11 February 2010
The ’10s was the decade when Haiti replaced Angola in our comfortable, condescending worldview as the most woe-begotten place on Earth. Years of brutal repression under the Duvaliers and their Tonton Macoute, coupled with huge external debt, had left the country politically and economically precarious, so Haiti was particularly ill-equipped for the massive earthquake that struck it in January 2010. The immediate natural disaster segued into a persistent humanitarian catastrophe. One of the contemporary responses in the UK was this charity record to raise funds for supplies and relief.
I’m not a fan of REM or their original ‘Everybody Hurts’. This charity version is essentially the same REM arrangement with guest vocalists, so it doesn’t move the needle either way for me. Thankfully, the participants—a mix of boybands, UK TV talent show alumni and random superstars like Mariah and Kylie—keep their contributions restrained, with the exception of the ever-dreadful Jon Bon Jovi showboating in the mid section. I get how the in-built feels and climactic swell of ‘Everybody Hurts’ make it almost purpose-built for charity projects like this, and the money it raised did undoubted good for real fellow human beings in appalling trouble. I’d just prefer if our collective public response to the catastrophic suffering of others included some shared outrage and political action at how whole countries can be made so systemically vulnerable in the first place. Instead, we merely sigh performatively via the medium of Westlife cooing at the people of Haiti to “hold on” as if our experience of hurt could possibly compare to theirs.
