Yes We Can: Voices of a Grassroots Movement

1	Eternity / Lionel Richie 4:55
2	Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours / Stevie Wonder 2:34
3	Waiting on the World to Change / John Mayer 3:23
4	American Prayer / Dave Stewart 5:38
5	Battle Cry / Shontelle 3:31
6	Make It Better / Los Lonely Boys 3:19
7	Pride, In the Name of Love / John Legend 4:11
8	I Have a Dream / BeBe Winans 7:06
9	Am I All Alone? / Suai 4:15
10	One Is the Magic # / Jill Scott 3:46
11	Love and Hope / Ozomatli 4:20
12	Looking East / Jackson Browne 4:52
13	Out of Our Heads / Sheryl Crow 4:22
14	Promised Land / Kanye West 3:06
15	Hold On / Yolanda Adams 3:38
16	America the Beautiful / Keb' Mo' 3:30
17	America / Ken Stacey 4:14
18	Wide River to Cross / Buddy Miller 3:02

Barnes & Noble

Featuring historic speeches from Barack Obama interwoven with music from today's most talented recording artists, this first-of-its-kind album inspired by a presidential campaign and its supporters' quest for a "more perfect union" contains performances by some of the most popular recording artists alive today, expressing themselves through instruments and voice. Collectively they have sold more than 100 million albums. This special collector's edition features deluxe packaging with a 52-page book with exclusive photos documenting this historic movement.

All Music Guide

Hidden Beach Recordings is the first label -- independent or otherwise -- to attempt to cash in on the election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States with Yes We Can: Voices of a Grassroots Movement. The album was produced by Steve McKeever of Hidden Beach with the brilliant Meaghan Burdick from Obama for America; she was his online coordinator for fundraising, and worked previously for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. In his liner notes, McKeever documents the birth of Yes We Can: Voices of a Grassroots Movement, but that hardly matters in a sense, because the music is what does. Assembled here are 18 cuts, some of them presented in their original form, some with bits from the speeches of Obama and the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Of course Stevie Wonder's "Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours" is here, but it's rather amazing that the audio for will.i.am's "Yes We Can" video is not, and neither is Kentrell's killer "Time" demo. Huh? Right. And that's part of the problem here: musically this set is diverse all right, but it is also scattershot in terms of quality -- that is, at best. It's about as middle of the road as it gets, even with the enormous profiles of some of these artists. Those using Obama speech audio include John Legend "Pride, In the Name of Love," Lionel Richie with "Eternity," and artists as diverse as Ozomatli, Jill Scott, Bebe Winans (who uses a bit of King's "I Have a Dream" speech instead), Dave Stewart, Shontelle, Los Lonely Boys, Suai, Keb' Mo', and Buddy Miller (whose closing number "Wide River to Cross" is among the real highlights). Elsewhere, Jackson Browne's "Looking East" is included as is Sheryl Crow's "Out of Our Heads," and "Promised Land" by Kanye West, Adam Levine, and Malik Yusef. Another highlight is Yolanda Adams' deeply stirring "Hold On." Thankfully,Bono isn't anywhere to be found here. Ultimately, this is a souvenir that loses the salt in its taste after a spin or two. It's far more memorable as a piece of memorabilia or nostalgia than as a musical artifact. The package is a nicer go, with photographs of everything from the Democratic National Convention to the New Hampshire Primary, and the many snippets from Obama speeches on the campaign trail included. The lyrics are also here but most of them are forgettable at best. We're also told that Hidden Beach is "donating a portion of the proceeds" from the sale of this volume to charitable causes. While it's a wonderful thing to want to remember and never forget what had to be overcome in this historic campaign, and it's unlikely that anyone living on either side of the red and blue aisle will thank goodness, it's quite another to engage in a bit of marketing for its own sake. Thom Jurek