Blessing the rains in the desert — forever

It was a global smash hit back in 1982, which coincidentally happens to be the year I started my career in journalism at the Winnipeg Free Press.

For the record, I am talking here about Africa, the iconic, synth-heavy, soft-rock pop song by the American band Toto, a song that is one of the world’s most nefarious earworms in the sense it burrows into your brain, plays on a continual loop and refuses to come back out.

Speaking about playing on a continual loop forever, that is exactly what is going to happen with the song Africa, thanks to an installation by an artist who plans to play the karaoke classic on a loop in a Namibian desert — for eternity!

You probably think I am kidding about this, but I would never kid about Toto’s masterwork, the band’s one and only tune to reach No. 1 on the Billboard charts.

Based on a gaggle of news reports I partially understand, a German-Namibian artist named Max Siedentopf — who can’t get this catchy song out of his melon — has set up a sound installation, called Toto Forever, in an undisclosed location in the 1,931-kilometre-long Namib Desert, which, around 55 million years old, is the world’s oldest desert.

The artist’s installation uses a solar-powered MP3 player — which contains one track: Toto’s Africa — hooked up to six speakers situated on pedestals to broadcast the song that everyone loves (or loves to hate) into the surrounding dunes forever.

“Even though Africa by Toto was released in 1982, it is still very much present in today’s pop culture and frequently used for memes and even entire Reddit pages are dedicated to the song,” Siedentopf told CNN. “I was very intrigued by this and wanted to pay the song the ultimate homage and physically exhibit Africa in Africa.”

If anyone wants to check out this installation and sing along with one of my favourite tunes, good luck with that, because the artist refuses to say exactly where in the desert Toto Forever has been set up.

On his website, Siedentopf indicates its “approximate location” by circling the entire Namib Desert in red. “The installation is supposed to be a bit like a treasure that only the most loyal of Toto fans can find,” he said.

As a crusading journalist and closet Toto fan, I have mixed feelings about this timeless tune being played for eternity in the middle of a barren desert with absolutely no one around to hear it, and join in the addictive chorus.

I do not know exactly why I love this song, but I do. And don’t lie to me, I can tell by the way you are reading today’s column that whenever you are in the car, you crank up the radio to ­ear-splitting volume and perform a deeply moving duet with Toto.

That is what I do when I get behind the wheel and Africa comes on the radio. I will sing in perfect harmony with Toto, despite the fact that, like the rest of the listening public, I can never remember the correct lyrics.

What that means is, when the band gets to the soaring crescendo — “There’s nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do/I bless the rains down in Africa/I bless the rains down in Africa!” — I will sing something entirely different.

For instance, with the radio booming at the level of a nuclear blast, I will throw back my head and with all the rock-star gusto I can muster, belt out something along the lines of: “Ain’t nothin’ that a hundred men on Mars could ever do/I stressed my brains down in Africa/I pressed the drains down in Africa!”

I do this because the lyrics to Africa are among the most frequently misheard in history. If you check out online sites devoted to misheard lyrics, you will find that when Toto sings the line “As sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti,” a great many pop fans instead hear the following: “As sure as my waitress stands above my plate of spaghetti.”

The point I am trying to make is that Toto’s Africa, which has sold more than four million copies in the U.S. alone, deserves a much better fate than being played on a loop for eternity in a desert where no one will ever hear it.

This song has become a pop-culture phenomenon. In recent years, rock band Weezer made a cover of it; ditto Pitbull; a sample of the song is featured in the movie Aquaman; it has a dedicated Twitter bot, which has been spitting out lyrics every couple of hours since 2016; and its legendary line, “I bless the rains down in Africa,” is frequently belted out, often incorrectly, in cars and by revellers at parties and weddings across the world.

If we are going to play a song forever in a place where it can’t be heard, I would suggest a few other artists would make more sense than Toto, namely:

1) Justin Bieber, who has brought Canada into disrepute by appearing at the top of almost every online list of most-hated performers in history;

2) Nickelback, who have also hurt our national image because many of their songs are featured on the elevator playlists in Hell;

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3) The Starland Vocal Band, who are known solely for inflicting on the world the 1976 hit Afternoon Delight, wherein the band croons the immortal words: “And the thought of lovin’ you is getting so exciting/Sky rockets in flight/Afternoon delight!”

Which, I hasten to point out, is frequently misheard as: “And the thought of rubbin’ you is getting so exciting/Sky monkeys in flight/After noon-daylight!”

But that is not today’s point. Today’s point is that all us big-time Toto fans need to make our way to the middle of the Namib Desert, where, with any luck, we will be able to say goodbye to Justin Bieber, and sing the immortal line: “I ate some grains down in Africa!”

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca