Live Performance
"What More Can I Give" was performed live at the 9/11 benefit concert United We Stand: What More Can I Give. Held at the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium in Washington, D.C. on October 21, 2001, the eight-hour concert featured numerous artists performing to a sell-out audience of 54,000 people. Jackson performed his songs "We Are the World" and "Man in the Mirror", before he and other singers such as Rod Stewart, Al Green, James Brown, Sean Combs and Pink closed the show with "What More Can I Give". Joe D'Angelo of MTV later stated that the entire performance was held together by Jackson and Billy Gilman, who he claimed were the only two who looked like they knew the lyrics to the song. He concluded that the collective rendition of the song was altogether "choppy and disparate". Jon Pareles also wrote negatively about the performance. He stated that it "became a shambles as stageful of guests missed their cues or couldn't be heard".
Jackson's appearance during the "What More Can I Give" performance was later edited out of American Broadcasting Company's airing of the show. The company were forced to take the action after representatives of Jackson informed them that CBS had demanded that the singer not perform on a network show before a Jackson special being broadcast on their channel the following month. CBS executives, however, denied their insistence on Jackson's removal from the footage. They stated that if the singer had appeared in the broadcast footage, they most probably would have been forced to delay Jackson's show, so that it would not appear too soon after the airing of United We Stand: What More Can I Give.
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