What do you really think of Africa by Toto

[sevendaughters]

I think at a certain songwriterly remove it is a well-wrought and interesting pop song with strange syncopation, certainly not a run of the mill piece of music. That said I feel as much about it as I do a drink of tepid water.

[Captain Z]

It's been memed into shit for cunts status for me. I've just been rewatching South Park and they seemed to acknowledge this by making it the song the member berries kept listening to in season 20 (2016).

Mr Brightside is an anthem for an absolutely nothing era, no cultural touchstones you can associate it with, and consequently it evokes no emotion.

[marquis_de_sad]

Also Brandon Killers can't fucking sing.

[sevendaughters]

Mr Brightside annoys me because it's just Disco Down by Shed Seven with good PR.

[Thomas]

Mr Brightside is an anthem for an absolutely nothing era, no cultural touchstones you can associate it with

Miquita Oliver.

[Brundle-Fly]

It's just a pleasant AOP rekkid from my mid-teens. It was just...there. 

Although I don't have much affection for most 1980s mainstream pop music, (from '82 onwards) but when it comes to all this patronising MEME bollocks, I've recently become quite protective over it in the way people say, "Hey lay off him. He might be an idiot but he's our idiot.". 

[Sebastian Cobb]

Mr Brightside was the one they played in places that were trying to distance themselves from Call on Me (aka 'the sidechain song').

[hummingofevil]

I fucking loathe it but today I realise it would mix seemlessly into Fix Up Look Sharp which is a fucking banger.

[Urinal Cake]

I think if a song gets played during a sports game especially during breaks for a sing along I think yeah awful.

[axel]

Like the song, and it was a starting point for 'vapourwave', which gave me a few pleasant hours a couple of years ago.

https://youtu.be/0T17gsA67og

https://youtu.be/aQkPcPqTq4M

[SpiderChrist]

Just like "Mr. Brightside" it is unironically a fucking absolute BANGER STEAMING PILE OF ORDURE.

Don't like it at all. No sirree.

[SavageHedgehog]

I like it, having first heard it after buying Toto's Greatest Hits on cassette from a Charity Shop back in 2003. I was already aware of it as a couple of my friends had mentioned it as one of their favourites on the GTA: Vice City soundtrack. I'm not sure how I'd feel about it if I'd ha discovered it amongst this was of quasi-ironic appreciation, but that says more about me than the song.

It's another fake memory song like Don't Stop Believing.

Though at least, unlike Don't Stop Believing which was virtually unknown to the UK public until 2006/2007, Africa was a hit in the UK at the time.

[Sin Agog]

Bag of shite.

I probably couldn't identify Mr Brightside out of a lineup, but I'm sure it's a bag of shite, too.

[alan nagsworth]

"Mr. Brightside" has fully earned its place as a staple of every wedding disco set list, a massive rallying pop anthem that has outlived almost all of its contemporaries (except maybe "Sex On Fire", which personally I don't think is as effective but still very good at what it does). Whinge all you want that wedding discos are shit for cunts and you don't think Flowers can sing very well but you're blinded by cynicism and you're missing the point.

Interesting that vaporwave has been mentioned in relation to this (especially "Eccojams" which is an early benchmark of Lopatin's brilliant and fruitful career) since it became clear to me right away when I heard "Eccojams" and Macintosh Plus's "Floral Shoppe" that the genre, skewed and strange as it was, only served to illustrate to a younger generation just how significant and worthwhile pop music, repetition and nostalgia are to the human spirit. Vaporwave didn't make those songs good, they were already good to begin with. The opening track from "Floral Shoppe" exclusively samples "Tar Baby" by Sade. "Tar Baby" is a fucking BELTER and Sade is AWESOME. Macintosh Plus loops small portions of the song because the chords and small flourishes sound so good that they deserve to be repeated.

"Africa" is no different, really. A highly satisfying and aesthetically pleasing composition. It just so happens to also be a whirling, anthemic hoofer with a chorus that everycunt wants to sing as loud as they can when they've had a skinful. Is that annoying to you? Probably. Should other people be allowed to enjoy the living shit out of it regardless? Undoubtedly.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I reckon Vice City bought Africa to a new generation, much like Glee or whatever shite it was bought Don't Stop Believing to cunts.

[alan nagsworth]

Good. I'm glad that happened.

[Lemming]

Mr Brightside is good, it's just a song nobody ever needs to hear ever again.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Good. I'm glad that happened.

It also reignited interests in people like Kurtis Blow so not all bad.

[Bently Sheds]

This is the best version

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82nqsksBH7M

[Jockice]

The intro to Whigfield's Saturday Night starts to make me feel a little sick.

Didier Agathe?

[marquis_de_sad]

Whinge all you want that wedding discos are shit for cunts and you don't think Flowers can sing very well but you're blinded by cynicism and you're missing the point.

It's not my eyes that have the issue.

[Jockice]

The verses and the chorus flow into each other kind of awkwardly and they feel like they're from two completely different songs. It's alright

It can work. The Human League's Love Action is the verse from one song and the chorus of another you know.

[Jockice]

Hold The Line was by far Toto's best single anyway. Love isn't always on time, you know.

[Shit Good Nose]

I still like it in a toe-tapping easy listening kind of way, but it is, literally, the only Toto song I like.

I'll also say at this point that I've always liked it since I first heard it in about 1983 (on whichever Now or Top Of the Pops or Hits album it was on), even when it was REALLY unfashionable to like anything by Toto.

[Satchmo Distel]

I had always assumed that it had the same plodding structure as Rosanna, but that was clearly unfair. It is somewhat over-complicated and doesn't swing but it does have a good melody, nicely sung, on the chorus. However, I can't forgive the use of an entire continent's natural beauty as a backdrop to a soppy love ballad.

I also misheard "a hundred men or more" as "a hundred men from Mars".

[alan nagsworth]

Ray Smuckles been repping this song hard since old times.

[Better Midlands]

Vaporwave

The comments section on YouTube of songs sampled in big vaporwave tracks are full of "X brought me here and now I love this even more than X" in the same way that 90's hip hop introduced people to old funk/soul & 90's/00's house to disco.

Speaking of which Roger Sanchez - Another Heart which got to #1 in 2001 used the vocal/piano intro to Toto - I Won't Hold You Back

[Dewt]

I think Africa is a bad song in terms of songwriting but the synths are lush and captivating.

[Cuntbeaks]

Where does "The whole of the moon" fit into all of this?

I'm surprised it hasn't been used as the theme tune to a massacre yet, cause it sure makes me feel stabby.

[An tSaoi]

British singer James Blunt has said that "Mr. Brightside" is his favorite song of all time.[48]