When I heard the local public health department was putting up $4,750 to help a group of local musicians write and record a pop song encouraging people to sign up for insurance on the federal health insurance exchange, I thought: What a stupid idea.
Not because spending tax dollars on music is stupid — government spends them on way stupider things — but because, well, come on — a song about signing up for health insurance?
And then I heard the song.
I’ve got to admit that “Sing Forward” belies some of my long-held assumptions about the popular soft rock, hard rock, classic rock and oldies that dominate the kind of commercial FM radio I’ve grown up on, namely:
• That about half of songs are about love/romance/sex, another quarter are about drugs/alcohol/wanting to “rock and roll all night” and the rest are a potpourri dominated by songs about some deep, inner torment of the songwriter that makes little sense but sounds really meaningful blasting out of your car stereo.
• That with the exception of works by Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye, songs that blatantly draw our attention to social inequality and political action tend to be lame. Think “We Are the World” or pretty much anything by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.
“Sing Forward,” though, manages to be message-focused without being preachy, partisan or pedantic.
“Insurance,” “Obamacare” and “Affordable Care Act” do not appear in the lyrics to “Sing Forward.” Nor are there any barely veiled shots at Gov. Scott “Reject Medicaid” Walker or any other Republican who’s made the health insurance law a whipping boy.
Yes, “healthcare.gov” and “insure” appear in the song’s “additional live verse,” but that might be appropriate if the song is being performed in conjunction with a health insurance sign-up event.
Mostly, “Sing Forward” is a salute to Wisconsin and its residents who work in traditionally under-insured industries — manual labor and hospitality — and a call for “health for all!”
“It’s difficult to pull off,” said Sybil Augustine, music director at Madison nonprofit community station WORT-FM/89.9, but the song succeeds in being “pretty catchy” and “the chorus is about the emotional reaction.”
Of course, catchy, made-for-FM-radio pop songs might as well be dead air if they aren’t, you know, played on FM radio. So I asked around to see if “Sing Forward” was appearing on any playlists.
Augustine said she’d just heard of the song Thursday and the station was planning to sponsor its release and a remix contest.
An official with Magic 98 didn’t return my call, and David Moore, the operations manager for the jointly owned 94.9 WOLX, 105.5 Triple M and Mix 105.1, hadn’t heard the song.
Moore said it might work for Triple M, but “it would really depend on the song.”
It wouldn’t work for “hot adult contemporary” 105.1, he said, and I couldn’t convince him that health insurance sign-up season was seasonal enough to get it on to WOLX’s “all Christmas music” Christmas season playlist.
Too bad. “Sing Forward” is definitely better than Miley Cyrus and the Trans-Siberian Orchestra.
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