“Michael’s house was colorful.”
That’s how Lionel Richie, the singer behind “Hello” and “All Night Long,” remembers the first time he walked into Michael Jackson’s family home in Encino, California. It was January 1985. The two of them had been asked to write a song to raise money for hungry families in Africa, and they didn’t have much time to get it done.
So for about a week, they met up at night in Michael’s bedroom and worked on it together.
Lionel had never seen a house quite like it. Michael kept telling him to go make friends with Bubbles, his pet chimp. In another room, a dog was barking and a pet myna bird was making a racket of its own. Lionel has reportedly joked that the bird would yell “Shut up!” at the dog.
None of it bothered Michael. He was having the time of his life, and he loved to work fast. “I love working quickly,” he once said. “I went ahead without even Lionel knowing. I couldn’t wait.”
One night, Lionel was stretched out on the floor, working on the words. There were stacks of records nearby. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw some of those records start to tip over.
Something in that room was moving. And Michael had been looking for it all over the house.
Lionel has told this story on TV more than once over the years. When he told it on a late-night talk show in 2021, the host tried to guess what it was and got it wrong. Here’s Lionel telling it himself.
Lionel tells what he saw on Michael’s floor
Somehow, the two of them still finished the song.
On the night of January 28, 1985, right after the American Music Awards, dozens of the biggest stars in music packed into a Hollywood studio and recorded it until morning. Michael and Lionel were both there, singing the words they’d written in that noisy bedroom.
“We Are the World” came out on March 7, 1985. It sold more than 20 million copies and raised more than $80 million for people in need. It also won Song of the Year at the Grammys, an award that went to Michael and Lionel as the writers.
Here’s the song they wrote that week. Lionel sings the very first line, and Michael comes in a little later.
The song Michael and Lionel wrote together
Lionel told the story of those nights at Michael’s house again in “The Greatest Night in Pop,” the 2024 Netflix film about the making of the song. The tipping records made it into the film too, and so did Bubbles.