{"id":806701,"date":"2020-04-22T22:11:01","date_gmt":"2020-04-23T04:11:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=988617"},"modified":"2020-04-22T22:11:01","modified_gmt":"2020-04-23T04:11:01","slug":"the-eight-most-jersey-moments-of-the-jersey-4-jersey-covid-19-relief-benefit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/music-news\/the-eight-most-jersey-moments-of-the-jersey-4-jersey-covid-19-relief-benefit\/","title":{"rendered":"The Eight Most Jersey Moments of the \u2018Jersey 4 Jersey\u2019 COVID-19 Relief Benefit"},"content":{"rendered":"
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As Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert both pointed out during Wednesday night\u2019s powerful Jersey 4 Jersey<\/em> benefit broadcast, the great, unfairly maligned state of New Jersey has taken repeated blows over the last couple of decades, including the death of more than 700 residents on 9\/11, and $30 billion worth of damage from Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Now, the Jersey death toll from COVID-19<\/a> has reached 5,000, making it the second-hardest-hit state in the union. \u201cI\u2019m never more proud of this state than when we have our backs up against the wall,\u201d Stewart said, highlighting the state\u2019s resilience.<\/span><\/p>\n

Executive-produced by Jon Landau, Joel Gallen, Joel Peresman and Irving Azoff, the show benefited the New Jersey Pandemic Relief Fund<\/a>. In all, it captured the global impact of COVID-19 as well as any media product has so far, evoking the universal via the highly specific. In clips between the performances, we saw Jersey pain and Jersey heroism: a restaurant owner tearing up as he described a 90 percent decline in business; shell-shocked doctors and nurses describing patients who didn\u2019t make it; grim-faced school nurses bravely volunteering at a testing center; a cop confessing his fear of catching the virus; a beachfront sign that reads \u201cBoardwalk closed until further notice.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The performances, meanwhile, were uniformly excellent; they were also \u2014 often enough \u2014 very, very, Jersey. Here\u2019s how they ranked on that scale, in descending order.<\/p>\n

Charlie Puth<\/a><\/strong>
Sitting in your childhood bedroom at age 28, wearing a tank top with several gold necklaces and sporting a line shaved in one eyebrow while covering a track from Bruce Springsteen<\/a>\u2019s debut album on a MIDI keyboard? All of that is literally more Jersey than actually being Springsteen or Jon Bon Jovi<\/a>. So Puth is the surprise winner. He sang the smoothest rendition of \u201cGrowin\u2019 Up\u201d imaginable, and gets extra points for nailing the piano solo. Plus, he made his bed, unlike his livestreamed appearance<\/a> last weekend.<\/p>\n

Jon Bon Jovi<\/strong>
Singing in front of a giant portrait of yourself, and an even bigger blown-up ticket from one of your concerts? Jersey, baby. Bon Jovi, who joins Mick Jagger in the club of frontmen who can handle themselves on guitar better than most people realize, performed \u201cDo What You Can,\u201d a new pandemic anthem with partially crowdsourced lyrics. He closed the show with a dramatic \u201cLivin\u2019 on A Prayer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bruce Springsteen and Patti Scialfa<\/a>
<\/strong>It was great to see him, but it must be noted that Bruce Springsteen on primetime TV with an acoustic guitar and a grave expression is, all too often, a really good indication that some horrible events are going down. Springsteen was smart enough to marry an E Street Band member, so he had help easily available: He and Scialfa delivered the most wistful version ever of \u201cLand of Hope and Dreams,\u201d and a wrenching take on Tom Waits\u2019 \u201cJersey Girl\u201d \u2014 and it was almost frustrating how tour-ready they sounded.<\/p>\n

Danny DeVito<\/a><\/strong>
DeVito took us through a novelistic description of his typical summer\u2019s day on the beach in Asbury Park as a kid, including the moment he\u2019d leap over the boardwalk fence to avoid paying for beach admission. \u201cWhen it\u2019s done,\u201d he said of the pandemic, \u201cwe\u2019ll go to Asbury and have a big party.\u201d Holding you to that, Danny.<\/span><\/p>\n

Fountains of Wayne<\/a><\/strong>
Always a heart-tugging song, for all its humor, \u201cHackensack\u201d was painfully poignant on Wednesday. FOW co-founder Adam Schlesinger died of complications from the coronavirus<\/a> on April 1st, and Sharon Van Etten filled in as the rest of the band reunited via video-conference. \u201cThis is for Adam, his parents, his children and New Jersey,\u201d frontman Chris Collingwood said.<\/span><\/p>\n

SZA<\/a><\/strong>
Introducing herself as \u201cSol\u00e1na from Maplewood\u201d helped make SZA\u2019s angelic version of \u201c20 Something\u201d super-Jersey, though she would\u2019ve gotten extra points for naming her exit off Route 78. She added a touching coda to the song, a benediction for \u201ceverybody safe at home\/Everybody scared outside.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tony Bennett<\/a><\/strong>
Standing tall for your entire performance (of Charlie Chaplin\u2019s \u201cSmile\u201d), at age 93, during a global pandemic, with your voice and breath control somehow fully intact? That\u2019s some Jersey Strong stuff, even if Bennett was born in Astoria, Queens.<\/p>\n

Halsey<\/a>
<\/strong>Fairly or not, the pandemic era favors performers who can perform solo acoustic, and Halsey easily proved herself to be among them with a pitch-perfect \u201cFinally\/ Beautiful Stranger\u201d \u2014 and then brought in her remote band. As for Jersey-ness \u2014 the off-the-shoulder thing to show off your tattoo qualifies.<\/p>\n

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Popular on Rolling Stone <\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert both pointed out during Wednesday night\u2019s powerful Jersey 4 Jersey benefit broadcast, the great, unfairly maligned state of New Jersey has taken repeated blows over the last couple of decades, including the death of more than 700 residents on 9\/11, and $30 billion worth of damage from Hurricane Sandy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-806701","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-13 06:04:46","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=806701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806701\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=806701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=806701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=806701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}