Best Classic Bands
‘We Are the World’ Documentary Set for Netflix
By Best Classic Bands Staff
January 9, 2024
It was the fastest-selling single in U.S. history, #1 there and in dozens of other countries as well, and it was all for a good cause. “We Are the World,” co-written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie, produced by Quincy Jones and credited to USA for Africa—an ad hoc supergroup featuring 46 of the music world’s biggest singing stars backed by a quickly assembled group of instrumental accompanists—was a phenomenon upon its release. Now it is the subject of a new documentary film, The Greatest Night in Pop, premiering at the Sundance Film Festival on Jan. 19, 2024, and coming to Netflix on Jan. 29.
Directed by Bao Nguyen (Be Water), the film takes a deep dive into the story behind the January 25, 1985, recording session that brought together Jackson and Richie, along with Tina Turner, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder, Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen, Willie Nelson, Kenny Loggins, Huey Lewis, Diana Ross, Cyndi Lauper, Ray Charles and many other stars of the day. A chorus including many other big-name artists, among them Bette Midler, LaToya Jackson, Lindsey Buckingham, Harry Belafonte, Smokey Robinson, Waylon Jennings and the Pointer Sisters, also crammed into the Los Angeles studio to lend their voices to the song.
“We Are the World,” which was awarded a quadruple platinum record and spent four weeks atop the Billboard chart, was inspired by a previous charity single, “Do They Know It’s Christmas?,” released in the U.K. in 1984. The subsequent U.S. recording, whose profits were slated to help aid famine relief efforts in Ethiopia, was followed up by an album, also titled We Are the World, that April.
Watch Bob Dylan rehearse his solo accompanied by Stevie Wonder on piano and taking direction from Quincy Jones.
The new documentary, according to several published reports, will include previously unseen footage relating to the massive undertaking that brought together the unprecedented gathering of superstars on such short notice. The Greatest Night in Pop is produced by Julia Nottingham, Richie, Bruce Eskowitz, Larry Klein, Harriet Sternberg, and George Hencken. The executive producers are Angus Wall, Amit Dey and Becky Read. Among director Nguyen’s previous projects was a Saturday Night Live doc, Live from New York!
