnacle of good taste - quite the reverse - and if you look at the UK charts for the week "Africa" peaked (it reached Number 3) there's a lot of fairly terrible music. The Number 1 slot is held by perennial 80's punchline Kajagoogoo with "Too Shy", and in the top twenty we also have such deathless works of art as Men At Work's "Down Under" and Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse Of The Heart" (oh, and "Wham Rap" is in there too. When "Wham Rap" proves to be more political than a song called "Africa" you know you're doing something wrong). None of them are great songs, though Our Bonnie at least provides a camp classic for the ages. But there's some decent stuff in the mix too. The number two position is "Billie Jean". The number twenty position is the glorious "Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)". Fun Boy Three are at Number 11 and Madness are at Number 9! And wedged in there, like the boredom filling of a musical sandwich, is "Africa". Still, "Africa" is indescribably bland, and so is Kajagoogoo and, one amusing lyrical aside excepted, so are Men At Work, so maybe really boring stuff was in during 1983? In the U.S. "Africa" kept Men At Work off the Number 1 spot for the first week, then Men At Work took it, so it's not an unreasonable conclusion to reach.
Fictional Interviewer: Are the charts any indication of anything though?
PH: Well they're an indication of what sold. Clearly. Obviously there's no meaningful correlation between popularity and quality, otherwise we'd have to regard the Tellytubbies as one of the most significant recording artists of the 1990s simply off the back of them scoring a number one hit (though in honestly I'd rather listen to "Tellytubbies Say Eh-Oh" a hundred times than suffer through "Africa" again). But if they are of any use then it's probably more as an indicator of broads trends than of specifics, and what that list of singles above shows is that there's a clear dividing line between the types of singles which are successful in early 1983, with a fairly even split between what we would call "quality" artists (Eurythmics, Fun Boy Three, Madness, Michael Jackson) and the sort of vaguely-remembered-but-bland hits that prop up endless I-Love-The-80s-type TV nostalgia shows (Bonnie Tyler, Kajagoogoo, Men At Work and, yes, Toto). Obviously there was a market for whatever trend it is "Africa" represents. A boring, boring trend. I would like to think/hope this trend has passed. I most certainly hope so.
Fictional Interviewer: Any final thoughts?
PH: I have spent far too long thinking about this song. Without the benefit of wine, no less, something I am now going to correct.
