Details from IMDB:
On January 25th 1985, dozens of the era’s most popular musicians gathered in Los Angeles to record a charity single for African famine relief. Setting egos aside, they collaborated on a song that would make history.
Initial Thoughts:
I’m a child of the 80s and I will always love the music from back then. I would argue that there is good and bad music from every time period and the 80s was no different, plus it’s filled with nostalgia and that’s what makes documentaries like this so good. I love the song “We are the World” and I was excited to see the behind the scenes story of it, so last weekend I have it a watch on Netflix.
Main Points:
Netflix has gotten really good at making documentaries and reality shows (and just finding them as well) and this one is one of their best. It was so great to see all of this footage from that recording of “We are the World” and see how it all came together. I had no idea that Lionel Richie and MJ wrote this song, and how it was Richie (along with help of course) that made the night happen. This documentary lets you see how difficult it was to make this song with 46 of the most famous singers at the time. I had no idea that 99% of the singers where there all night to get this done and that everyone involved volunteered their time.
I had wondered about unusual pairings like Willie Nelson and Dionne Warwick but the answer is simple, they were grouped together because of their vocal range. Those who could hit the high notes were together, like Huey Lewis, Cyndi Lauper and Kim Carnes and that Huey’s part was made bigger because they couldn’t get Prince. We get to see the personalities of these celebs and it makes them all more relatable. For example it is often forgotten, including by me, that Bob Dylan has terrible stage fright and has a really hard time performing in front of a crowd. You could see that he was genuinely upset during the recording, he felt the pressure of the other stars around him, and it was a pleasure to see him come around with Stevie Wonder’s help and get his part done. We are very lucky that so much footage was shot that night, as they were also shooting the video, as we get to see the progression of the song along with lots of unseen footage of the singers.
Final Thoughts:
As always I won’t go into a lot of details on what happened, I’ll leave that up to you to discover. I will say that if you enjoy 80s music in general, and “We are the World” in particular, you need to watch this. An excellent documentary, I would have liked for them to show the video and play the song in it’s entirety (and explain more what happened with Prince and Shelia E) but nothing is perfect. I give this a solid 8.5 out of 10 and a huge recommendation from me. Please don’t let your kids watch this, ages 14+ due to coarse language. Keep up the good work Netflix, lots more great tales from the 80s to be told, I’ll be watching.