There comes a time...

"The Greatest Night in Pop" is a fun look at the recording of "We Are the World," as captivating for the 1985 time capsule it provides as for the chronicle of this overwrought anthem

Watching “The Greatest Night in Pop,” I couldn’t help but think Netflix was also documenting the beginning of the end of my love affair with pop music. The film, a new documentary about the recording of "We Are the World" is a surprisingly captivating look at an event that could never happen again, one that funneled a staggering amount of star power into a fairly limp power ballad that nonetheless topped the charts, raised awareness, and as was the goal, helped to feed starving people in Africa.

Seeing this 39 years later, it was as if I was two people at once: The cynical suburban dad who scoffs at grand gestures and bland music on one side, and the starstruck teenager marveling at the simultaneous appearance of so many favorites in one room. I mean Huey Lewis and Darryl Hall and Lionel Ritchie? Together? Pinch 15-year-old me. Were I to hear the song for the first time now, after rolling my eyes so far back they might never right themselves, I would at least perk up when Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen chime in (croak in?), though I made fun of the strained untunefulness of both at the time.

Let's get this out of the way now: "We Are the World" isn't a good song. Remove it from the context, put it in the hands of one of its two authors — Ritchie or Michael Jackson — and it's a filler track on their hit-laden albums, the one song on Thriller that wouldn’t chart. But I'll always have a soft spot for it because I still remember poring over the photos on the LP's gatefold, cueing up the album, and listening often enough that I knew where everyone came in. A year later, the first blush of my infatuation with the Replacements and R.E.M. was taking hold, and soon everything about "We Are the World" and most of the artists involved would seem lame, if not repellent.

But nostalgia is a powerful magnet, and that coupled with a surprisingly compelling narrative made this an enjoyable film. I could happily live the rest of my life never hearing that song again, but for 90 minutes I was willing to turn back the clock and immerse myself in ‘80s excess.

Some of the footage has been available on YouTube for years, the artists recording their solo lines, for example, but seeing these clips more fully, surrounded by scene-setting current interviews, adds to the story, creating just the right amount of tension to sustain interest over the course of the film. 

You should watch it for yourself, so I won't summarize the entire thing, but I will share a few thoughts and note some highlights.

First off, why was Dan Aykroyd there? I suppose one could cite The Blues Brothers as a reason, but his "hardware store manager who stopped by the studio on his way home from work" vibe isn't exactly adding to the festivities.

Dwight Twilley on national TV with Phillip Bailey? There’s an “I’m On Fire”/Earth, Wind and Fire joke in there somewhere. And this is perhaps the only time Brian Wilson’s confused look seems entirely justified.

Backing up, some of the most interesting footage is from the 1985 American Music Awards, a show Ritchie was hosting, and which provided the excuse for so many stars to be in one place at the same time. It's here just to show how busy Ritchie was the day of the recording, but I swear that's Dwight Twilley up there with Phillip Bailey presenting an award to Ritchie, while Midnight Oil's Peter Garrett is presenting a full two years before his band broke through in the U.S. The Beach Boys presenting an award to Prince while Prince's hulking bodyguard lurks nearby is such an '80s moment in a sea of '80s moments that I almost couldn't go on. (Yes, that link above goes to a video for the full three-hour show, and yes, I’ll probably watch it all at some point).

Seeing Kenny Rogers drive his own Plymouth Laser up to the studio amid the limos and handlers is also a sight to behold.

We knew he could drive because we all saw “Six Pack” at a drive-in like I did, right?

Back to “We Are the World” and the wrangling it took to bring it together, interesting story lines abound. Waylon Jennings refuses to sing Swahili and leaves! Sheila E. realizes too late that she's little more than (unsuccessful) Prince bait and leaves! Al Jarreau gets drunk and his ability to sing a line coherently leaves!

But it is the behind-the-scenes musical maneuvering that is most interesting. Quincy Jones may get the adulation for producing the track, but Ken Bahler is the secret weapon. He's the one who figured out who would sing solos and in what order they would appear. What might seem random is revealed, on a closer listen, to be a well thought out plan that enhances each voice by placing complementary voices around it. They are singing bland, feel-good banalities, but it sounds good!

The short mention of Dylan's discomfort confirms what has been obvious from that available footage, Bob clearly not singing along with the chorus as everyone emotes their way through. The film rightly notes that he doesn't sing that way; his is an idiosyncratic voice, and it doesn't make sense to add that ingredient to the sugary confection being created on those risers. 

Everyone laughs at Stevie Wonder’s joke about him and Ray Charles driving… and then there’s Bob Dylan.

In a fascinating clip, Dylan is coaxed into singing a vocal tag for a sort of post-chorus bridge (it's a seven-minute song, so there are many, many parts), but can't seem to find his voice. Literally. He mumbles a line with unsatisfying results. Finally, he calls over Stevie Wonder, asking him to play the piano and help him through. Wonder does his best Dylan impersonation, acting as a guide vocal of sorts that Dylan follows, using Wonder's version of his voice to find it within himself, and then delivers a heartfelt reading that adds real emotion where it was largely lacking. I didn’t appreciate it at the time, but it’s a highlight now.

The documentary only deals with the writing and recording of the song, as much about the logistics of wrangling 40-plus stars as anything. That's interesting in and of itself, but I would have welcomed more about the album or the other songs that came out around the same time.

"We Are the World" was a response to "Do They Know It's Christmas?" a similarly star-studded charity song from UK pop artists. I loved that song at the time, blind to the rather terrible and condescending lyrics because it featured Sting and Bono and had a great hook. 

A Canadian all-star song cut about the same time as "We Are the World" was actually included on the We Are the World album, though I have no recollection of ever hearing it. "Tears Are Not Enough" very much follows the "We Are the World" template, a maudlin bit of treacle featuring voices like Gordon Lightfoot, Neil Young, Bryan Adams, and Joni Mitchell. (And, in an odd bit of symmetry, SCTV’s John Candy, Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara fill the "what are they doing here?" role filled by Aykroyd south of the border.)

The rest of the We Are the World album is equally skippable. Prince, who snubbed the big recording session, contributed an unreleased track instead. Though I have a bit more appreciation for "4 the Tears in Your Eyes" today, it's still a minor Prince performance. Huey Lewis offers a live take of a pre-fame track, "Trouble in Paradise," while Steve Perry, Kenny Rogers, the Pointer Sisters, and Chicago all contributed tracks that I may have listened to at the time but can't recall and couldn't be bothered to listen to now.

But the gem of the album, the song that made me almost sad that I seem to have divested myself of the LP sometime over the past 39 years, is Bruce Springsteen's "Trapped." It's a live version of a Jimmy Cliff song recorded in 1984. It's everything "We Are the World" is not: impassioned, dynamic, and powerful, and it cemented the fandom sparked by the ubiquitous Born in the USA the year before.

So, as a song, “We Are the World” was a mixed bag. It’s not a great composition, and it doesn’t address any root causes of the problem, opting instead for a non-specific call to action. But as a tool of advocacy, it certainly worked, raising awareness of the issue and a significant amount of money, as much as $80 million to date, to fight hunger and poverty in Ethiopia. And more followed, including Live Aid, Farm Aid, Live 8 and other similar charity concerts, tribute albums and more, all designed to mimic, for good or ill, the time when some of pop’s biggest stars heeded a certain call.