"We Are the World" truly might have been the greatest night in pop

When I was 15, I already loved music so much, and it was a time when the “top 40” popular choices still meant something. It was what everyone listened to, and even if you were at heart a punk kid or something else, you had to at least begrudgingly admit that stuff like Michael Jackson, Hall and Oates, Journey, and Huey Lewis was good stuff. But one night, all those superstars and many others stepped into the studio all at once. The new movie The Greatest Night in Pop, just released on Netflix, takes a behind-the-scenes journey with mastermind Lionel Richie, and it’s a joyride for sure.

Harry Belafonte had travelled to see the horrendous famine in Ethiopia in the 1980s and Bob Geldof had just recorded Live Aid's “Do They Know It’s Christmastime?” in England. So he worked to recruit Lionel Richie and Quincy Jones to put together a similar effort in the U.S. They wanted to write a song with Stevie Wonder but couldn’t contact him, so they brought in Michael Jackson. He drove to Richie’s house to write the song, but he had to take practically every backroad in L.A. because Michael didn’t take freeways. 

There were no cell phones in 1985. Things didn’t move quickly. Getting an ambitious group of musicians together was a logistical nightmare. The only way it might happen was if it was in January in L.A. when everyone was in town for the American Music Awards. 

One of the memorable elements of “We Are the World” is how all the artists stood together in the studio. Richie thought they would all sing one by one in the vocal booth, but Jones said that would take weeks. They only had one night. This caused a little troublemaking by the likes of Cyndi Lauper and Wonder. The vocal arranger planned who would sing which parts and the artists had to hit it all quickly after arrival or else there could be chaos. Geldof got in front of everyone once they were situated and told them about what it was like on the ground in Ethiopia. A somber mood fell over the superstars, causing them to behave and not act like spoiled children or even celebrities. He got them to focus and “put what they feel into the song.” 

Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen were some of those who were instructed to sit out of the octaves. And it was getting hot with lights and people - “ripe” someone said - and everyone had to be really quiet to not mess up the tapes. Lauper, for one, had to remove a bevy of beads. Richie’s role was to not let it veer off at any point. If that happened, there could be 47 versions of the song - one for each artist in that building. But there was no time for that in a one-night-only event. Waylon Jennings walked out when someone suggested adding a Swahili bit; he didn’t think it fit his style at all. 

Once they got to the solo parts, Dionne Warwick and Al Jarreau struggled for a bit before Springsteen, Steve Perry, and Daryl Hall nailed it immediately. Huey Lewis was waiting for the end while many of the others were having to redo their bits over and over; he finally suggested they run all the way through so he and the others at the end could get some practice and it was agreed that was a good idea. 

Richie got home at 8 a.m. the next morning and his family all congratulated him on his awards and hosting, but all he could talk about was We Are the World. They didn’t really know what he was talking about, but that evening, the song was played everywhere at the same time. It was sung in many languages by big groups of people around the world. It sold more than a million copies its first weekend. And it won best album and single at the 1986 Grammys. To this day, USA for Africa has raised $160 million and is still going strong.  

5 out of 5 stars