One huge bummer about our atomized popular culture is that we’ve lost one of the great contributions that the music industry made to the artistic canon in the back half of the 20th century: The Charity Mega-Song. Folks still love “Do They Know it’s Christmas” after all, to the point that someone was one going to make a slasher movie about Bob Geldof and that legendary recording session. Getting Soundcloud rappers and TikTok stars together just doesn’t have the same pull as what Quincy Jones, Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie made back in ’85 with “We Are the World,” one of the strangest pop culture documents ever released into the wild.
Raising money for USA for Africa, the three gathered together an eclectic group of the biggest superstars in music, regardless of genre, and got everybody to sing together for the greater good. And now, it’s finally the subject of a major documentary, The Greatest Night in Pop, which Netflix dropped the trailer for earlier on Tuesday (January 9). It’s kind of weird that they’re not waiting a year to drop this, given that 2025 is the 40th anniversary of the recording, but, hey, it’s gonna be pretty ridiculous regardless.
Peep it:
Here’s a synopsis:
“On January 25, 1985, dozens of the biggest names in music convened at a studio in Los Angeles, checked their egos at the door and recorded a song to benefit African famine relief that would alter global pop culture history. ‘The Greatest Night in Pop’ chronicles the massive undertaking to assemble the world’s most impressive supergroup in a world before cell phones and email. That group of artists — led by the song’s co-writers and two of the most significant musicians of the 20th century — Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie — came from different worlds but united to record ‘We Are the World.’ Featuring never-before-seen footage, the film details the early planning stages, including the writing sessions with Richie and Jackson, and goes inside the famed Henson Studios where ‘We Are the World’ was recorded. Many of the artists who were there that legendary evening — Richie, Bruce Springsteen, Smokey Robinson, Cyndi Lauper, Kenny Loggins, Dionne Warwick, and Huey Lewis — reminisce alongside musicians, engineers, and production crew about one of the most storied nights in music history. ‘The Greatest Night in Pop’ was directed by Bao Nguyen and produced by Julia Nottingham, the team behind the acclaimed Bruce Lee documentary (‘Be Water’).”
The Greatest Night in Pop will have its world premiere at Sundance on January 19 (and we might even see it while we’re there!) before it hits Netflix on January 29. We’re just hoping and praying for a follow up documentary called The Worst Night in Pop about “We Are the World 25 for Haiti” because, man, what a disaster.
All that autotune, Paul Haggis as director for the video, and proof that the ghost of Michael Jackson haunts the Henson Studios — actually, you know what, that might be the actual Greatest Night in Pop.