The special instruction Quincy Jones sent out to the several dozen pop stars invited to participate in the recording of \u201cWe Are the World\u201d was this: \u201cCheck your egos at the door.\u201d Jones was the producer of a record that would eventually go on to sell more than 7 million copies and raise more than $60 million for African famine relief. But before \u201cWe Are the World\u201d could achieve those feats, it had to be captured on tape\u2014no simple feat considering the number of major recording artists slated to participate. With only one chance to get the recording the way he and songwriters Michael Jackson and Lionel Ritchie wanted it, Jones convened the marathon recording session of \u201cWe Are the World\u201d at around 10 p.m. on the evening of January 28, 1985, immediately following the conclusion of the American Music Awards ceremony held just a few miles away.<\/p>\n
Singer\/actor\/activist Harry Belafonte was the initiator of the events that led to the recording of \u201cWe Are the World.\u201d Inspired by the recent success of \u201cDo They Know It\u2019s Christmas?\u201d\u2014the multimillion-selling charity record by the British-Irish collective Band Aid\u2014Belafonte talked Lionel Ritchie, Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones into helping him organize an American response under the name \u201cUSA for Africa.\u201d Ritchie and Jackson wrote the song over the course of several days in January, and Belafonte\u2019s manager, Ken Kragen, who would go on to serve as President of the USA for Africa Foundation, the nonprofit organization that managed the profits from \u201cWe Are the World,\u201d came up with the plan to hold the session on the night of the AMA\u2019s in order to guarantee that the greatest number of big names would be able to participate.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Among the 45 stars who sang on \u201cWe Are the World\u201d that night were huge-in-the-80s figures like Cyndi Lauper and Huey Lewis; Country stars like Kenny Rogers and Willie Nelson; pop icons like Smokey Robinson, Tina Turner and Paul Simon; and musical giants like Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles and Bob Dylan. Also in the studio that night were half of the Jackson family, one Irishman (Bob Geldof, co-organizer of Band Aid) and one party-crashing Canadian, comedian Dan Aykroyd. Egos fully in check, the group laid down the chorus and solos before sunrise on the 29th, and \u201cWe Are the World\u201d was in the stores and on the airwaves just five weeks later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The special instruction Quincy Jones sent out to the several dozen pop stars invited to participate in the recording of \u201cWe Are the World\u201d was this: \u201cCheck your egos at the door.\u201d Jones was the producer of a record that would eventually go on to sell more than 7 million copies and raise more than […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3506],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7391\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}