Did you catch all the CanCon at Saturday night’s “One World: Together At Home” special?
The jam-packed epic eight-hour special (!!!) put on by the anti-poverty group Global Citizen included several of Canada’s most famous musicians and performers, including Céline Dion, Shawn Mendes and Lilly Singh.
Alanis Morissette was scheduled to perform as well, but ended out being cut from the set list at the last minute. HuffPost Canada reached out to Global Citizen for more information, and will update this story if we hear back.
Unlike other similar shows, the aim of One World was to highlight health care workers and entertain people stuck at home, rather than to fundraise. (Corporate disclaimer: Many companies partnered to stream the event, including Yahoo!, which alongside HuffPost, is owned by Verizon.)
The first Canadian to show up was Jessie Reyez, sporting a high messy ponytail and expertly winged eyeliner. Before she started playing her song “Coffin,” the Toronto singer-songwriter thanked healthcare workers and everyone doing their part to flatten the curve.
“Thank you all if you’re staying home and you’re being an honourable global citizen,” she said. “Because this is only going to get better if we do it as a community.” Her performance is at 1:51:23.
Talk show host Lilly Singh was also there, dressing up as each of her parents in the style of the YouTube videos that made her famous, at 2:23:50. “Stay home and stay safe,” she said, dressed as herself.
Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello sang a duet of “What a Wonderful World,” accompanied only by Mendes on piano. They added a verse at the end, acknowledging the ways the song might feel dissonant right now.
“All the pain that we’ve been through / All the fears and the hurt / I still think to myself / What a wonderful world.”
Toronto native and former Montreal Canadien P.K. Subban was part of the show too, along with his fiancée, ski champion Lindsey Vonn. In one of the more memorable at-home moments, they talk about how staying home doesn’t have to mean forgoing fitness — which they demonstrated by having Subban do pushups while Vonn sat on his back. Impressive!
Their fitness regimen, along with a cameo from one of their very cute dogs, can be seen at the 3:24:40 mark.
Crooner Michael Bublé showed up at 3:52:45 to sing a slow, stripped-down piano version of the Beach Boys classic “God Only Knows.”
Idris Elba and his Canadian wife Sabrina Dhowre, who have both recovered from COVID-19, talked about the incredible case of Italica Grondona, a 102-year-old Italian woman who survived both the Spanish Flu of 1918 and, as of a few weeks ago, the coronavirus. And in a charming moment at the end, Elba acts like he’s going to start singing, and his wife has to hold him back.
And naturally for someone of her iconic status, Céline Dion was part of the group effort that ended the show. She and Andrea Bocelli finished the event with a flourish, singing their 2007 duet “The Prayer,” along with some pretty impressive collaborators: John Legend, Lady Gaga and concert pianist Lang Lang.
If you missed the show because, say, you didn’t have eight hours to spare yesterday but you do today, you can catch the whole thing streaming for free on Yahoo.
