AP Photo
Quincy Jones and Harry Belafonte display a USA for Africa poster, February 11, 1985.
While good for Orwell, 1984 was not exactly a thrilling time for progressives. Ronald Reagan was wreaking havoc. That November, Reagan trounced Democrat Walter Mondale, who managed to carry just D.C. and Minnesota. The Cold War was still raging, and there was dire famine in Africa.
On the latter count, some of America’s best-known pop stars, led by Harry Belafonte, Lionel Richie, and Michael Jackson, decided that they might be able to make a difference. The result was USA for Africa, and the anthem “We Are the World.”
The 2024 Netflix documentary The Greatest Night in Pop is a behind-the-scenes look at how “We Are the World” came together. It is utterly charming. And it poignantly evokes a lost era.
USA for Africa was inspired by a November 1984 fundraising effort, Band Aid, organized by the Irish rock musician and activist Bob Geldof, who assembled a studio of British pop stars and raised about eight million pounds for famine relief. In December, Belafonte began calling around to enlist an all-star U.S. cast to go bigger. He contacted Richie’s manager, Ken Kragen. They soon persuaded Richie, a rising Motown star then in his thirties, to lead the effort.
The film is narrated in part by Richie, who looks great today in his mid-seventies. Once you had a few superstars, it was not hard to get others. Springsteen’s in. OK, how about Dylan? Now let’s get Willie Nelson, Diana Ross, Tina Turner, Billy Joel, and Paul Simon. Eventually, upwards of 60 pop stars agree, all on short notice.
But how to get all these people, secretly, in one place? It turned out that at least half of them would be in Los Angeles on January 28, 1985, the night of the American Music Awards, which Richie is hosting. Others fly in. After the awards end at around 11 p.m., the performers sneak off, one by one, to a secret location, for a recording session that goes all night and finally ends at 8 a.m.
Jackson and Richie wrote the song, on a one-week deadline. Cassettes and sheet music were FedExed, with one day to spare, to the performers and their agents. The incomparable producer Quincy Jones records the chorus in unison, a cappella (“Acapulco,” he puns), with 60 superstars standing on tiers in a semicircle. He then goes on to record the verses with some short solos and duets.
They do take after take after take. Jones has posted a handwritten note: “Check your ego at the door.” Most do.
This part of the movie is touching and almost surreal. Paul Simon is paired with Kenny Rogers. There’s Willie Nelson singing with Dionne Warwick. Something is interfering with a microphone. It turns out that Cyndi Lauper is wearing far too much jangling jewelry. And they all look preposterously young.
At one point, Ray Charles needs to use the bathroom. Stevie Wonder takes him. “The blind leading the blind,” says Richie. Michael Jackson, cruelly remembered for the messed-up, tragic end of his career, is utterly sweet.
Courtesy Sundance Film Festival
The overnight all-star recording session was held on January 28-29, 1985; “We Are the World” raised $90 million to help save starving children in Africa.
The most anxious person in the room is Dylan. He keeps his head in his hands, clutching his headphones, glowering. When the time comes for him to record his solo, he just can’t figure out how to do it. Stevie Wonder sings the lyric, in a perfect imitation of Dylan. So Dylan manages to record the line, by imitating Stevie Wonder imitating himself. There’s a choice … we’re making, we’re saving our own … lives.
Dylan shakes his head. That wasn’t any good, he says to Quincy Jones. That was fantastic, says Jones, giving Dylan a huge hug. Dylan grins. It’s 6 a.m.
After the session is finally done, Richie points to Belafonte, in the back row. He’s the man who started this. The group breaks into applause and sings a perfect rendition of “Day-O.” Then they shyly start asking for each other’s autographs.
When it’s released, “We Are the World” breaks all records. Several other pop fundraising efforts follow, including Farm Aid (including Nelson, Dylan, B.B. King, and Billy Joel) and Artists United Against Apartheid, which was about South Africa (with Bono, Springsteen, several rap legends, and many more).
“We Are the World” raised $90 million to help save starving children in Africa. Today, that sum is petty cash for any of the world’s multibillionaires.
In 1984, global climate change was just taking off, both as an issue and as a plague. Since then, famine and starvation have multiplied far beyond the capacity of any superstar charity to make a difference.
In the decades that followed “We Are the World,” we went from the hope of Obama (who would have fit right into the chorus), to the sheer evil of Trump. There are anti-Trump signals by the likes of Taylor Swift, but in an era obsessed by markets and marketing, there are no Artists Against Trump. Even in moments of tremendous recent suffering—think COVID, or the Maui wildfires, or the February 2023 earthquake that killed 55,000 people in Turkey and the surrounding area—there hasn’t been anything mounted at the scale of USA for Africa.
Who would have thought that 1984 would evoke nostalgia. You should see the movie. If you’re in my generation, it will bring back your youth. If you’re younger, it may seem like a quaint period piece. But it was an inspiring moment of hope. We need all we can get.
