The reason Steve Lukather has always hated Toto’s classic ‘Africa’: “I hate that shit”
It’s not unusual for a band to hate their most famous song. Ask Kurt Cobain, John Lennon, Thom Yorke, David Bowie, Joni Mitchell and just about any musician who has had a good enough career to have a highlight buried within it. Music is an art form, but it is also an industry, and those things don’t often mix.
What makes a song popular with an audience doesn’t often translate to ensuring that the artist who made it feels equally as happy about hearing or performing the song. Art is a tricky thing to understand, and popularity rarely determines great art, but it is hard to disagree with a democracy, and audiences vote with their hard-earned cash. If you were to go by that metric, Toto‘s mega-hit, ‘Africa’ is one of the best songs of the 1980s.
‘Africa’ is one of those inescapable songs that somehow appears to be ingrained into humanity as a whole. You can’t quite put your finger on when you first came across it, you might not even remember a time you voluntarily hit play on it, and yet you can’t quite stop yourself from joining in when David Paich declares, “It’s gonna take a lot to drag me away from you!”
Toto have become near-synonymous with ‘Africa’. They’re not quite a one-hit wonder – ‘Rosanna’ and ‘Hold the Line’ have amassed their own huge commercial success – but, nonetheless, most of us will always associate them with the strange synths, playful percussion and nonsense lyrics of their 1982 hit. This goes against the band’s formation as a combination as perhaps some of the finest session musicians of all time together in one band. But their skill is overshadowed by the ubiquitous nature of ‘Africa’.
The enduring cultural presence of ‘Africa’ is somewhat bewildering. Despite clunky and inaccurate lyrics, the song found favour with audiences for its soaring synths and yacht-rock stylings, and for some reason, it remains a staple even today. It’s even been named the greatest song of all time, according to science. But, as with any mammoth hit, the song has amassed abhorrence and admiration in equal measure.
The inescapability of the track means most of us have heard it more times than we would have cared to, demonstrating that the line between love and hate really is thin. This even applies to one of the track’s songwriters, Toto guitarist Steve Lukather, who seems to have a conflicting relationship with the song.
Initially, the band were wary about even including the song on their fourth record, TOTO IV. The concept of releasing it as a single seemed preposterous, but they were convinced by Al Keller at CBS, Lukather recalled to Rock Eyez. “I thought it was the worst song on the album,” he recalled, “It didn’t fit, the lyrics made no sense and I swore that if it was a hit record, I’d run naked down Hollywood Boulevard!”
Despite their trepidation, the song was released as a single and found the band global fame. Shocked by its transcendental appeal, he eventually warmed to the song himself – even declaring that he loves it now. Still, he continued to dislike it for the constraints it would put on them as a band.
Suddenly, Toto were being reduced to and defined by one song, one they hadn’t even originally planned to release. “A lot of people categorise us as ‘that ‘Africa’ or ‘Rosanna’ band,’” Lukather explained to Rock’s Backpages, “and I hate that shit. We have a lot more substance than that. Don’t get me wrong – those songs have been great to us, but you really don’t understand the depth of the band if that’s all you know.”
Unfortunately for Lukather, 40 years on from the song’s first release, ‘Africa’ remains Toto’s defining song, an inescapable hit, for better or worse.
