We'd Like to Teach the World to Sing

by Joe ViglioneWe'd Like to Teach the World to Sing by New Seekers is actually their earlier New Colors album with the fifth track on side one, "Move Me Lord," moved off in favor of the group's remake of their Coca Cola commercial. In one of the most interesting moments in pop music, both the Hillside Singers on Metromedia Records and New Seekers on Elektra got into the Top 40 at the same point in time with the exact same song. As commercials keep infiltrating movies, this Top Ten hit for New Seekers was actually a harbinger of things to come three decades after. It also beat out the Hillside Singers, who brought the same tune to the Top 15 the week before. But there's a certain genius to it all, come to think of it. Inundated with the melody via incessant ads, one almost can hear "Coca Cola" in the song, or strain to think the group is singing, "It's the real thing." In Britain, Ray Davies had to remove the name "Coca Cola" and replace it with "cherry cola" in the Kinks' song "Lola" for airplay on the BBC, but no such problem exists here. The marketers made the persistence of memory so overwhelming that the listener knew this wasn't a Pepsi jingle. Side one of the disc is not as solid as the flip, though things start strong with R. Wood's "Tonight" and a nice reading of Richard Kerr's "Evergreen." Peter Doyle's labored vocal and song "Boom-Town" might've served this project better by getting the axe rather than the song that did, "Move Me Lord," though the songwriting royalties on an album with a monster hit may have been what gave this little doggy the nod. Here was an opportunity to fill out half of side one with an extended remake of one of singer Buzzy Linhart's favorite titles, the original Seekers' "I'll Never Find Another You." Now that would have put this effort over the top and Linhart could have guest starred as well, because Doyle, Paul Martin Layton, and Marty Kristian, along with Lyn Paul and Eve Graham, don't get much help from the other material on this side of the disc. Melanie Safka's "The Nickel Song" leads off side two and it is one of the highlights, the group having hit with Safka's "Look What They've Done to My Song, Ma" the year before. Peter Doyle's "Lay Me Down" isn't a bad tune either, with Lyn Paul taking the lead vocal and the group showing that they can compose as well. Eve Graham and Peter Doyle take the leads on the country-ish "Good Old Fashioned Music" and the very pretty album-closer "Child of Mine." This latter-day New Christy Minstrels was more of a middle-of-the-road vocal pop group in the style of the original Seekers than folksingers, and the impeccable voices sweep in and out with the strings and perfect instrumentation. It was also during the time that the hit record ruled, so all in all, We'd Like to Teach the World to Sing is an acceptable and respectable outing.