(The Hit Hammer is where I'm reviewing each #1 song on the Billboard Hot 100. Starting from when the chart started in 1958 and eventually working my way to the present. To see my inspiration and more information about this blog, please CLICK HERE)
Edwin Starr - "War"
Hit Number 1: August 29, 1970
Stay at Number 1: 3 Weeks
"War. What is it good for?" That's something people have been asking for a while now. It's a question I've heard a countless amount of times and it almost seems like it's become a figure of speech, but what's funny is that I think most people don't even realize where it came from. Edwin Starr, a Motown artist who was always in the shadows of artists like the Supremes and the Temptations, is the one who first asked that question. Well, technically he was the second. "War" was first recorded by the Temptations in a completely different style than Starr's version. Their song would be released, but only as a song that was included on the 1970 album Psychedelic Shack. College students and other young people across America wanted "War" to be released as a single so bad that they wrote letters to Motown, asking them to release it. Motown was hesitant because they were afraid the song might damage the Temptations' image as being a fun-loving, irresistible band. But they came up with a plan. They would release "War", but from a different artist.
Starr had been a member of Motown since 1968 after the company purchased the Ric-Tic label that he had previously been a part of. He wasn't some random artist that Motown threw out of left field to record "War", as Starr had gotten to #6 with "Twenty-Five Miles", but it was the only hit that he had scored up to this point. ("Twenty-Five Miles" is a 7) Despite his small history of fame, he still offered to re-record the song upon hearing the difficulty Motown was having in finding someone to do it. This time the song was changed in order to coincide with Starr's soul-shout of a voice. This time the song was much more dramatic, and much more fitting to a topic that had so many people infuriated at the time.
At this point, protest songs are nothing new to the Hit Hammer. We've seen all kinds of songs that try to persuade listeners into thinking differently about different things. Unfortunately, some of those songs are so clumsy that it's easy to roll your eyes at them and move on with your life. "War" won't have any of that. It's intense and it's grand. It gets your attention and it's impossible to ignore; it's like an amber alert late at night. To say that Starr sings in a soul-shout is an understatement, and it doesn't tell the whole story. He angrily shouts like he's using a metaphoric megaphone to the rest of America. It captures the true feelings of what people thought of the war. They were upset and pissed off. Starr sounds pretty pissed off!
"War" is also part of the bridge from soul to funk that was seen in the early 1970s. It starts off with a fast drum roll, which gives the listener the knowledge that they're about to hear something powerful. There's not much of a bass line to speak of, but there's electrifying guitar lines, smooth horn sections and backing vocals by the Undisputed Truth that play a call-and-response game with Starr throughout the song. (The Undisputed Truth's highest-charting single is "Smiling Faces Sometimes", which made it to #3. It's a 10) Overall, the song is angry, fierce and commanding. Starr doesn't gently try to change your mind if you thing differently. Instead, I get the impression that he would ignore your entire existence. I absolutely love that.
Anyway, Starr could not have hoped for better results than the ones "War" provided him. He earned himself a #1 hit, and became a prominent figure for the liberal party moving forward with other releases such as "Stop the War Now". Unfortunately, "Stop the War Now" and other post-"War" releases from Starr never became hits and by the mid-1970s, he was all but out of the music business. He moved to the United Kingdom and re-recorded "War" and other songs of his with the Utah Saints. Ironically, the re-recorded version of "War" was Starr's last piece before he died in 2003 of a heart attack. Regardless, his song lives on, and as long as there are still wars, antiwar people will continue to play the hell out of it.
GRADE: 9/10
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