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25 years ago, on January 28, 1985, more than 45 of America’s best musicians went to a recording studio after the American Music Awards ceremony to record together, under the name “USA for Africa”, one of the most famous humanitarian anthems ever, “We Are The World”.
The song, penned by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie, and produced by Quincy Jones, became the biggest selling single of all time and raised more than $63 million, which allowed USA for Africa to support more than 500 projects and help millions of people in 18 countries in Africa.
Tonight after the Grammy Awards ceremony, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of “We Are The World” and to help the earthquake relief efforts in Haiti, many singers will join together to record a new version of the song, once again conducted by Quincy Jones, who will of course request everyone to “check [their] egos at the door”.
But tonight, it is also our turn to celebrate a song that inspired so many other artists around the world to follow USA for Africa’s example and to get together and sing for the world. This song allowed singers to see they can use their art to make a difference and allowed us to see we can achieve great things for the world when many people join for a cause. It became a natural thing for us to buy a charity song or to go to a relief concert, but it all started with groups like Baid Aid and USA for Africa and it all started with people like Michael Jackson.
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Many of us spent the past decades relying on Michael to heal the world instead of trying to do it by ourselves. And tonight, it is time we pay attention to what Michael wrote in the song “We Are The World”:
“We can’t go on pretending day by day
That someone, somewhere will soon make a change”
This is why I came up with the idea that we can also get together, all around the world, and record our own version of “We Are The World”. We’ll show the world that we don’t need to be famous and we don’t need to rely on famous singers to use music to make a change and save lives. This might be a crazy idea, but we already showed the world that when Michael Jackson fans get together, they can raise thousands of dollars for a cause, as we did for Haiti thanks to “Team Michael”!
“Team Michael” already helped save hundreds of children in Haiti, but just imagine how many more children we could help if we used this song to raise awareness around the world. Imagine if your voice could save a life.
Today, I’m calling all the singers and musicians out there, no matter how old you are or where you’re from, no matter if you’re a Michael Jackson fan or not, no matter if you love to sing alone in your room or you’re part of a band or a choir at school, church or in any other organization, no matter if you’re an accomplished singer or not… you can help!
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Are you ready? Grab a mic, shoot a video of you or your group or choir singing “We Are The World” and send it to Make That Change! We will then edit all videos together to create a unique music video of all your performances and publish it on YouTube and everywhere else! The video will be used to help us raise more funds for Haiti and will hopefully inspire millions of people around the world.
Let’s show the world what “We Are The World” really means, let’s show them that people around the world can get together and sing one song.
If you want to join the project and be part of United for Haiti, please read carefully what’s following.
For this big project, we need:
- Singers - Do you like to sing alone or with your friends? Do you sing in a band or in a choir? Do you perform on stage or just in your room? Then take a camera and film your performance. You can sing the whole song or just the part you’re more comfortable with, even if it’s just one or two lines. The best performances will be chosen to create solo parts and background vocals, like in the original song.
- Musicians - We need musicians to recreate the music of “We Are The World”. If you play in a band, you can try to record an arrangement and send it to us. If you play an instrument, be it the piano or the drums, you can also send your part. You can send it in audio or video format. We’ll use the best musical arrangement or we’ll mix several instrumental sections together if we can’t have a full arrangement made by a single band.
- Translators - Although we ask all participating singers to sing “We Are The World” in English, we would like to subtitle our video with the song lyrics translated in a multitude of languages from all over the world. So if you speak Spanish, German, Japanese, Italian, Arabic, Creole, Dutch, Russian, Greek or any other language, you can help! Just send us your translation of the lyrics. You’ll find the lyrics by clicking here.
IMPORTANT RULES TO FOLLOW:
- Do not alter the lyrics. You must sing the song in English and use the lyrics as they were written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie. You’ll find the lyrics right here.
- Singers and musicians aged 13 years old or younger must ask permission to their parents or legal guardians before taking part in the project. One of your parents or guardians must appear in the video and clearly state that they allow you to take part and they give Make That Change permission to use your video and image. [UPDATE: You can also email us a scan of a handwritten and signed authorization from your parent or guardian]. Minor participants who are older than 13 years old should also make sure their parents or guardians agree to let them participate in the project. For school choirs, the teacher or person responsible must make sure all the participating children are authorized by their parents or guardians. Please don’t participate if your know that your parents/guardians disagree, you don’t want to cause us any legal problem, right?
- Pay attention to the sound quality of your performance. Using the mic integrated in your webcam or filming your band with a cellphone may not be the best thing to do. Use a good microphone and a good camera to record your performance. If recording the sound with your computer, make sure to adjust the settings to obtain the best sound quality. If the sound quality is bad, your performance won’t be selected for the final song.
- Sing a cappella. There is no instrumental version of this song, so we have to remake an instrumental track from scratch (this is why we need musicians). That means we’ll mix your voice on the music so we need to hear only your voice in your video! To stay in tune while you sing, you can play the song in your headphones while your microphone only records your voice.
Now, once you’ve done all that, you can send your video/audio track/translation by email to makethatchange@mjdreams.net
For video and audio files, upload them on megaupload.com and paste the link into your email. For text files, just attach the file to your email.
Also include in your message: your name(s) or the name of your band/school/church/etc., your age, your city and your country.
The deadline to send your contribution is Sunday, February 28, 2010.
Be careful, you only have one month and time goes by fast!
We hope to be able to complete the music video for a release on March 7, 2010, as the original “We Are The World” single was released on that day, 25 years ago.
[IMPORTANT UPDATE: The deadline was pushed back to Sunday, April 25, 2010! Click here for more details.]
The song and video won’t be commercialized but we’ll include the address to our “Team Michael” page at the end of the video to encourage people to donate for the relief efforts in Haiti.
We will also send the video to the Jackson family and Quincy Jones so that they can see how Michael Jackson and “We Are The World” inspired us.
So come and join us in this adventure, and of course, don’t forget to “check your egos at the door”!
To give you some inspiration, here are some great videos of “We Are The World”, including the original music video, Michael Jackson recording his vocals, and two beautiful covers of the song.
Credits: Pictures: MJJ-Online / Lyrics: Steady-Laughing