"We Are the World 25 for Haiti (YouTube Edition)" is a collaborative charity song and music video produced by singer-songwriter

Lisa Lavie Lisa Lavie (surname pronounced ''lah-'') is a Canadian singer and songwriter originally from LaSalle, Quebec, Canada. Background Lavie's early musical influences included her older brothers, hip hop dancer Michael and disk jockey Danny. At age ...

and posted to the YouTube

video sharing website An online video platform (OVP), provided by a video hosting service, enables users to upload, convert, store and play back video content on the Internet, often via a structured, large-scale system that may generate revenue. Users will generally u ...

to raise money for victims of the January 12,

2010 Haiti earthquake A disaster, catastrophic Moment magnitude scale, magnitude 7.0 Mw earthquake struck Haiti at 16:53 local time (21:53 UTC) on Tuesday, 12 January 2010. The epicenter was near the town of Léogâne, Ouest (department), Ouest department, a ...

. The video was created as a response to the celebrity remake "

We Are the World 25 for Haiti "We Are the World 25 for Haiti" is a charity single recorded by the supergroup Artists for Haiti in 2010. It is a remake of the song " We Are the World", which was written by American musicians Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie, and was recor ...

" that was released eight days earlier, and is a

cover Cover or covers may refer to: Packaging * Another name for a lid * Cover (philately), generic term for envelope or package * Album cover, the front of the packaging * Book cover or magazine cover ** Book design ** Back cover copy, part of co ...

of " We Are the World", the 1985 charity single produced in support of famine relief in Africa.

Making the video

Lavie conceived, organized, performed in, and with fellow YouTube personality

Iman Crosson Iman Crosson (born March 27, 1982), better known by his stage name Alphacat, is an American actor, impressionist, and YouTube personality known for his impersonations of former U.S. President Barack Obama and his starring role in independent film ...

, co-edited, the video for charity relief of victims of the

occurring the month before. Lavie said that she "was in the car driving and the idea to do a YouTube version of We Are the World popped into (her) head." She determined how to assign portions of the song to respective YouTube singers, by "going to each singer's (YouTube) channel and listen(ing) to their voices to get a better idea of how high or low a singer could sing, if a particular part would sound better with their tonal quality, etc." In interviews on

CNN CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by the M ...

and

ABC World News ''ABC World News Tonight'' (titled ''ABC World News Tonight with David Muir'' for its weeknight broadcasts since September 2014) is the flagship daily evening television news program of ABC News, the news division of the American Broadcasting ...

, Lavie explained how the video was made, given that its 57 contributors would not be performing in the same studio and generally did not even know each other. After deciding on the assignments of singers to song segments, she sent all the singers the same

instrumental An instrumental is a recording normally without any vocals, although it might include some inarticulate vocals, such as shouted backup vocals in a big band setting. Through semantic widening, a broader sense of the word song may refer to instru ...

backing. A Radio Canada feature included a video segment of Montréal singer Heidi Jutras'

vocal The human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal tract, including talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, shouting, humming or yelling. The human voice frequency is specifically a part of human sound production i ...

performance, in which she suppressed the

accompaniment Accompaniment is the musical part which provides the rhythmic and/or harmonic support for the melody or main themes of a song or instrumental piece. There are many different styles and types of accompaniment in different genres and styles ...

by using earphones. The singers then returned their respective vocal video segments to Lavie electronically, for the visual segments to be

edited Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, photographic, visual, audible, or cinematic material used by a person or an entity to convey a message or information. The editing process can involve correction, condensation, orga ...

, and the audio to be mixed and

, over the course of "three days (and) one sleepless night." Lavie specifically pointed out the challenge of mixing the vocal segments, made "tedious" by the segments' different sound levels, recorded in different acoustic environments (bathrooms, kitchens, bedrooms), and made by

microphone A microphone, colloquially called a mic or mike (), is a transducer that converts sound into an electrical signal. Microphones are used in many applications such as telephones, hearing aids, public address systems for concert halls and public ...

s of different type and quality. The resulting composite vocal and visual segments, combined with the single

backing, constituted the resulting video. The video was posted as a YouTube "video response" to the 2010 celebrity remake video on YouTube, whose last minute included a video annotation inviting such video responses. CNN's

Josh Levs Joshua Levs, commonly known as Josh Levs, is an American broadcast journalist. Born in Albany, New York, he reports for the CNN news television network. Biography Levs was raised in a Conservative Jewish family in Albany, New York and received ...

made special note of Lavie's use of YouTube's video annotation feature: her video continually provided successive video annotation hyperlinks to the YouTube channels of the respective contributing singers as their images appeared onscreen throughout the performance.

Media coverage

Called "a massive charity collaboration for the digital age" by CTV's national television program Canada AM, within days after it was posted the video became the subject of media attention, including multiple national television features on

and a primetime news feature on ''

with Diane Sawyer.'' CNN's

reported that "a lot of people are telling us that this is better than the celebrity remake. It certainly is a sign of the times and a case of where we are right now." In the second CNN interview that was aired, CNN's

Richard Lui Richard Lui is an American journalist and news anchor for MSNBC and NBC News. Lui is currently a breaking news anchor for NBC and MSNBC, broadcasting from 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. prior to that role he was a co-h ...

remarked "This really is sort of—not to be trite here—''we'' are the world," alluding to the song's title "We Are the World". Levs added that "Richard's exactly right. ... Getting together fifty-seven singers, all over the world, ... and they all made their own recordings, and ''the world'' therefore put these different (recordings) together." ABC's Diane Sawyer conducted a

Skype Skype () is a proprietary telecommunications application operated by Skype Technologies, a division of Microsoft, best known for VoIP-based videotelephony, videoconferencing and voice calls. It also has instant messaging, file transfer, deb ...

interview with Lavie, asking her motivation for making the video. Lavie responded that "the way we (singers) give back is by singing." Singer Melissa Polinar explained, "We didn't really do it to compete with the remake," with Lavie emphasizing that the YouTube collaboration "reaches people in a ''different way''." Hours after ABC News posted the Skype interview online, the collaboration video's participants were recognized as "Persons of the Week" on the nationally televised ABC World News with Diane Sawyer to close the work week on Friday, March 19, 2010. The television broadcast paired segments of celebrity singers' performances with those of YouTube singers who sang the corresponding segments of the song, with Sawyer narrating: "He may not be

Lionel Richie Lionel Brockman Richie Jr. (born June 20, 1949) is an American singer, songwriter, record producer, and television personality. He rose to fame in the 1970s as a songwriter and the co-lead singer of funk band the Commodores; writing and recordi ...

, but the fourteen-year old high school student in his bedroom in Perth, Australia, can ''sing''. Instead of

Al Jarreau Alwin Lopez Jarreau (March 12, 1940 – February 12, 2017) was an American singer and musician. His 1981 album '' Breakin' Away'' spent two years on the ''Billboard'' 200 and is considered one of the finest examples of the Los Angeles pop and R ...

, this manager of a California youth program. In for

Michael Jackson Michael Joseph Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009) was an American singer, songwriter, dancer, and philanthropist. Dubbed the "King of Pop", he is regarded as one of the most significant cultural figures of the 20th century. Over a ...

, a community college student.

Diana Ross Diana Ross (born March 26, 1944) is an American singer and actress. She rose to fame as the lead singer of the vocal group the Supremes, who became Motown's most successful act during the 1960s and one of the world's best-selling girl groups o ...

has been replaced by a young woman in Montréal singing in her ''bathroom''. And for

Dionne Warwick Marie Dionne Warwick (; born December 12, 1940) is an American singer, actress, and television host. Warwick ranks among the 40 biggest U.S. hit makers between 1955 and 1999, based on her chart history on ''Billboards Hot 100 pop singles cha ...

, this receptionist at a hair salon in Santa Barbara." Sawyer's further explanation: "Perfect strangers, perfect harmony, making a joyful sound... in effect saying, ''we'' are the world, ''too''... And so (for "Persons of the Week") we choose Lisa Lavie and the singers she brought together around the globe, who proved that that anthem is not just for glittering names." WATWTEreunionDec2010

The day following the ABC World News feature, CNN online posted a supplemental feature that was being broadcast on CNN International: a "YouTube sensation, a new version of the popular song that's attracted more than 1.7 million views—and not a celebrity in sight." Three days after the ABC World News feature, ''

USA Today ''USA Today'' (stylized in all uppercase) is an American daily middle-market newspaper and news broadcasting company. Founded by Al Neuharth on September 15, 1982, the newspaper operates from Gannett's corporate headquarters in Tysons, Virgini ...

'' characterized Lavie as a "visionary" for conceiving the "

phenom Phenom may refer to: * AMD Phenom, the 64-bit AMD desktop processor line based on the K10 microarchitecture ** Phenom II, a family of AMD's multi-core 45 nm processors using the AMD K10 microarchitecture * Phenom (electron microscope), a fast elec ...

" YouTube video. A Radio Canada feature emphasized the divergent sources of the segments constituting the video, noting that some of the 57 contributors sang "in their bedroom, living room or even in their bathroom" but that the result is ''assez remarquable'' (quite remarkable). CNN's Josh Levs explained that "the official YouTube channel of the ''celebrity'' version, is now posting this (YouTube collaboration) version there," meaning that a

thumbnail Thumbnails are reduced-size versions of pictures or videos, used to help in recognizing and organizing them, serving the same role for images as a normal text index does for words. In the age of digital images, visual search engines and image ...

photo link to the YouTube collaboration video was displayed as a "Favorite" on the YouTube channel of the We Are The World Foundation adjacent the official celebrity remake video.

Formal recognition

2010 Video views - We Are the World 25 for Haiti YouTube Edition

Formal recognition of the video included: * The video's participants were recognized as "Persons of the Week" on ''

with Diane Sawyer'' (March 19, 2010). * '' CNN Newsroom's''

chose the YouTube video as the best viral video of 2010 in its "Viral Video Rewind" feature (December 26, 2010). * The video was recognized by YouTube's official "TheYearInReview" channel in its "Moments That Defined YouTube in 2010" feature (December 2010).

Reception by viewers

The video received its first half-million views on YouTube in two days, and more than 830,000 views in its first six days. Within five months of being posted, the YouTube video had been viewed over 3.17 million times, had received almost 20,000 comments, had been "favorited" over 48,500 times, and was the seventh most highly rated YouTube Canada music video of all time. As of October 2016, the video had been viewed 6.5 million times on YouTube.

Contributors to the video

Singers as recited in the order listed in the subject video's description: *

Troye Sivan Troye Sivan Mellet ( ; born 5 June 1995) is an Australian singer-songwriter, actor and YouTuber. After gaining popularity as a singer on YouTube and in Australian talent competitions, Sivan signed with EMI Australia in 2013 and released his thi ...

* Melissa Polinar * Ben Sharkey * Iann Guérin * Bruce & Daniel * Mishal Moore * Ahmir (group) * Blair Perkins * Lyne Sullivan * Lois Mahalia * Chris Cendana * Jumoke Hill *

J Rice Joshua Rice (born in Washington state, US) better known as J Rice is an independent American Conscious Pop and R&B artist. He has released six albums: ''The Intro'' (2005), ''So Close'' (2008), ''Phantom Boyz Present: J Rice'' (2011), ''12+'' ( ...

* Luna Mae * SamDaSinga * Anhayla * Maria Zouroudis *

* David Choi * Richard Rick Rose * Nick Pitera *

AJ Rafael Arthur Joseph Rafael (born March 12, 1989), known professionally as AJ Rafael, is a Filipino-American singer-songwriter, YouTuber, and TikToker. Born in Moreno Valley, California, he graduated from the Berklee College of Music in 2010. Rafael st ...

* Lucas Teague *

Jessica Sanchez Jessica Elizabeth Sanchez (born August 4, 1995) is an American singer-songwriter. She rose to prominence following her finish as the runner-up on the eleventh season of ''American Idol''. Early life Jessica Elizabeth Sanchez was born in Chula ...

Thia Megia Thialorei Lising Megia (born January 30, 1995) is a Filipino-American singer and television actress. She is known for being a contestant on the tenth season of ''American Idol'' and for starring as Haley Chen on ''Days of Our Lives''. Early l ...

* Shan Malaika * Airto * Emmanuelle Auger * Laura Broad * BeeKay * Sheena Melwani *

Dan Talevski Dan Talevski is a Canadian singer-songwriter from Georgetown, Ontario, who comes from a Macedonian background. His career first began as an online YouTube sensation in 2007 posting covers of popular songs. Since then he has gone on to work with wi ...

* Frank Bell *

Orlando Dixon The fourth season of the American reality talent show ''The Voice'' premiered on March 25, 2013, on NBC and was hosted by Carson Daly, while Christina Milian returned as the social media correspondent. Coaches Adam Levine, and Blake Shelton returne ...

* JR Aquino * Eric Arceneaux * Stacy Dudero * Meghan Tonjes * James Dupre * Heidi Jutras * Anna Moya * Laura Song * Renee Thomas * Jonnathan Molina (Jon McSingee) * Laurence Fishman * Nick Gardner * Jon Cahlander * Julie Corrigan Non-singer credits: * Editors:

(audio editing),

(video editing) * Instrumentals: Mike Kalombo * Ending graphic: Chris Kalombo

References