The Greatest Night in Pop has more star power per second than any other 2024 movie
This initial report on The Greatest Night in Popcomes from our team following the premieres at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. We’ll update this piece when there’s more information about the movie’s release.
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On Jan. 28, 1985, more than 40 of the United States’ most famous musicians, from Michael Jackson and Diana Ross to Paul Simon and Billy Joel, gathered in secret to record a charity song. “We Are the World” was intended as a fundraiser for famine relief in Africa. The Greatest Night in Pop, a documentary coming to Netflix soon, is about how that song got recorded in just one night.
“We Are the World” is one of the bestselling, most popular singles of all time, featuring perhaps the most star-studded lineup to ever record together. Bao Nguyen’s film runs through the making of the song, from the initial idea to the writing to getting talent on board to the recording itself.
Nguyen presents all of this through archival footage from when the recording session was initially filmed, as well as talking-head interviews with some of the musicians involved, including Lionel Richie, Cyndi Lauper, Bruce Springsteen, and Kenny Loggins.
Besides just documenting one of the most important moments in 20th-century pop culture, The Greatest Night in Pop also tries to communicate the sheer star power that came together in A&M Studios on that night in 1985. It was a who’s who of the most famous musicians on the planet, which meant that there was both a clashing of egos and an easiness that came from shared levels of fame: These superstars were in the only room in
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