Africa is one of the world’s most popular and/or well-known songs. It is also a very divisive song – even amongst Toto fans, and even within the band!
For a band that started out with prog rock leanings, the album that this song is on (Toto IV, released on 26 March 1982) represents a move towards more mainstream pop music, and the hits from that album were unescapable.
Radio stations all over the world still play Africa. There are numerous cover versions of it, and people keep blessing the rains down in Africa at karaoke bars every night all over the world. The song has also found a new audience on streaming platforms, pushed by continual use in movies and TV series, where the song has seen an increase in streams of over 220% the last few years. There’s just something about that song that never allows it to become forgotten.
The band was under some pressure to deliver hits at the time. They had achieved immediate success with their first, self-titled album in 1978, with songs like Hold the Line becoming a Top 10-hit in the US and a hit single in most other territories (reaching #14 in the UK).
Their early sound mixed pop with synth and hard rock elements. On their next two releases, fan favourites Hydra (1979) and Turn Back (1981), they ventured deeper into hard rock and prog territory, creating some albums that are well worth checking out. While many fans think of this as the best era for Toto, they struggled to recreate their early success. Consequently, Columbia Records put their foot down to stop what they saw as a move into less commercial music. They asked the band to get back on track by delivering a hit album with their next release, or risk being dropped from the label. Appeasing the faithful was not enough. It was time to entice the masses.
The band went back to the formula that helped them succeed on their first album, which touched on many different genres of music while always making sure every song had a hook. They also utilized outside musicians to help give the sound a more polished, fuller feel than they had on the past few albums.
The recording was spread over many months during 1981 and 1982. By indicating to the label that they would do their utmost to deliver what they wanted, the band was allowed a much larger than average recording budget. At a time when most bands were using a single 24-track recorder Toto used as many as 3 separate 24-track recorders at the same time.
The initial idea and lyrics for Africa came from keyboardist and co-lead vocalist David Paich, who could be called the band’s principal (but not only) songwriter. Steve Porcaro, the band’s synth player, had introduced Paich to the Yamaha CS-80, a polyphonic analog synthesizer, and recommended that he write a song specifically with the keyboard in mind.
Paich was playing around with the new keyboard and found the brassy sound that became the song’s opening riff, which he found to be a unique alternative to the piano. Porcaro programmed six tracks of a Yamaha GS 1 digital piano to emulate the sound of a kalimba. Each track featured a one-three note gamelan phrase with different musical parameters.
With that, Paich completed the melody and the chorus lyrics in about ten minutes, much to his own surprise. In an interview with Mix, he said “I sang the chorus out as you hear it. It was like God channeling it. I thought, ‘I’m talented, but I’m not that talented. Something just happened here!'”
While the melody had come quickly, the full lyrics took quite a bit longer. Paich spent all of six months refining the lyrics before showing the song to the rest of the band.
The lyrics in the song seem to describe a man’s torn feelings about a girl he meets in Africa, as well as his love for the continent. He is not sure he can commit to her and stay in Africa, or if he should return to his home and career. A strong connection to the continent and its people is implied, as well as a fear of losing himself and becoming someone he doesn’t recognize. He sings that he will “take some time to do the things we never had,” implying that he is moving on and might leave her behind. What happens is however left open-ended.
In 2015, Paich explained that the song is about a man’s love of a continent, Africa, rather than being about a personal romance. He based the lyrics on a late night documentary with depictions of African plight and suffering. The viewing experience made a lasting impact on Paich: “It both moved and appalled me, and the pictures just wouldn’t leave my head. I tried to imagine how I’d feel about it if I was there and what I’d do.”
Paich had attended Catholic school in his youth and met several missionaries who had worked in Africa. They had told him about how they would bless everything down there: the people, bibles, harvests, and the rain. This inspired the well-known phrase “I bless the rains down in Africa.”
I hear the drums echoing tonight
But she hears only whispers of some quiet conversation
She’s coming in, 12:30 flight
The moonlit wings reflect the stars that guide me towards salvation
I stopped an old man along the way
Hoping to find some long forgotten words or ancient melodies
He turned to me as if to say, “Hurry boy, it’s waiting there for you”
It’s gonna take a lot to take me away from you
There’s nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do
I bless the rains down in Africa
Gonna take some time to do the things we never had
The missionaries also told of a lonely life. Paich wanted to write a romantic story about someone who flew to Africa to visit a lonely missionary. There was only one problem: Paich had never been to Africa. Everything he knew about it was what the missionaries had told him, old movies about Dr. Livingstone, and articles from National Geographic. This may explain why he seemed to believe that the Kilimanjaro Mountain was located right next to Serengeti National Park (they are 290 kilometers apart) in the line “As sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti.”
The wild dogs cry out in the night
As they grow restless, longing for some solitary company
I know that I must do what’s right
As sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti
I seek to cure what’s deep inside
Frightened of this thing that I’ve become
Additionally, some of the lyrics – specifically “I seek to cure what’s deep inside / Frightened of this thing that I’ve become” – seem to be a bit introspective. In a Songfacts interview from 2015, Paich admitted: “There’s a little metaphor involved here, because I was at the age where I was so immersed in my work, 24/7, that at times I felt like I was becoming just a victim of my work. There was a little bit of autobiographical information in there: being consumed by my work, not having time to go out and pursue getting married and raising a family and doing all the things that other people do that were my age at the time.”
Bobby Kimball handled most of the lead vocals for Toto, but Paich sang the verses on Africa himself. His subdued delivery suited the verses better, and Kimball also had a hard time wrangling lines like “as sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti” which admittedly is a mouthful. Having Kimball wait until the chorus to join in worked out really well, though, as the song got a powerful lift from the added vocal dynamics and glorious harmonies.
Jeff Porcaro (drums) is credited as co-writer of the song’s music alongside Paich. He later described the song as “A white boy is trying to write a song on Africa, but since he’s never been there, he can only tell what he’s seen on TV or remembers in the past.”
The rest of the band were not immediately convinced that the song would be a hit. “I thought the melody was good,” guitarist Steve Lukather told NRK.no, “but when I heard the lyrics I just said, ‘I bless the rains down in Africa? What the hell are you singing about? Are you Jesus, Dave?’”
If it had been up to Lukather, the song would never even have been on the album. “I told the rest of the band that if this song became a hit, I would run naked down Hollywood Boulevard” he laughs.
For all the misgivings there might have been about the song, the label had faith in it, and the band really did work hard on it. Engineer Al Schmitt stated that Africa was the second song written for Toto IV and had been worked on extensively in the studio. The work was actually so extensive that the band would grow tired of the song, to the point that they considered cutting it from the album entirely. David Paich went through a period where he considered saving Africa for a solo record, but ultimately decided against it.
Jeff Porcaro played his drum parts live without a click track. “So when we were doing Africa,” he recalled for Mix, “I set up a bass drum, snare drum and a hi-hat, and Lenny Castro set up right in front of me with a conga. We looked at each other and just started playing the basic groove. […] We played for five minutes on tape, no click, no nothing. We just played. And I was singing the bass line for Africa in my mind, so we had a relative tempo. Lenny and I went into the booth and listened back to the five minutes of that same boring pattern. We picked out the best two bars that we thought were grooving, and we marked those two bars on tape. […] Maybe it would have taken two minutes to program that in the Linn, and it took about half an hour to do this. But a Linn machine doesn’t feel like that!”
Jeff Porcaro also acknowledged that he was influenced by the sounds created by fellow Los Angeles session musicians Milt Holland and Emil Richards. He also described the significance of the African pavilion drummers at the 1964 New York World’s Fair and a National Geographic Special. To recreate those sounds, he and his father Joe Porcaro made percussion loops on bottle caps and marimba respectively.
As soon as Africa had been earmarked as a single, plans were made to shoot a music video for it. MTV was exploding and with a title like Africa, there were many options to make something different and adventurous.
In the video, a researcher in a library (portrayed by David Paich) tries to match a scrap of a picture of a shield to the book from which it was torn out. There is a cute librarian, taxidermy, a book called “Africa,” a burning spear, and a globe. It’s an abstract adventure yarn, and what’s actually going on is clearly open to interpretation.
The music video used the radio edit of the song. It was directed by Steve Barron who also did their Rosanna video as well as many other early MTV favourites. It features Mike Porcaro on bass, replacing David Hungate, who had already left the band before the video was made. Lenny Castro is also featured in the video on percussion. As of late April 2023, the music video has 867.5 million views on YouTube.
During an appearance on the radio station KROQ-FM in 2018, Lukather and Steve Porcaro still had mixed feelings about the song. While they praised the song’s melody, its colours, the loops on it, and the overall satisfaction with the hard work that went into giving the song its shape, the lyrics were still not above ridicule. They described some of the lyrics as “dumb,” “just something to put there” (i.e. placeholder), and “goofy,” particularly the line about the Serengeti.
Some of the misgivings are possible to understand. It is probably Toto’s most famous song, but Lukather in particular would like you to know that there is much more to the band. He told NRK.no: “People have said, ‘I hate that Africa-band. The lyrics make no sense.’ And they are right about that. But they often haven’t listened to our other songs. Those who listen closer, often end up saying ‘Hey, I didn’t know these guys could rock!’”
At the same time, the song has clearly been a blessing for the band, contributing not only to their fortunes but also making Toto one of the most well-known bands in the world in the process. The single was a massive worldwide hit upon its release (25 June 1982 (UK) and October 1982 (US)). It got all the way to the top of the Billboard charts and was a massive hit everywhere. Toto IV, the album it came from won six Grammy Awards and sold over 12 million copies.
Ever since Africa was released, it has been played on every single tour the band has done, and is usually one of the show highlights. Everybody knows it, as it continues to be played on radio around the world. On the popular Norwegian hit station NRK P3, they have a rule about not playing music that is older than 10-15 years. The management has however given Africa a hall pass – any of the station’s hosts can play the song whenever they like, as much as they like.
The song has never really gone away. It keeps appearing on television shows (Stranger Things, Family Guy, Chuck, The Cleveland Show and South Park), movies, video games, and even public ceremonies (including Nelson Mandela’s funeral – albeit not without controversy).
The song saw a particular resurgence in popularity via social media in the mid-to-late 2010s, thanks to numerous internet memes… and a particular Twitter campaign. On 6 December 2017, 14 year old Mary from Cleveland in America opened a Twitter-account with the name “weezer cover africa by toto.” In her first tweet, she strongly encouraged Weezer vocalist Rivers Cuomo to have his band record the song.
The campaign went viral, and the American poprock-band started getting requests from fans all over the world. There was a jokey feel to it all, and Weezer decided to be a bit jokey in return. They covered the correct band, even the correct album, but the wrong song! They opted for Rosanna – that other big hit from Toto IV.
The joke worked perfectly, but it just added fuel to the Twitter fire. Half a year later the pressure had become too much. The band buckled, and Mary got her wish as the original request was fulfilled. Africa would go on to become Weezer’s biggest hit in over 10 years.
Toto was in on the joke, surprising everyone by returning the favour when they covered the Weezer track Hash Pipe. Their cover version was not as popular as Weezer’s, but in fairness, one track is legendary, the other one… perhaps not.
Alongside Weezer, the list of bands that have covered Africa seems endless. Many of these covers have millions of streams. The song has nearly become inescapable, to the point that even if you should find yourself in one of the largest deserts in the world, away from modern life and society in general, you might still be able to hear the song play. The German-Namibian artist Max Siedentopf has built a sound installation in an undisclosed location in the middle of the Namib desert in January 2019 which plays Africa on a constant loop. The installation is powered by solar batteries, allowing the song to be played indefinitely.
Listing all of the song’s accolades beyond its initial chart success would take some time. To name but a few, in 2012 Africa was listed #32 by music magazine NME on its list of 50 Most Explosive Choruses. Two years later, the song was one of the first to reach 1 billion plays on the streaming site Spotify. In 2021, it was listed at No. 452 on Rolling Stone’s Top 500 Best Songs of All Time. In 2022, the song was revealed as the third most streamed song of the 1970s, 80s and 90s in the UK (behind Oasis’s Wonderwall and Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody).
In closing, let us return to Steve Lukather and his promise to run naked down Hollywood Boulevard if the song should became a hit. NRK.no asked him if he had done it yet, which caused a roar of a laugh, and an answer in the negative: “Well. I can promise you that nobody wants to see me run naked down Hollywood Boulevard. Nobody! Sparks will fly from my balls!”
You might be correct, Steve. That does sound scary.
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