“They are hungry for knowledge, for childhood, for a home”, she said.
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The 48-year-old Nashville actress was lighting up the famed building to celebrate and honor the 2015 Global Citizen Festival & mark the United Nations new Global Objectives for Sustainable Development. I refuse to believe we won’t try.
In pre-taped remarks, President Barack Obama stated, “Children are dying. Whenever or wherever dignity is denied, we’re called to work toward change”.
The two were performing at the Global Citizen Festival, in Central Park, New York City.
The First Lady gave Beyonce the best introduction one could hope to get: “Let’s give it up for the fantastic Beyonce“, she said. She may be leading the stage but others weren’t sidelined as well.
Beyonce put on a crowd-rousing show of dance pop with an emphasis on her feminist themes but performed an unlikely acoustic duet with Sheeran of “Drunk in Love“, which she usually sings with husband Jay Z.
Beyoncé: At this point in her career, it’s safe to say Beyoncé can out-perform anyone, no matter who else is on the bill. Her hit song “Run the World (Girls)” was punctuated by recordings of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED talk on feminism, and the Maya Angelou poem, “Phenomenal”, on the power of womanhood. With twelve high stepping female dancers, she dazzled the crowd, closing with “Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)”. Then Mrs O encouraged the audience to Tweet with the hashtag #62MillionGirls (the number of girls around the world who dont have access to education) and the true power of the Mich-oncé force was felt around the globe.
Mrs. Obama was followed by Bono, who recalled how he worked with Nelson Mandela when he was 19 years old. It was the fourth such festival organized by Global Poverty Project, a nonprofit that began in 2008 with the ambitious goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030.
“… [R]ight now, 62 million girls are not in school”.
“I look out and I see lots of global citizens, optimistic, determined, absolutely determined, rejecting the false premise that our challenges are mere fate with no solutions”. “We thought other people have the same passion, so we joined up”. The rest of the band left the stage, leaving just the two singers to perform a duet of Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song.” Martin delivered threefold by bringing out unannounced guest Ariana Grande during Coldplay’s set, making an appearance during Ed Sheeran’s performance and debuting a new Coldplay song titled “Amazing Day”.
Coldplay frontman Chris Martin has signed up as a curator of the event for the next 15 years with Richard Curtis as creative director.
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Sting and Common had a powerful medley of The Police’s “Every Breath You Take” and “One World (Not Three).”
