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MUSIC

Shakira, Pharrell coming to Hamburg for anti-poverty concert amid G20 summit

Pop superstars Shakira and Pharrell Williams announced on Wednesday that they will join the first Global Citizen festival in Europe to push leaders to end extreme poverty.

Published: 8 June 2017 08:47 CEST
Shakira, Pharrell coming to Hamburg for anti-poverty concert amid G20 summit
Shakira and Pharrell. Photos: DPA

The July 6th concert in Hamburg, a spin-off of the festival that takes place each year in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, comes during a summit of the Group of 20 major economies.

Shakira and Williams, both long involved in charity, will join already announced acts Coldplay, Ellie Goulding and chart-topping electronic duo The Chainsmokers.

Shakira said the concert would press governments to recommit to the UN-backed Sustainable Development Goals which aim to end the worst forms of poverty by 2030.

“As Global Citizens that we are, I believe we can be the first generation to make sure children everywhere have access to quality education, health care and proper nutrition to break the cycle of poverty in which millions of people are still trapped,” the Colombian pop sensation said in a statement.

Williams, creator of the viral hit “Happy,” added: “The next generation deserves a better future. Let's make sure our leaders commit the resources necessary to bring millions out of extreme poverty across the globe.”

The summit's message comes at a trying time as US President Donald Trump is a staunch critic of foreign assistance, proposing steep cuts in aid to put “America First.”

Global Citizen distributes tickets for free to supporters who pledge to take actions which include writing their leaders to support foreign assistance.

The festival also expanded in November to India, where 80,000 fans came out in Mumbai for artists including Coldplay and rap great Jay Z.

The Hamburg edition, which will be livestreamed on YouTube, will also feature major German stars including Andreas Bourani and the previously announced Herbert Gronemeyer.

More than 10 percent of people in the world lived on $1.90 or less each day in 2013, although the figure has tumbled by 25 percentage points since 1990 amid concerted global efforts, according to World Bank data.

CULTURE

New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday’s death

Fans of the late Johnny Hallyday, "the French Elvis Presley", will be able to commemorate the sixth anniversary of his death with two songs never released before.

Published: 17 November 2023 09:05 CET
New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday's death

Hallyday, blessed with a powerful husky voice and seemingly boundless energy, died in December 2017, aged 74, of lung cancer after a long music and acting career.

After an estimated 110 million records sold during his lifetime – making him one of the world’s best-selling singers -Hallyday’s success has continued unabated beyond his death.

Almost half of his current listeners on Spotify are under the age of 35, according to the streaming service, and a posthumous greatest hits collection of “France’s favourite rock’n’roller”, whose real name was Jean-Philippe Leo
Smet, sold more than half a million copies.

The two new songs, Un cri (A cry) and Grave-moi le coeur (Engrave my heart), are featured on two albums published by different labels which also contain already-known hits in remastered or symphonic versions.

Un cri was written in 2017 by guitarist and producer Maxim Nucci – better known as Yodelice – who worked with Hallyday during the singer’s final years.

At the time Hallyday had just learned that his cancer had returned, and he “felt the need to make music outside the framework of an album,” Yodelice told reporters this week.

Hallyday recorded a demo version of the song, accompanied only by an acoustic blues guitar, but never brought it to full production.

Sensing the fans’ unbroken love for Hallyday, Yodelice decided to finish the job.

He separated the voice track from the guitar which he felt was too tame, and arranged a rockier, full-band accompaniment.

“It felt like I was playing with my buddy,” he said.

The second song, Grave-moi le coeur, is to be published in December under the artistic responsibility of another of the singer’s close collaborators, the arranger Yvan Cassar.

Hallyday recorded the song – a French version of Elvis’s Love Me Tender – with a view to performing it at a 1996 show in Las Vegas.

But in the end he did not play it live, opting instead for the original English-language version, and did not include it in any album.

“This may sound crazy, but the song was on a rehearsal tape that had never been digitalised,” Cassar told AFP.

The new songs are unlikely to be the last of new Hallyday tunes to delight fans, a source with knowledge of his work said. “There’s still a huge mass of recordings out there spanning his whole career,” the source said.

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