The Greatest Night in Pop

When this seemingly generic Netflix doc came out in January 2024, none of us were expecting that by the end of the year, Quincy Jones would be gone and Bob Dylan would be discovered by new generations of young people after being portrayed by Timothée Chalamet. Still, back in January 2024, Jones and Dylan were the two people I was left thinking the most about after seeing this surprisingly moving documentary about the recording of USA For Africa's "We Are The World."

Like most folks my age, even those of us who grew up without MTV, I was well acquainted with the song, the organization it benefited, and the heavy-rotation music video. I'd even watched the 1985 hour-long behind-the-scenes documentary. Still, I wasn't the biggest fan of the cheesy pop tune and didn't fully grasp the uniqueness of this recording session. That attitude and lack of appreciation were at least in part because "We Are The World" didn't seem unique at the time. After all, many other stars were instantly compelled to jump on the charity supergroup bandwagon. By the end of the year, it seemed that every type of music did its variation, from Canadian pop stars to Latin American singers, to Christian rockers, to Artists United Against Apartheid (which was probably the most effective of these efforts in terms of how it helped change international policies regarding South Africa). And, of course, there were countless, often hilarious full-cast SNL sketches that parodied these well-meaning but dubious supergroup undertakings. So one of the most effective things about documentarian Bao Nguyen's The Greatest Night in Pop is how it takes you back to a time before the ubiquity of this trend and makes the case for this event deserving the movie's moniker.

Nguyen relies mostly on the same footage used in the 52-minute 1985 promo doc We Are The World: The Story Behind the Song, but rather than a stiff, fly-on-the-wall accounting of the event awkwardly narrated by Jane Fonda (who was apparently present that night), The Greatest Night in Pop is told as a cherished memory by a handful of those who participated. The little backstory given focuses on how the legendary singer and activist Harry Belafonte had felt uneasy about the British supergroup Band-Aid, which Bob Geldof had assembled to raise money for the famine in Ethiopia that had begun in 1983 after a war involving Ethiopia and Tigre. Belafonte had expressed a concern to producer/composer Quincy Jones that the optics of white British and Irish popstars "saving Africans" didn't look great and that he'd feel better watching Black artists "saving Africans." That observation inspired Jones to assemble an American Soul, Funk, and R&B supergroup to do what Band-Aid did. He thought of Stevie Wonder and Lionel Richie, each enjoying career peaks (at least in terms of record sales) to write the song. When he couldn't get ahold of Stevie, Jones, who had produced two of the most successful albums of all time (Michael Jackson's Off the Wall and Thriller) called "Mike" and explained that the clock was ticking: the only time he and Richie could envision pulling off such a session was right after the American Music Awards, which Richie was hosting that month. So Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie got to work writing.

As the surviving songwriter, Richie starts this documentary in an interview filmed in the very room at Hollywood's A&M Recording Studios, where the session took place. He and others talk about the song's genesis and how manager/producer Ken Kragen took on the complex logistics of organizing the session and keeping its location and details completely out of the press. Richie is appropriately the most frequently talking head in the movie, joined by notable behind-the-scenes folks like vocal arranger Tom Bähler, who had the complex job of selecting which soloists would take each line of the song; lighting designer Bob Dickinson, who set the studio up to film the music video while the song was recorded; Ken Woo, the youngest of the cameramen who volunteered to film; and Humberto Gatica, who mixed and engineered the session.

Only a handful of the artists who participated are interviewed, and if you just looked at the list, it might seem like the filmmakers only got who they could get. But watching the movie, I think the correct folks were used to tell the story this movie wants to tell. Huey Lewis had just become a superstar and was thrilled to be given a solo and a harmony part at the last minute during the session. Cindy Lauper almost bailed right before the session because her boyfriend didn't think the song would be a hit (this would not be the first nor the last time that Lauper's future husband, David Thornton, would offer such helpful "career advice"). Sheila E. had perhaps the most negative experience of any performer. At first, she felt honored to be asked to join such an elite group, but then she realized she was probably just kept around in the hopes that she could lure her romantic partner, Prince, into participating.

Jones wanted the song to reach across a range of musical genres and stretch back to activist musical traditions from decades earlier. As the preparations progressed, he invited country stars like Willie Nelson, Kenny Rogers, and Waylon Jennings, as well as rock legends like Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon, and Bob Dylan. The team had gotten almost everyone they wanted except the real prize they'd hoped for: to have both Michael Jackson and Prince on the track. Those two megastars were engaged in a rivalry fueled by the press. Both Jones and Richie had hoped the song and the cause would transcend the breach, but Prince declined to participate despite several calls late into the night.

Hearing what was going on for many of the key participants at this time adds multiple levels of interest that are not present in the contemporaneous promo documentary made from the same footage. Neither the tensions nor the grandeur of the event is captured in We Are The World: The Story Behind the Song, which makes the proceedings look like a fairly standard recording session. Whereas that promo video does mention that Richie, Cindy Lauper, and Tina Turner had come straight from performing at the American Music Awards, it doesn't point out that about half the participants were coming from that awards show and that the session didn't start till around midnight. The promo doc makes it seem like the celebrity gathering was an almost routine day-long recording session, complete with a photo shoot, commemorative poster signings, interviews, and various other standard activities. In truth, that may have been how it felt for many of the folks involved, but there's no way it could have felt routine for Jones, Richie, Jackson, and the others entrusted with pulling everything off.

Like the 2021 archival doc Summer of Soul, the interviews and historical perspective found in The Greatest Night of Pop are what gives it its power. I've always admired Quincy Jones but never identified with this musical icon. Yet, watching this movie, the legendary "Q" comes off like any other experienced producer trying to pull off a massive undertaking. I had never fully grasped how difficult it would be just to get this unprecedented assembly of diverse hitmakers into the same room at the same time, let alone get them all to sound good together and to stick around for hours without clashes of egos and cultures. I found myself experiencing sympathetic anxiety as the recording progressed. Even though I knew the song would be completed, watching the recording, I started to fear this complicated undertaking would not end well. There was just so much that could have gone wrong.

Jones and Kragen had determined that the only possible time for the session was right after the AMAs because so many of the artists would already be in LA to perform at or attend that award show. They then convinced people like Springsteen, Dylan, Dion Warwick, and Billy Joel to break away from their touring and concert schedules to be there on this particular night. Knowing what awards shows are like, especially music-related awards, it is hard to imagine these folks wouldn't be at least a little tired, punchy, inhibited, or inebriated as they rolled into the studio late at night instead of going to an award show after-party. So whenever something starts to go wrong in this movie, it feels genuinely tense because the context has been so well established.

Stevie Wonder, who had blown off the invitation to co-write the song, almost derails the session twice. First, he introduces the eleventh-hour concept of adding a line in Swahili (even though the project is meant to raise money for Ethiopia), and Jones indulges him. At that point, Waylon Jennings decides to split, and you can see how the whole session could have fallen apart. Jones must have been furious at Stevie, but fortunately, he and Michael Jackson got things back on track. By 4 a.m., when the crowd of forty-four artists thinned out to just the twenty-one soloists, Stevie gets impish again. He has the second solo line of the song, and he seems to flub his performance intentionally, then has the "helpful suggestion" that he should swap lines with someone else.

But Stevie Wonder redeems himself at the end of the night by coaching Bob Dylan through Dylan's 15-second solo. It's fascinating and kind of hilarious to watch Dylan standing for however many hours this all lasted, looking like the most uncomfortable deer ever caught in headlights. He was clearly not sure he should be there and lost as to how his distinctive vocal style could fit into even the chorus of this song, and his discomfort is palpable. Jones saves Bob's solo till almost the very end, but Bob has no idea how to sing his part. Stevie Wonder then takes Dylan in hand and essentially gives him a line reading. Bringing Dylan over to a piano, he does a Bob Dylan impression for the real Bob to mimic. Bob follows Stevie's impression of himself, and they get his iconic voice on the track, much to everyone's relief. As vital as the producers felt having Dylan on the song was for connecting USA For Africa to the traditions of white socially conscious music as well as African-American political traditions, being associated with the project was probably a lot more important for Dylan, as his career was floundering in the 1980s. We wonder what is happening inside the iconic head that he's clearly in over.

That brief collaboration between Stevie Wonder and Bob Dylan is just one example of what comes across so strongly in this movie—how unpretentious and invested these folks are in this undertaking. Even though most of the artists didn't know much about what they'd signed up for, they were genuinely excited to collaborate with such a diverse array of singers that they themselves were fans of. In the entirety of the long night of recording, only one person bales out, only one gets drunk, and only a couple (intentionally or unintentionally) try to take over from the producer. The egos seem tempered by the absence of managers, agents, paparazzi, and the public. Those present comport themselves like regular human beings. Most of the soloists stick around to watch the others after their part of the song is finished. Dianna Ross, who didn't have the friendliest reputation at this time, seems the most humble and sincere person there. She asks everyone to sign her sheet music during a break and sticks around till the final tape stops rolling, tearing up when it's all over. 

Regardless of whether or not the recording of "We Are the World" was actually "the greatest night in pop," this documentary did something I never thought possible: it made me appreciate the nuance, intricacy, and artistry of a song I'd never thought all that highly of. It both provided me with a good deal of nostalgic enjoyment and made me feel downright reverential, witnessing one of the most audacious acts of producing in the history of American music.