I have seen the music video for “We Are the World” multiple times, and when I found out they were making a documentary about the making of the video, I was intrigued. And it got me even more intrigued after I saw the trailer.

Netflix’s The Greatest Night In Pop is the story of the making of the huge We Are the World collaboration on January 25, 1985, which featured dozens of the world’s top musicians at the time singing to raise awareness for famine in Ethiopia. Some of the artists include Lionel Richie, Michael Jackson, Cyndi Lauper, Bruce Springsteen, and Kenny Loggins. The Director of this movie is Bro Nguyen who directed the Saturday Night Live documentary Live From New York in 2015 and the Bruce Lee documentary Be Water in 2020.

There are a lot of positives to this documentary. This is an example of a documentary that utilizes interviews with people, otherwise known as talking heads, instead of just telling a straightforward story. I enjoy these types of documentaries because you get to hear from the people themselves with their experiences and it’s not just the artists. You also get snippets from people behind the scenes who arranged The music and lighting. 

Another thing I enjoyed Is that you get to see all the different things that added pressure to make this song a reality. Everything from controlling the egos of all of the artists involved to doing it all in one night, especially after the American Music Awards, which happened right beforehand with Lionel Ritchie hosting. They also had to deal with who would be singing the solos because you wanted different contrasting voices on the solos.

This is not necessarily a negative but it’s a little disappointing that Michael Jackson is not around anymore because it would’ve been interesting to hear his perspective of the making of the song along with the other artists. He passed away before the film was in production 

My favorite decade of music is the 1980s. I am glad that I was able to watch this great documentary because it gave me more insight into this event. If you are a music fan or just a fan of the song, I recommend seeing it because you will get to see the process of making this legendary song in a whole new way.

The Greatest Night In Pop is Streaming on Netflix

Rating-4.5/5

Zachary Shelton