Netflix’s The Greatest Night in Pop gets intimate with an ’80s hit

This preliminary report on The Greatest Night in Pop comes from our workforce following the premieres on the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. We’ll replace this piece when there’s extra details about the film’s launch.

Logline

On Jan. 28, 1985, greater than 40 of the United States’ most well-known musicians, from Michael Jackson and Diana Ross to Paul Simon and Billy Joel, gathered in secret to report a charity track. “We Are the World” was supposed as a fundraiser for famine reduction in Africa. The Greatest Night in Pop, a documentary coming to Netflix quickly, is about how that track obtained recorded in only one evening.

Longerline

“We Are the World” is among the bestselling, hottest singles of all time, that includes maybe probably the most star-studded lineup to ever report collectively. Bao Nguyen’s movie runs via the making of the track, from the preliminary concept to the writing to getting expertise on board to the recording itself.

Nguyen presents all of this via archival footage from when the recording session was initially filmed, in addition to talking-head interviews with among the musicians concerned, together with Lionel Richie, Cyndi Lauper, Bruce Springsteen, and Kenny Loggins.

What’s The Greatest Night in Pop attempting to do?

Besides simply documenting one of the crucial essential moments in Twentieth-century popular culture, The Greatest Night in Pop additionally tries to speak the sheer star energy that got here collectively in A&M Studios on that evening in 1985. It was a who’s who of probably the most well-known musicians on the planet, which meant that there was each a clashing of egos and an easiness that got here from shared ranges of fame: These superstars have been in the one room in the world the place most people round them actually understood what life was like at that stage of superstar.

Does The Greatest Night in Pop dwell as much as its premise?

The Greatest Night in Pop is after a extra relaxed and celebratory model of the harried power that director D.A. Pennebaker captured in Original Cast Album: Company, his filming of that album’s all-night recording session. Mostly, Nguyen gets it there. His doc is ethereal and enjoyable, and whereas it narrativizes the evening nicely, thanks in giant half to Richie’s improbable narration, it principally has the great sense to get out of the way in which of the personalities that have been truly in the room. This strategy holds it again from being a really nice documentary: It hardly ever provides a lot context to the footage we’re seeing, past the backstory, and it pointedly avoids any controversy, or any criticism of even probably the most troublesome superstar contributors. But the footage-forward strategy does make the entire thing tremendously enjoyable to look at.

Seeing Bob Dylan look uncomfortable in a sea of well-known faces, Stevie Wonder joking round with Ray Charles, or Huey Lewis nervously understanding a concord is as near unguarded as most of those stars have ever been on movie. It’s a captivating doc. And the way in which each second of that footage continues to be charming almost 40 years later is a testomony to the uncooked, all-encompassing, completely magnetic star energy that everybody in that room has.

Image: Netflix

The quote that claims all of it

As the film itself factors out, crucial side of the entire evening was when producer Quincy Jones posted an indication contained in the recording studio that stated “Check your ego at the door.” That’s what makes The Greatest Night in Pop really feel particular: It lets us contained in the room the place all-time nice musicians merely felt like they have been amongst buddies and equals.

Most memeable second

There are various unbelievable moments, like Waylon Jennings strolling out of the recording studio whereas muttering “Ain’t no good ol’ boy ever sung in Swahili,” or Cyndi Lauper realizing that her huge necklaces have been making a lot noise that the microphones have been selecting them up alongside her voice. But if something from this film goes to be a meme, it’s Bob Dylan’s awkward grimace, proper smack in the center of probably the most well-known faces in music, as he desperately tries to determine tips on how to sing in refrain with them. It’s unbelievable, and as Bob Dylan as something might be.

Is The Greatest Night in Pop good?

Absolutely. It doesn’t fairly attain the heights of documentary classics, falling wanting the perception into the tortured circumstances and pissed off manufacturing of Original Cast Album: Company, or the pure musical excellence of Monterey Pop. But there’s one thing particular about seeing these stars mingle that makes this film a captivating doc on fame and the individuals behind it.

When can we see it?

The Greatest Night in Pop will likely be launched on Netflix on Jan. 29.