We feel conflicted about this. On the one hand it’s a charity album – to raise public consciousness and monies for the benefit of climate crisis projects and natural disaster relief – but, on the other hand, many of the contributions are woeful. For the unfamiliar, Rhythms Del Mundo’s shtick is to add copious brass, bongos and celebrity contributors – The Killers, Keane, Amy Winehouse etc – to rock and pop standards. It’s a shtick they beat us unceasingly over the head with for nineteen largely unappealing tracks.
Certain songs sound as if they were dredged up from some circle of Dante’s hell. Amongst this assortment of abominations we find Kaiser Chiefs murdering poor old Marvin Gaye all over again with a painful rendition of ‘I Heard It Through The Grapevine’ and the sad, misshapen, Tropicana-rock hybrid that is Fall Out Boy and John Mayer’s ‘Beat It’. We can only be thankful that Jacko moonwalked off this mortal coil before this was released. In many instances there’s nothing wrong with the individual elements. Take Cat Power’s version of ‘Satisfaction’ – the Cuban musicians are, as ever, technically superb, the vocal is beautifully lachrymose and the original song a bona fide classic. However, altogether, this musical equivalent of fusion food proves somewhat unsatisfying.
Still, nothing is as unappetising as Editors’ take on ‘Walk On The Wild Side’, Lou Reed’s paean to lives less ordinary here sounding like a garish mix of funeral oratory and Cuban carnival. In the end then, whilst hoping that it succeeds in meeting its charitable aims, in musical terms, Classics has to be judged a failure.