Will Sing for Money

Kimm Rogers's "Will Work for Food" is a catalogue of urban ills keyed to the roadside jobseekers now holding up signs of the same message all over this land. There are worse songs with a conscience and better songs without one. But there's never been a song promoted with such a mind-boggling combination of liberal back-slapping and raw payola: Island promises to donate $20 to a radio station's food bank of choice for every documented spin. Since nobody should go hungry, we hope the thing rockets to number one, which it probably won't, and that Island then sticks to its offer, which it probably won't. But we're uneasy about the precedent. Good thing nobody thought of this back when they were flogging "The Ballad of the Green Berets" or "She's Having My Baby."

Village Voice, 1992