Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Greatest Night In Pop’ on Netflix, A Documentary About How “We Are The World” Became A Reality

In The Greatest Night of Pop (Netflix), we return to 1985 and the spontaneous, ultimately smashingly successful effort to write and record a benefit single for the plight of famine in Africa. With Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie writing it, and Quincy Jones producing it, “We Are the World” had the power to change the world. For it to work, they just had to get 44 of the biggest stars in music corralled into one studio at a secret location for one night only. Greatest Night includes interviews with lots of the principals, including Lionel Richie, Bruce Springsteen, Smokey Robinson, Cyndi Lauper, and Huey Lewis, and a ton of revealing footage from the night in question.

THE GREATEST NIGHT IN POP: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

The Gist: As Richie puts it, the USA for Africa supergroup would be a chance for the collective power of the participants’ ego and talent to be put toward saving some lives. Ken Kragen, Richie’s manager, had one of the thickest rolodexes in entertainment, and Greatest Night recounts how fingers started dialing every major artist in town. Would they do it? Could they do it? And what about scheduling it? That early effort was spurred by who was already involved. Harry Belafonte, elder statesman of show business and advocate for social justice and civil rights, who had the idea for an American-based charity single in the first place. Lionel Richie, Michael Jackson, Quincy Jones, and Stevie Wonder, who nobody could get ahold of until he strolled into the studio for the demo sessions. And as the melody and lyrics came together – Richie’s anecdotal stories include a top-notch MJ impersonation – it was decided to record “We Are the World” on the night of the 12th Annual American Music Awards. The AMAs used to be a pretty huge deal. Everybody would be in town.  

“The single most damaging piece of information is where we’re doing this,” Kragen says in an old recording. Once there was a demo, numbered cassette tapes were sent to participants with gag orders attached, and top secret instructions to appear at LA’s A&M Studios on the night of the session. Greatest Night has all of the footage of that night, and includes interviews with the sound technicians and cameramen who volunteered their time to work the session, as well as the recording engineers and arrangers who worked alongside Quincy Jones. “This guy pulls up across the street in this old Pontiac GTO,” cameraman Ken Woo remembers. “Guy gets out and it’s Bruce Springsteen. I’m Like, ‘Wow, it’s on.’” Like trying to figure out how Taylor Swift will ever get from her show in Japan to the Super Bowl on time, Springsteen had closed out his Born In The USA tour in Buffalo and flown overnight to be a part of USA for Africa.  

The bulk of Greatest Night in Pop becomes the recording session itself. Conversations about who would sing together, down to duct tape on the floor with their names written in marker. Stars like Diana Ross, Tina Turner, Kenny Loggins, Kim Carnes, Paul Simon, and Steve Perry reading quickly from handwritten music charts and sketching their vocals. Tension in the room. It starts to heat up in there, and stress builds. Stevie Wonder starts improvising lyrics in Swahili, and Richie has to tell him that the language isn’t spoken in Ethiopia. And Sheila E remembers getting angry. Was she only invited to participate so that the organizers could get to Prince? (The Purple One never showed.) “Right now, we’ll do that all the way through,” Quincy Jones shouts over the assembled stars. “Up in the same octave as Michael’s singing it.” That’s Michael Jackson as your guide vocalist. “Everybody that can’t sing it that high, just lay out. Just the high singers. I don’t wanna get octaves on this part. We’re gonna do low octaves later.” It’s true that USA for Africa and “We Are the World” would make a better day. But it would require a recording session where everyone was flying by the seat of their pants. 

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? A year before “We Are the World,” there was Bob Geldof with the Band-Aid supergroup, and George Michael singing on “Do They Know It’s Christmas.” The 2023 documentary Wham! goes deep on the hit pop duo and the era. And “We Are the World” participant Dionne Warwick features in the 2021 doc Don’t Make Me Over, which also includes appearances by Quincy Jones.

Performance Worth Watching: While the stars who would sing on the track were partying at the American Music Awards, Michael Jackson was in the studio refining the “We Are the World” chorus. Greatest Night includes an extended sequence featuring Jackson’s isolated vocal as he works the thing out, wearing his classic black aviators and gilded gold jacket. Jackson’s legacy is tarnished. But in 1985, he was the king of pop, and the sequence captures him in a place free of artifice or presentation. 

Memorable Dialogue: When weeee stand together as onnnnnnne… “Then they said, ‘Sing in harmony with Cyndi and Kim,’ Huey Lewis remembers. “The demo didn’t have any harmony parts or anything. I’m gonna have to make something up here. Make up a three-part harmony in front of Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles, Kenny Loggins, and Daryl Hall. That was very nerve-wracking.”  

Sex and Skin: Nothing.

Our Take: The overnight recording session for “We Are the World” fills almost the entire second half of The Greatest Night in Pop, and it’s a pretty fascinating chunk of raw footage. As the artists arrive en masse and mill about the room at A&M Studios, Quincy Jones has to get this chatty crowd full of huge celebrity personalities all lined up on the risers and in front of their microphones like a class of spazzy elementary school kids being arranged for a recital. Bette Midler sneaks a cigarette on the side, Huey Lewis wanders by with a can of Budweiser, Al Jarreau is overserved, Cyndi Lauper keeps cracking everyone up, and the entire group is in awe of Ray Charles, Harry Belafonte, and Stevie Wonder. Lionel Richie is still in the shiny silver suit he wore as host of the American Music Awards earlier that night. And Kenny Rogers is giving dad energy, wearing the promotional white USA for Africa sweatshirt. In every shot, the foreground features two or three superstars, while the background has two or three more superstars just, like, chilling next to a ficus.

Of course, the issue with so many stars in one room becomes “Who’s in charge?” And while Lionel Richie tells us the story in the present, and was instrumental in planning the session and keeping it on track, Quincy Jones was the boss in that room. (If there were any questions about that, you could take a look at the sign he scrawled in Sharpie: “Check Your Ego At The Door.”) It’s interesting seeing Jones’s process in the studio. He’ll deliver technical instructions regarding singing positions and hitting octaves alongside bouts of cajoling talent – getting Stevie Wonder to sit at the piano and demonstrate Bob Dylan’s part in the style and voice of Bob Dylan – and reminding all of these people that it’s not all fun and games, because they’re singing this song to address global famine.     

Our Call: STREAM IT. Could we get 50 of the most powerful people in music today to attend a lengthy overnight recording session after the conclusion of an awards show? Who knows – and who would stand next to who? – but in 1985, it was Lionel Richie’s job to do just that. The Greatest Night in Pop is at its best when it just lets the tape roll on how “We Are the World” played out.

Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.