The Weekly Lostrocity: "Voices That Care"

For me, 1991 was about two things: The Simpsons and shitty music. (I  was 11.) That meant Fox was my friend, mother, secret lover, what with The Simpsons, the lame ’90s hip-hop on In Living Color, and a string of music video premieres right after The Simpsons. The show was the zietgeist, so any video appearing in this slot was important and major, right? No, it was pretty much a Lostrocity Hall of Fame:

• Lesser singles and diminishing returns thereof from Michael Jackson’s Dangerous.
• Videos from The Simpsons Sing the Blues, such as “Do the Bartman” (secretly rewritten by Michael Jackson) and fogettable but slightly more superior “Deep Deep Trouble”
• And this entry’s subject, “Voices That Care.”

“Voices That Care” wanted so desperately to be the next “We Are the World, when it turned out to be the next “Sun City.” For many reasons. First off, the music was even more treacly sweet and hamfisted than “We Are the World,” and the stars B-list compared to the A-list (minus Prince) of its predecessor. Plus, the cause was a hard sell. “We Are the World” wanted to alleviate the famine in Africa; “Voices That Care” was a vague, apolitical message of “support” to the troops fighting in the First Gulf War, which was about as popular as the Second Gulf War. But at least Will Smith and Michael Bolton could feel good about themselves.

Oh, and by the time the song was recorded, the video made, and the video/single released in late February 1991, the mighty U.S. military’s war with Iraq was over after a mere six weeks. So the whole musical debacle was not only bad (it’s the corniest thing ever written by David Foster and Peter Cetera, which is saying something), but it was just barely out-of-date, but enough to be kind of awkward.

And unlike “We Are the World,” the song was a minor hit, peaking at #11. Can you believe it? Number eleven. Even with all the teen kids’ fav raves participating, like Kenny G, Kathy Mattea, Alan Thicke, and Ralph Tresvant.