October 9, 1999

Jean, Wyclef & Bono : New day

All this and a children's choir, too. Oh Lord, the light is growing dim...

He's just so lovable, Bono. Wouldn't you just love to spend
some quality time with him, kicking back with a few beers, discussing world politics, examining your spirituality? Or would you rather volunteer to be a living exhibit in the London Dungeon's Medieval Torture: The Legacy show? Hand us the thumbscrews and let's wail.

In fact, that's probably a superfluous measure - authentic misery can quite handily be induced by one play of this record, a collaboration put together by NetAid to "raise awareness of poverty in the world". If this gospel-hop hymnal piloted by a cruise-control Wyclef is anything to go by, we're talking poverty of ideas as much as anything here.

Yes, yes, it's for a good cause, but there are other, more pleasant
ways of raising money. A sponsored bout of influenza, perhaps, or some kind of charity cough-in. Anything rather than The Pontiff's Choice crooning, "Midnight she's on the streets/Ten years old my Spanish Rose", somehow confusing compassion with creepiness.

A man who has moved so far beyond delusions of grandeur you imagine Louis XIV saying, "Woah, slow down there, son", Bono is irritating to the point you hope the Pope might want to make some kind of Trappist monk arrangement with him. Still, Wyclef shouting, "Introducing Bono, straight outta Dublin" is gratifyingly hilarious. More fitting than "straight outta the Lear Jet", anyway. All this and a children's choir, too. Oh Lord, the light is growing dim...

Victoria Segal