There's nothing like a charity single for making musicians pull together – as long as they're American. The lineup that recorded We are the World 25 Years for Haiti in LA this week is impressive no matter how you look at it. Proper legends – Brian Wilson, Tony Bennett, Gladys Knight – appeared with young guns like Kanye West, Pink and Lil' Wayne. No matter how wretched the music (Celine Dion is involved, so expect, at the least, crescendo after raging crescendo), that's a premium-rate cast.
And the British effort? Not so premium. If the "official" British single, a cover of REM's Everybody Hurts, appears to have been made by people who've come straight from the X Factor green room, that's because they have. Virtually every artist on the single, from anomalous Americans (Mariah Carey, Miley Cyrus) to pop heavies (Kylie, Robbie Williams, Take That) to actual X Factor winners (Lewis, Burke, McElderry) is associated with Simon Cowell's evil empire. Cowell himself masterminded the single, which will be released Monday.
So there you are: the UK music industry's response to a shattering natural disaster. America musters some of its greatest pop names; the British turn to reality TV. Where are the Brits who would have given the thing some gravitas? Radiohead, Dizzee Rascal, Arctic Monkeys, Damon Albarn, even Coldplay? All are big enough to sell records, none are averse to charity work, and their presence would have saved Everybody Hurts from the horrors inflicted on it by two dozen quiveringly compassionate reality stars.
But Dizzee, Radiohead and co aren't about to work with Simon Cowell, are they? Even if he'd asked, and he probably didn't, they would have almost certainly refused. All right, but why didn't they phone him and offer their services? Two reasons, I suggest. One is that they bridled at the idea of covering Everybody Hurts. It's a song about empathy, but the idea of saying, in effect, "We understand how Haitians feel", is repellent. (Having said that, you can understand why Cowell chose it – reality stars absolutely adore songs with a universal message, and in this case they're ramming home the message whether it fits or not.)
The second reason is that working with Cowell, whose musical values are so different from their own, would have been anathema. Where the American artists left notions of coolness behind and mucked in together – respect for project organiser Quincy Jones undoubtedly had a lot to do with that – things are different on this side of the Atlantic. If the question of contributing to the Cowell single had come up, would Radiohead et al have been able to silence the little voice inside that squealed "Uncool! No! No!"? I'd imagine not. A pity: how amazing would it have been – in every sense of the word – to see Polly Harvey harmonising with Susan Boyle, Dizzee leading the choir with Cheryl Cole and Elbow swapping verses with JLS?
