One world collectively, pulling our hair out.
Saturday’s two-hour primetime live performance, “One World Collectively At House,” achieved the unimaginable: it made us really feel even worse about our already depressing circumstances.
The unbearable present — simulcast on CBS, NBC, ABC and the web — pieced collectively saintly speeches from A-list celebrities and somber United Nations officers between womp-womp acoustic ballads. Didn’t we tune in for some uplift?
Sure, however we obtained none of that when couple Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello dueted on “What A Great World,” Louis Armstrong’s signature quantity, surrounded by candles like a Bonnie Tyler music video.
Or when Taylor Swift softly crooned “Quickly You’ll Get Higher” as if she was a hospital resident scrawling out a prescription.
Practically each musician opted for the saddest, most evident tune they may muster, whereas — fortunate us! — giving a shaky tour of their fabulous houses that might make Robin Leach scowl.
In the event you didn’t know John Legend was an EGOT earlier than, you certain do after gawking tonight at his awards shelf, conveniently situated subsequent to his piano.
Ellen Degeneres’ floor-to-ceiling home windows revealed lush California greenery. And Elton John, oddly, wished us to witness his basketball hoop, full with two basketballs on the driveway, as he barked “I’m Nonetheless Standing.”
The luxurious Trulia listings would have been forgiven have been it not for the uninteresting sanctimony paired with them.
Keep in mind 1985’s Reside Help, held to boost cash for the famine in Ethiopia? That worldwide telethon supplied considered one of Queen and Freddie Mercury’s most legendary performances. This downer, nevertheless, didn’t have half its vitality.
Saturday evening wasn’t even a telethon! Certainly taking into account the skyrocketing unemployment figures of the coronavirus pandemic, co-host Stephen Colbert (alongside Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel) started by saying, ‘We’d love everybody to take out their wallets and throw them away. We aren’t asking for any cash tonight.”
Even when the co-hosts that didn’t land a joke all evening, that’s a pleasant thought. What folks need is a enjoyable distraction, a celebration of the human spirit. proper? However the subsequent 118 minutes had no humor, no enjoyable, no watchability.
Probably the most memorable moments have been, at greatest, bizarre.
Jennifer Lopez had, um, a conspicuously clear vocal monitor, as she sang “Individuals” from “Humorous Lady” in entrance of a campy tree coated in Christmas lights.
“There’s one factor I spotted throughout this complete time,” Lopez mentioned. “And that’s that all of us want one another … PEOPLE!” You possibly can’t make it up.
And Keith City carried out “Increased Love” with two digital copies of himself. On the finish of the tune, his spouse Nicole Kidman got here out and kissed one of many carbon copies. Unusual, however at the least it was uptempo.
One of the crucial very important performances was 76-year-old Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones doing “You Can’t All the time Get What You Need.” That claims all of it, doesn’t it?
Within the ultimate music of the present, Girl Gaga, one of many occasion’s organizers, wedged herself right into a well-known duet: “The Prayer,” sung by Celine Dion and Andrea Bocelli. The music — sung by these two legends — has been a consolation to the world for 22 years. And nonetheless, Gaga needed to get in there.
It was the ultimate act of narcissism throughout an evening dominated by it.