Michael Jackson got to the studio early. Around 8 p.m., hours before anybody else turned up, he stepped up to a microphone at A&M Recording Studios in Hollywood and sang his part of a brand-new song all by himself.
By morning, more than 40 of the biggest names in American music would be crowded into that same room.
The song was “We Are the World.” Michael wrote it with Lionel Richie, the smooth-voiced singer behind “All Night Long.” They spent about a week on it at the Jackson family home in Encino, California, working mostly at night in Michael’s bedroom, and they finished the words and melody on January 21, 1985.
The money would go toward fighting a terrible famine in Africa, and the charity running it all was called USA for Africa.
Quincy Jones, the producer who’d made Michael’s album Thriller, was in charge of the session. Somebody taped a note to the studio door telling every star who walked in to “check your ego at the door.”
The timing was smart. That same night, January 28, the American Music Awards were held nearby at the Shrine Auditorium, so lots of the stars were already in Los Angeles and dressed up. Once the show wrapped up, a lot of them headed straight over.
And what a crowd it was. Stevie Wonder showed up, and so did Diana Ross, Bruce Springsteen, Tina Turner, Billy Joel, Willie Nelson, Cyndi Lauper and Bob Dylan. When Ray Charles, the blind soul singer, came through the door, someone said it was “like the Statue of Liberty walking in.”
This is what they made together that night.
U.S.A. For Africa – We Are the World
It wasn’t a smooth night, though.
Prince had just won three awards at the show, but he never came to the studio. Huey Lewis, the rock singer behind “The Power of Love,” was handed the line that had been saved for him. Lewis later said his legs went wobbly.
Cyndi Lauper nearly skipped the whole thing. Just hours before, she backed out because she worried the song wouldn’t be a hit, and Lionel had to talk her into coming back.
Then there was Bob Dylan, the folk singer who’d shaken up rock music back in the 1960s. He kept mostly to himself all night. When his turn for a solo finally came in the early morning hours, standing in a leather jacket with a stack of lyric pages, he looked lost.
Quincy and Lionel stood right beside him while he tried to work out the part.
So Dylan asked Stevie Wonder to play the song for him on the piano. Stevie sat down, and he had a little trick ready, one that got the most nervous man in the room to finally smile.
That moment stayed mostly out of sight for decades, until Netflix put the footage in a 2024 documentary called The Greatest Night in Pop.
The Greatest Night in Pop | Official Trailer | Netflix
The song came out on March 7, 1985. Its first 800,000 copies sold out in three days, and it spent four weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
The last take of that long night was done at 8 a.m., a full 12 hours after Michael had stood alone at the microphone in an empty studio.