Seems every time there's a tragedy, emergency or awareness of a good cause needs to be heightened, there are artistes prepared to give their time and talent to write, sing on and/or produce a charity song to help promote that cause. We can all laugh about how terrible and cheesy and twee these singles often turn out to be, but it's easy to laugh (fun, too!) when you're not actually doing anything to help.
So, in tribute to those who do what they can to make a difference, and often get ridiculed for it, or accused of just trying to raise a flagging public profile or promote a new album, we'll be featuring here some of the better charity singles that have been released down the years.
We all know of “Do they know it's Christmas”, of course, and its American counterpart, the somewhat superior in ways “We are the world”, but did you know that those guys north of the US border did their bit for famine relief too? Yeah, back in 1985 Canadian giants like David Foster, Bryan Adams and Jim Vallance got together under the name of "Northern Lights" and wrote “Tears are not enough”, pulling in big names like Gordon Lightfoot, Anne Murray, Joni Mitchell, Dan Hill, Neil Young, Geddy Lee and Bruce Cockburn, among others, to record and release their version of Band Aid.
As most of these songs are, it's commercial, deriviative and somewhat cringeworthy, but considering they went to the trouble of recording it the least you can do is listen to it once. It's not as bad as some, I can tell you. Video is below, with the obligatory “making of” video beside it.
Northern Lights --- “Tears are not enough” --- 1985
Music by David Foster and Jim Vallance, Lyric by Jim Vallance and Bryan Adams.