Pitchfork

This weekend's Live Earth concerts are easy to criticize. With so many performers on a global bill, there's someone for everyone to dislike. The huge venues aren't exactly music-oriented-- the "New York" space was the Meadowlands, in East Rutherford, N.J. And when the cause is saving the world, everybody can be accused of hypocrisy. (Typing that you're a hypocrite would be far easier for me than, say, saving the world.) And is there a single big-media pundit who doesn't foam at the mouth hating Al Gore?

For all those caveats, Live Earth did include a few performances of note, buried amid the YouTube footage. In London, the ever-trendy Madonna hopped the Balkan-music craze, enlisting Lower East Side gypsy-punks Gogol Bordello for help with a rendition of 1987 hit "La Isla Bonita". At the Meadowlands, Kanye West lent some political rhetoric to the Police and John Mayer for a fast-paced "Message in a Bottle". In Washington, D.C., Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood took the stage for Brooks' "first and only" gospel song, 1992's "We Shall Be Free".

...well, it's all for a good cause, right?

Madonna: La Isla Bonita [ft. Gogol Bordello]

 

The Police: "Message in a Bottle" [ft. John Mayer and Kanye West]

 

Garth Brooks: "We Shall Be Free" [ft. Trisha Yearwood]