“To this day, I smirk when I hear the words”: Steve Lukather admits he thinks the lyrics to Toto’s biggest hit are “silly”
Toto guitarist Steve Lukather thinks the lyrics to the band’s biggest track, Africa, are “silly”.
In an interview with The Telegraph, Lukather admits he never thought Africa, which was released over four decades ago, would be a single.
“To this date, I smirk when I hear the words,” he says, “We all cracked up at the lyrics. Those of us that didn’t write them were going, ‘What?’”
READ MORE: “Where it goes into the three-part harmony is where I dicked it”: Steve Lukather reveals he messed up the solo on one of Toto’s most iconic songs
He continues, “You think it’s just silly lyrics, like, this’ll never be a single but it’s a cool track. Yes, none of it makes sense, it’s not geographically perfect or anything but you take poetic license. It rhymes, okay?”
Toto’s co-founder and keyboardist David Paich was the one behind the lyrics, which he once explained are a “romanticised” version of his love of the continent, rather than a stereotypical romance.
“When I sat down and played the chorus, the way you hear it just came out,” Paich says, “It’s different, and I wasn’t sure what it meant at the time. Then I worked backwards and constructed a story that felt appropriate.”
Not only would Africa go on to be the most streamed track in the last three decades of the 20th century, it also has achieved diamond status for physical and digital sales of more than 10 million.
Lukather also explains how he negotiated higher-than-average royalty rates for the band with Spotify, meaning those streaming numbers are paying Toto more than they should be.
“I can’t tell you [how I did that],” he says, “Because if I did, someone would kill me.” What he does offer is an explanation to how pertinent the timing of his negotiations were. “You’re not supposed to make as much as we do from this shit. But I got in when they didn’t know what they had. It was brand new, so I got one over on them there. But it was a fair deal. We made them hundreds of millions of dollars and it was our turn to make it back.”
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