‘If a bomb lands on this place, John Denver is back on top...’
There are two ways to look at Bao Nguyen’s Netflix documentary The Greatest Night in Pop. One is to acknowledge how incredible it is that so many global superstars were in the same place at the same time, and it’s even more incredible that the song that they subsequently produced raised millions and millions of dollars for charity. The second, perhaps less generous take, is that the song itself, ‘We Are the World’, is an abomination – we’re talking genuinely one of the worst songs ever recorded. I should probably caveat this with the admission that I despise Michael Jackson and I firmly believe that the consensus that he is a musical genius is some kind of shared mass psychosis that I have somehow not fallen victim to. But putting Jackson to one side for a moment (hopefully forever), Bob Dylan showed up for this thing. Bruce Springsteen was there. And yet… the song is still absolutely, irredeemably terrible…
On one fateful night in January of 1985, Lionel Richie and Harry Belafonte gathered some of the biggest superstars in pop music at Kenny Rogers’ Lion Share Recording Studio on Beverly Boulevard in Los Angeles to record ‘We Are the World’ – essentially the American music industry’s response to Band Aid, another terrible song. The Greatest Night in Pop combines archive footage with new interviews to tell the story of what is a pretty unbelievable night in music history, regardless of how bad the resulting song is.
Seeing how these global superstars react to each other in a confined space and with limited time is what makes Nguyen’s documentary so insightful. It’s fascinating to see Dylan looking absolutely lost throughout while his less misanthropic peers appear to be in their element. While some will be put off by the sheer po-facedness of it all, the star power is enough to ensure that the film remains compelling throughout. It’s not hyperbolic to suggest that nothing like this (other than Band Aid) has happened in pop music history before or since.
The Greatest Night in Pop makes for a great companion piece to the 2025 BBC documentary Live Aid at 40. Just don’t make me listen to that damn song again.
