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(Credits: Far Out \/ Album Cover)<\/p>\n
Sat 25 October 2025 2:00, UK <\/p>\n
Like Rick Astley\u2019s \u2018Never Gonna Give You Up\u2019, Linkin Park\u2019s \u2018In The End\u2019 and Darude\u2019s \u2018Sandstorm\u2019, after it, \u2018Africa<\/a>\u2018 by Toto is more of a meme now than a song. <\/p>\n I mean no disrespect with that fact either. There\u2019s a big difference between a song being a meme and a song being pilloried for being bad. Just look at the reaction those godawful recent Taylor Swift songs got from anyone who didn\u2019t drop a year\u2019s wages on Eras Tour tickets. Quality still has a way of being undeniable, and the way that \u2018Africa\u2019 became a meme is by being a song so good that it doesn\u2019t matter how cringe it is. <\/p>\n And to be clear, \u2018Africa\u2019 is still phenomenally cringe. Yet, that chorus is so spectacular that it really doesn\u2019t matter. This is a formula complex to the point of alchemical. One that no one has ever been able to knowingly replicate since and a vast number of songwriters have tried. As a piece of songwriting, it\u2019s basically unimpeachable. A work that builds and builds on a veritable fisherman\u2019s toolkit of hooks before that chorus takes the whole thing home, staying in your cerebral cortex long after the houselights have gone up at the \u201980s night and the crowd starts shuffling home.<\/p>\n So, one might (understandably) ask the question, \u201cIf the song\u2019s so good, why is it so cringe? Surely just being a good song saves it from that fate?\u201d A question truly spoken like someone who has never gone through the lyrical meaning of the song. Congratulations, this means you now have something in common with 95% of people who\u2019ve ever heard \u2018Africa\u2019 by Toto. The problem is, the further you look into the song\u2019s goddamn lyrics, the more you\u2019ll wish you had stayed with that 95%. <\/p>\n \u2018Africa\u2019 is absolutely the story of a bunch of rich, Tipp-Ex white California natives deciding to write a song about the concept of \u201cAfrica\u201d: a place that, if you read the lyrics of the song, they seem to have spent as much time in as Narnia<\/a>. <\/p>\n So, what is the story of \u2018Africa\u2019 by Toto?<\/p>\n The most infamous example of this is the line \u201cSure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti\u201d. <\/p>\n Now, on the one hand, both Mount Kilimanjaro and the Serengeti are in Tanzania. The problem is, they\u2019re 317 miles apart from each other. The Status of Liberty and The White House are closer together than that. Nevertheless, while it is easy to point out the bone-headed factual inaccuracies of \u2018Africa\u2019 and call it a day, not to mention funny, the song\u2019s inherent whiteness goes a lot deeper than that.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t want to blow your mind here, but David Paich, Toto\u2019s frontman and chief songwriter, had not been to any country in Africa when he wrote the song. Instead, as he claimed in an interview with Songwriter Universe, he was inspired by two things. The first was watching \u201ctravelogues of Africa on TV when I was growing up.\u201d Things that \u201cromanticised it\u2026 [I] was compelled to want to visit Africa, or at least write about it.\u201d<\/p>\n The second was of a film he grew up watching, which is where things get really dark. \u201cIt was about a guy who lived in Africa, who loved Africa, and had a mail-order bride who came in. He\u2019d never met her, and when she got to Africa, she had to choose between staying there in Africa and living that lifestyle or going back home. So, it\u2019s kind of an old-fashioned, romanticised story about that film in my imagination.\u201d<\/p>\n If this sounds like me being soft, I\u2019m not alone in feeling this way, either. Reasonably enough, Paich\u2019s own bandmates had issues with the song. Years after its release, the band\u2019s virtuoso guitarist Steve Lukather told The Guardian, \u201cI thought the song had a brilliant tune, but I remember listening to the lyrics and going: \u2018Dave, man, Africa? We\u2019re from North Hollywood. What the fuck are you writing about? I bless the rains down in Africa? Are you Jesus, Dave?\u2019\u201d.<\/p>\n