She’s Dying To Survive!

Their toxic Paul McCartney promotion is just about over with, but apparently it’s still not safe for me to walk into a Starbucks.

While waiting for my five -dollar Strawberry Quik, I heard a wretched, bogus baritone coming from the store speakers. Then I recognized the lyrics: this was a Sade cover! “There is a woman in Somalia!”—It’s “Pearls”!

And then, to back up this white-boy intercontinental crooning: some Santana-esque guitar!

I busted out in full-on laughter. People stared; it was bad. But it was so ridiculously insulting that I couldn’t believe this cover was actually happening.

Then I did a search: this cover is from Angelique Kidjo‘s new album Djin Djin, a collection of adult contemporary duets. The offenders on this track were Josh Groban and Carlos Santana himself!

Kidjo is African, so she has enough cred to cover a song about the harsh lives of African women. But Santana is even less evocative of Somalia than Toto is. And Groban is just plain awful.

I can’t understand why anyone would give some smarmy white guy any sort of authority on problems facing the African—oh wait: