The Greatest Night in Pop

A documentary about a song made in one night. The year is 1985. A charity record for famine in Africa is to be made in America. The idea comes from Harry Belafonte. A similar recording had been made in Britain. Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson write the song. Quincy Jones produces. The date is set: the night of 28 January 1985. The reason is practical. The American Music Awards are that evening and the stars are all in Los Angeles anyway. They will go to the studio as soon as the ceremony ends. From there the documentary follows that night hour by hour. Forty-five people, one room, one night. A note is hung on the door: check your ego at the door. The session does not go easily. Some voices do not fit, some cannot find the note, and some do not come. One section is about language. A part in the middle had been written in Swahili and the artists present say it is wrong; the words are changed. Cyndi Lauper's jewellery gets into the recording. The microphone picks up the sound and she has to take it off. The Bob Dylan section is the best thing in it. He cannot sing his own solo and Stevie Wonder sits at the piano and shows him by imitating his voice. What the narrative is interested in is not charity but a room: its idea is that forty-five people who compete with each other had to stay in the same room for a night, and that this is the real story. The source is the raw footage shot that night, most of it never published. There are present-day interviews too. Lionel Richie, Bruce Springsteen, Dionne Warwick, Cyndi Lauper and Huey Lewis tell it. The recording finishes toward morning. Bao Nguyen directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes 1980s pop and studio stories. Who it is not for: anyone looking for a critical view; the documentary never enters what was contested about the song at the time.