A Change Is Gonna Come (thanks To Youtube): Black Eyed Pea One-Ups Wentz And Butler In Obama Ass-Kissing Stakes With Crummy "Music" Video

a change is gonna come (thanks to youtube)

Black Eyed Pea One-Ups Wentz And Butler In Obama Ass-Kissing Stakes With Crummy "Music" Video

So here is "Yes We Can," the video that will.i.am and his star-studded iPhone address book put together for ABC in support of the Barack Obama presidential campaign, using the candidate's New Hampshire primary speech as their aesthetic jumping-off point. Calling it "music," as the folks at ABC News see fit to do, is stretching the definition further than a lot of stuff that gets written up in The Wire, though, as Common and Scarlett Johansson and John Legend and the Professor and Mary Ann perform a tuneless call-and-response with a recording of Barry's original oratory. Plus I think maybe there's a guitar strumming in the background? While the bleeding-heart in me appreciates the gesture and I realize it was rushed out thanks to a supposed sense of political urgency, c'mon, this is ham-handed even for a hump-chump whose idea of protest is "Where Is The Love." [YouTube]

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Avant-Rock Legend Joins Various VH1 Faves At CES For The Sake Of The Children

11:00 AM on Mon Feb 4 2008
By Jess Harvell
491 views
9 comments

Comments

by loudersoft at 11:16 AM on 02/04/08
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This seems like one of those ideas that sounded good at the time and, because nobody can ever just throw in the towel when they realize what they've done isn't up to snuff, now we're forced to suffer its existence.
by Chris N. at 11:34 AM on 02/04/08
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Is it just me, or is Idolator's tone getting progressively more spiteful?
by brainchild at 11:48 AM on 02/04/08
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oooh... Esthero!
by Jess Harvell at 12:07 PM on 02/04/08
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@Chris N.: i came out of the womb like this.
by extracrispy at 12:20 PM on 02/04/08
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@Chris N.: You're just now noticing?
by Nicolars at 12:39 PM on 02/04/08
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This is actually soft and cuddly for Jess.
by Chris Molanphy at 12:48 PM on 02/04/08
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It's a shame, because it's a not-half-bad idea totally botched in execution. If they'd led off and closed the clip with 20-second excerpts of Obama -- to signal, hey folks, Obama wrote all the lyrics to this! -- it wouldn't be as discordant and near-tuneless as it is.

Well, okay, maybe it would -- it's a mediocre song, too. Maybe Lenny Kravitz should've done it. Oh, no...wait, maybe not...
by moomintroll at 02:29 PM on 02/04/08
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I quite like it, except for all the absolutely random celebrities...they ruin the message a bit eh? It would have been so much better if Barak's speech was just accompanied by the guitar without the creepy "celebrity singing a duet with dead Elvis or Nat King Cole technology", OR, if they actually got real people to sing (erm..or just speak-sing) it ...not millionaires.
by Moimeme at 09:15 PM on 02/04/08
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@Chris N.: I thought I was the only one who noticed. *shudder*