If we talk about
We Are The World
to anyone over, say, 40 years old, a feeling of ridicule or, in the least cruel of cases, of guilty pleasure will most likely come to mind.
Above all, the image of all those eighties pop superstars singing it in unison (with the gesture of their hand holding their headphones or next to their ear) has remained in the collective memory, parodied a thousand times.
However, at the time it was a major milestone in pop history, an initiative of epic proportions in which everything could have gone wrong.
Today, when we have become accustomed to the fact that, in most collaborations, artists do everything remotely without needing to know each other, it would be unthinkable to see almost 50 of the biggest stars of that time recording together in the same studio.
Even less so, that they did it for a purely altruistic cause and without any of them trying to impose their conditions or whims above the others.
The documentary
The Greatest Night In Pop
– which premieres on Netflix on January 29, after passing through the Sundance Festival – now looks back on that memorable moment, with one of its inducers, the singer Lionel Richie, as executive producer and narrative driver.
The Vietnamese-American director Bao Nguyen had the privilege of having images of practically the entire recording process, turning the viewer into a witness of what happened on the night of January 28, 1985. At the same time, some of the protagonists air their memories in interviews recorded today at the same location: A&M Studios in Los Angeles.
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The first thing to remember is that this was not an original idea, but was inspired by the charity single
Do They Know It's Christmas?.
Promoted by Bob Geldof, it brought together another brilliant cast of figures, in this case from British and Irish pop, with the intention of raising money to alleviate the famine in Ethiopia that, at that time, was shocking Western public opinion.
Under the name Band Aid, Bono, Sting, George Michael, Boy George, Paul Weller, Phil Collins and the members of Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet, among others, joined in and it swept Christmas 1984, becoming the best-selling single. of all time in the United Kingdom.
It was the musician and actor Harry Belafonte, known for his activism in defense of civil rights, who raised the cry: how could it happen that a bunch of white people had organized this to help Africa and that their fellow race did not? would they have lifted a finger?
Belafonte then contacted Ken Kragen, one of the strongest men in the American recording industry at that time, and uttered a phrase that today would set off all the alarm bells of political correctness: “If Jews were dying of hunger in Israel , American Jews would have already raised millions of dollars.”
His first step was to involve the most important African-American pop stars of that time: Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder and Lionel Richie, as well as Quincy Jones, the star producer who had made Thriller the
best
-selling album in history.
Michael Jackson shows the sheet music of the legendary single to his colleaguesNetflix
The documentary shows part of the initial compositional process of Jackson, Richie and Jones.
Apparently, they couldn't contact Wonder – there was no email or mobile phones in 1985 – but he ended up showing up at the studio by surprise, which left his colleagues a little confused.
In Richie's statements in the documentary we witness some interesting revelations: Jacko, since he did not know music theory, explained all of his musical ideas by humming them.
Finally, they recorded the first demo of the song, basically a Jackson creation, with the help of several session musicians.
Based on this guide, the single would be recorded, which would be signed by USA For Africa, the name of both the organization created for the occasion and the band that would perform it.
As soon as Kragen, Jones and company picked up the phone, names began to pour out.
Ray Charles, Tina Turner, Diana Ross, Smokey Robinson..., but the one that changed the course of events was Bruce Springsteen's yes, followed by Bob Dylan's, Paul Simon's... They could be more ambitious than thought at the beginning, to unite blacks and whites,
soul
and pop stars with rock.
That would make the project stronger, more powerful, more integrative.
The idea was for all the artists to be together in the same studio, to balance the most demanded agendas in the world of entertainment.
Finally it was decided to bring them together on the same night that the American Music Awards were being held in Los Angeles, where many of those singers were going to be and whose ceremony was going to be presented by Richie.
Special emphasis was placed on keeping the content of the demo and the location of the recording a scrupulous secret.
Any slight leak could cause fans or paparazzi to appear and that would scare away the stars.
In the recording it was necessary to do a goldsmith's job with the vocal arrangements, carefully meditate on the position of each artist in the room, who sang each line and with whom and think about the voice ranges of each one and how to sequence them so that the narrative line of the song had the greatest capacity for emotional attachment.
“We make a circle in the room and everyone is looking at each other,” said Quincy Jones, who also had the best idea of the session to avoid nonsense: he hung a sign at the entrance to the studio that said “Leave your ego at the door.” ”.
And he achieved it during the ten hours that the recording lasted.
Presences and absences
Were the 46 biggest American pop stars of the moment in that Los Angeles studio?
No, not all of them.
Prince and Madonna did not attend the recording, even though they had performed at the AMA's ceremony.
The organizers reserved a spot for the author of
Purple Rain
– who had beaten Jacko in several categories of the awards that were given out that night – but he never went to record.
There are several theories to explain why Prince did not attend, from the bitter rivalry that Michael and he were experiencing at that time to the extreme shyness of the Minneapolis genius, who did not want to hang out with so many people.
In the only non-complacent moment in the documentary, Sheila E, then Prince's collaborator, reveals that after expressing her pleasant surprise at being invited to the recording, there came a moment when she realized that, in reality, they were using her. .
She was just bait to convince the artist to come.
She was, in fact, about to get it when she called him at her hotel in the middle of recording, but he proposed playing a guitar solo in another room.
Quincy flatly refused: everyone had to sing, and together (although he made an exception for Jackson, who recorded his first lines alone while the others were still at the AMA's).
The absence of Madonna is tiptoed more, perhaps so that people would not notice what may well be the biggest casting mistake
in
the history of pop.
Someone from the technical team suggested that, in that profile, there could be Cyndi Lauper or the author of
Like A Virgin
(an album that, at that time, had been on the market for two weeks and already had a
single
at number 1 and another at number 2. ), but not both singers at the same time.
Without discrediting the wonderful Cyndi, eternal misery will fall on the one who made such an unfortunate decision.
The artists sing together on the single recording.
More than 20 million copies were sold.Netflix
The thing is, Quincy's catchphrase worked pretty well.
The most surprising thing about the images from the recording is seeing those stars in a shy and unusually docile attitude, “as if it were the first day of kindergarten,” Richie defines.
Many met there, and even signed autographs for each other.
Among all of them, a completely out of place Dylan stands out.
When everyone sings the central chorus, he simply moves his lips, half embarrassed and visibly uncomfortable, like the child who has been invited to a birthday party and doesn't know how to fit in.
It was Wonder, one of the heroes of the night, who broke the ice by dragging him to his piano, imitating Dylan's voice!, and giving him ideas to approach his vocal part.
Another great Stevie moment is when she proposes incorporating some verses in Swahili into the song without much success.
Someone shouts, “Stevie, they don't speak Swahili in Ethiopia!”
The one who ends up saying the key phrase there is Bob Geldof, who was present at the recording as a kind of ideological advisor or motivational
coach
so that the musicians did not lose the solidarity focus of the project: “We are not singing for those who are hungry, we sing for those who have the money,” he snapped.
Of course, the documentary does not capture the moment in which, according to several witnesses, two Ethiopian women appeared in the studio to thank the musicians.
They had been invited by the author of
I Just Called To Say I Love You
.
Pop anthem or tool with a function?
When
We Are The World
was released on March 7, 1985, it automatically became the global superhit it was destined to be, but the song also received many blows.
The most stinging was the one dedicated to him by the renowned music critic Greil Marcus, who warned that the song was too similar to a Pepsi jingle (the company that, at that time, sponsored both Jackson and Richie).
It was, of course, a very easy song to ridicule for many reasons: its syrupy melody and ecclesiastical choir, the imperialist vision of the United States as saviors of the world or that it was a charitable patch that served to wash consciences but did not dare to go to the root of the problem of hunger or question the responsibility of Western governments and large companies.
But here the key phrase is said by Bruce Springsteen in the documentary: “People judged the song aesthetically, but it was just a tool with which to try something.”
In that sense, and being aware of the impossibility of reversing a complex structural situation, we can mitigate cynicism and highlight that
We Are The World
fulfilled its function.
The
single
raised even more than expected (according to the organization, the equivalent of 150 million euros today).
With that money, more than 70 recovery and development projects were launched in seven African countries, including aid in agriculture, fisheries, water management, manufacturing and reforestation.
Training and birth control programs were also developed, while 10% was dedicated to helping the homeless in the US.
But even at the level of the music industry and pop culture, this story makes us reflect on many other things.
The first, how its protagonists – and the public – arrogated to magical thinking, to faith in the utopia that a song can change the world.
Even more: trusting that a physical album, a simple
single,
would be capable of selling enough copies to satisfy hunger on a continent.
It was quite an exhibition of strength on the part of pop music, whose social relevance at that time is very difficult to visualize today.
And also, an example of humility and horizontal and selfless collaboration – no one charged anything – between musicians at the peak of their careers just at the moment when Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher had made individualistic values and the most cruel and exacerbated economic liberalism hegemonic. .
That idea of pop as a safeguard of global consciousness would reach a new level that same year with the Live Aid macro concert and would end up making solidarity albums and festivals fashionable, which sprung up like mushrooms from then on.
Some turned out better than others, but today,
We Are The World
remains among the top 10 best-selling
singles
of all time while the USA For Africa website is still active, and still raising money.
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