"We Are the World" is a charity single recorded by the supergroup USA for Africa in 1985. It was written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie and produced by Quincy Jones for the album We Are the World to raise money for the 1983–1985 famine in Ethiopia. With sales in excess of 20 million physical copies, it is the eighth-best-selling single of all time.

After the British group Band Aid released the charity single "Do They Know It's Christmas?" in 1984, the musician and activist Harry Belafonte decided to create an American single for African famine relief. The agent Ken Kragen enlisted several musicians for the project. Jackson and Richie completed the writing the night before the first recording session on January 28, 1985. The recording brought together some of the era's best-known recording artists, including Bruce Springsteen, Cyndi Lauper, Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder, and Tina Turner.

"We Are the World" was released on March 7, 1985, by Columbia Records. It topped music charts throughout the world, became the fastest-selling US pop single in history and the first single to be certified multi-platinum, and was certified quadruple platinum. Its awards include four Grammy Awards, one American Music Award, and a People's Choice Award.

"We Are the World" was promoted with a music video, a VHS, a special edition magazine, a simulcast, and books, posters and shirts. It raised more than $80 million (equivalent to $ in ) for humanitarian aid in Africa and the United States. Another cast of singers recorded a new version, "We Are the World 25 for Haiti", following the 2010 Haiti earthquake.

Background

In 1985, inspired by Band Aid's "Do They Know It's Christmas?" in the UK, the American entertainer and activist Harry Belafonte decided to organize a US equivalent. He planned to have the proceeds donated to a new organization, United Support of Artists for Africa (USA for Africa). The organization would provide food and relief aid for the 1983–1985 famine in Ethiopia, which killed about one million people. Belafonte also planned to set aside money to help eliminate hunger in the US. Jones also telephoned Michael Jackson, who had just concluded Victory Tour with the Jacksons. The songwriting team originally included Wonder, but his time was constrained by his songwriting for the film The Woman in Red. Jackson and Richie wrote "We Are the World" Jackson presented his demo to Richie and Jones, who were both surprised that he had completed the structure so quickly. The next meetings between Jackson and Richie were unproductive. On January 21, 1985, the night before the first recording session, Richie and Jackson completed the lyrics and melody. then Richie and Jackson recorded a vocal guide. Jones selected the sixth take of the guide—he felt there was too much "thought" in the previous versions—and had it mixed with the instrumental tracks. A cassette tape duplicate was made for each of the performers invited to the vocal recording sessions.

After the initial recording, Jackson and Jones began thinking of alternatives for the line "There's a chance we're taking, we're taking our own lives". The pair was concerned that line would be considered a reference to suicide. As the group listened to a playback of the chorus, Richie declared that the last part of the line should be changed to "We're 'saving' our own lives". Jones also suggested altering the former part of the line. "One thing we don't want to do, especially with this group, is look like we're patting ourselves on the back. So it's really: 'There's a choice we're making.'" Around 1:30 am, the musicians ended the night by finishing a chorus of melodic vocalizations, including the sound "sha-lum sha-lin-gay". Many of the participants came from an American Music Awards ceremony held that night. One newspaper said that Prince did not want to record with other acts; another report, from the time of the recording, suggested that he did not want to partake because the organizer, Bob Geldof, called him a "creep". During the session, Richie spoke with Prince on the phone, and declined Prince's offer to play a guitar solo in a separate room. Instead, Prince donated an exclusive track, "4 the Tears in Your Eyes", to the We Are the World album. John Denver asked to participate, but was refused despite his previous commitment to charity work. According to Kragen, some felt that Denver's image would affect the credibility of the song as a pop-rock anthem; Kragen disagreed, but relunctantly turned him down. In his 1994 autobiography Take Me Home, Denver wrote that the rejection "broke my heart".

More than 45 of America's top musicians participated, and another 50 had to be turned away. Wonder greeted the musicians as they entered, and said that if the recording was not completed in one take, he and Ray Charles, two blind men, would drive everybody home.

Notable live performances

"We Are the World" has been performed live by members of USA for Africa on several occasions both together and individually. One of the earliest such performances came in 1985, during the rock music concert Live Aid, which ended with more than 100 musicians singing the song on stage. Harry Belafonte and Lionel Richie made surprise appearances for the live rendition of the song. Michael Jackson would have joined the artists, but was "working around the clock in the studio on a project that he's made a major commitment to", according to his press agent, Norman Winter.

An inaugural celebration was held for US President-elect Bill Clinton in January 1993. The event was staged by Clinton's Hollywood friends at the Lincoln Memorial and drew hundreds of thousands of people. Said Jones, "I've never seen so many great performers come together with so much love and selflessness." The celebration included a performance of "We Are the World", which involved Clinton, his daughter Chelsea, and his wife Hillary singing the song along with USA for Africa's Kenny Rogers, Diana Ross and Michael Jackson.

As a prelude to his song "Heal the World", "We Are the World" was performed as an interlude during two of Michael Jackson's tours, the Dangerous World Tour (1992–1993) and the HIStory World Tour (1996–1997), as well as Jackson's performance at the Super Bowl XXVII halftime show in 1993. Jackson briefly performed the song with a chorus at the 2006 World Music Awards in London, which marked his last live public performance. Jackson planned to use the song for his This Is It comeback concerts at the O2 Arena in London from 2009 to 2010, but the shows were cancelled due to his sudden death.

Michael Jackson died in June 2009, after suffering a cardiac arrest. His memorial service was held several days later on July 7, and was reported to have been viewed by more than one billion people. The finale of the event featured group renditions of the Jackson anthems "We Are the World" and "Heal the World". The singalong of "We Are the World" was led by Darryl Phinnessee, who had worked with Jackson since the late 1980s. It also featured co-writer Lionel Richie and Jackson's family, including his children.

25 for Haiti

thumb|right|alt=A black child stares through one eye. A hand attends to a bandage which covers his head and that has blood seeping through it. The boy's face is cut and injured. He wears a T-shirt that is sodden and dirty.|One of the hundreds of thousands of people who were injured by the destructive earthquake in Haiti

On January 12, 2010, a magnitude-7.0 earthquake struck Haiti, the island's most severe earthquake in over 200 years. The epicenter of the quake was just outside the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince. The Haitian government confirmed the deaths of over 230,000 civilians because of the disaster and the injuries of around 300,000. Approximately 1.2 million people were homeless and the lack of temporary shelter may have led to the outbreak of disease.

To raise money for earthquake victims, a new celebrity version of "We Are the World" was recorded on February 1, 2010, and released on February 12, 2010. Over 75 musicians were involved in the remake, which was recorded in the same studio as the 1985 original. Michael Jackson's younger sister Janet duets with her brother on the track, as per a request from their mother Katherine. In the video and on the track, archival material of Michael Jackson is used from the original 1985 recording. This version is also infamous for the way Wyclef sings towards the end of the song, fluctuating his voice in a manner that sounds like, as a music writer for the San Francisco Chronicle called it, "Not unlike a cross between a fire siren and the sound of Wyclef giving himself a hernia."

On February 20, 2010, a non-celebrity remake, "We Are the World 25 for Haiti (YouTube edition)", was posted to the video sharing website YouTube. Internet personality and singer-songwriter Lisa Lavie conceived and organized the Internet collaboration of 57 unsigned or independent YouTube musicians geographically distributed around the world. Lavie's 2010 YouTube version, a cover of the 1985 original, excludes the rap segment and minimizes the Auto-tune that characterizes the 2010 celebrity remake. Another 2010 remake of the original is the Spanish-language "Somos El Mundo". It was written by Emilio Estefan and his wife Gloria Estefan, and produced by Emilio, Quincy Jones and Univision Communications, the company that funded the project.

Legacy

"We Are the World" has been recognized as a politically important song, which "affected an international focus on Africa that was simply unprecedented". "We Are the World" was also influential in subverting the way music and meaning were produced, showing that musically and racially diverse musicians could work together both productively and creatively. "We Are the World", along with Live Aid and Farm Aid, demonstrated that rock music had become more than entertainment, but a political and social movement. Journalist Robert Palmer noted that such songs and events had the ability to reach people around the world, send them a message, and then get results. Other notable examples include the 1989 cover of the Deep Purple song "Smoke on the Water" by a supergroup of hard rock, prog rock, and heavy metal musicians collaborating as Rock Aid Armenia to raise money for victims of the devastating 1988 Armenian earthquake, the 1986 all-star OPM single "Handog ng Pilipino sa Mundo", which talked about the optimism the Filipinos needed after the People Power Revolution, the 2003 all-star OPM recording "Biyahe Tayo" which promoted Philippine tourism and its subsequent 2011 remake "Pilipinas, Tara Na!" the 2009 all-star OPM recordings "Star ng Pasko" and "Kaya Natin Ito!" as a means to provide hope to the survivors of Typhoon Ketsana (locally known as Ondoy). Several Star Music artists also recorded another inspirational ballad, "Restart Back2Love" in 2017 to provide hope to the survivors of the Siege of Marawi (locally known as Yolanda).

The 20th anniversary of "We Are the World" was celebrated in 2005. Radio stations around the world paid homage to USA for Africa's creation by simultaneously broadcasting the charity song. In addition to the simulcast, the milestone was marked by the release of a two-disc DVD called We Are the World: The Story Behind the Song. Ken Kragen asserted that the reason behind the simulcast and DVD release was not for USA for Africa to praise themselves for doing a good job, but to "use it to do some more good [for the original charity]. That's all we care about accomplishing."

On January 29, 2024, a documentary about the recording of the song, The Greatest Night in Pop, was released on Netflix, featuring interviews with Richie, Springsteen, Lewis, Warwick, Lauper and others.

Charts

Weekly charts

{| class="wikitable sortable"

|-

!align="left"|Chart (1985–1986)

! style="text-align:center;"|Peak<br />position

|-

|align="left"|Australia (Kent Music Report)

| style="text-align:center;"| 1

|-

|-

|-

| Brazil (ABPD)

| style="text-align:center;"| 6

|-

|-

|-

| Chile (UPI)

| style="text-align:center;"| 1

|-

|align="left"|Denmark (Hitlisten)

| style="text-align:center;"| 3

|-

|-

|-

|align="left"|Ireland (IRMA)

| style="text-align:center;"| 1

|-

|-

|-

|-

|-

| Panama (UPI)

| style="text-align:center;"| 1

|-

| Paraguay (UPI)

| style="text-align:center;"| 1

|-

|South Africa (Springbok Radio)

| style="text-align:center;"| 1

|-

|Spain (AFYVE)

| style="text-align:center;"| 1

|-

|-

|-

|-

|-

|-

|US Hot Black Singles (Billboard)

| style="text-align:center;"| 1

|-

|-

|US Hot Dance/Disco 12 Inch Singles Sales (Billboard)

| style="text-align:center;"| 1

|-

|-

|US Cash Box Top Singles

| style="text-align:center;"| 1

|-

| Venezuela (UPI)

| style="text-align:center;"|1

|-

|Canada Top Singles (RPM)

| style="text-align:center;"|23

|-

|New Zealand (Recorded Music NZ)

| style="text-align:center;"|1

|-

|South Africa (Springbok Radio)

| style="text-align:center;"|8

|-

|UK Singles (OCC)

| style="text-align:center;"|35

|-

|align="left"|US Billboard Hot 100

| style="text-align:center;"| 20

|-

|align="left"|US Black Singles Chart (Billboard)

| style="text-align:center;"| 37

|-

|align="left"|US Cash Box Top Singles

| style="text-align:center;"| 1

|}

Certifications and sales

See also

  • Band Aid (band)
  • "Cantaré, cantarás"
  • "Chiquitita", an ABBA song, sales of which benefit humanitarian relief for children
  • Hear 'n Aid
  • Music for UNICEF Concert
  • "Tears Are Not Enough", a 1985 charity single recorded by a supergroup of Canadian artists, under the name Northern Lights, to raise funds for relief of the 1983–85 famine in Ethiopia
  • The Greatest Night in Pop, documentary about the making of "We Are the World"
  • "Tomorrow Will Be Better"
  • "We Are One" (global collaboration song)
  • We Con the World

Notes

References

Bibliography

  • Breskin, David (2004). We Are the World: The Story Behind the Song booklet. Image Entertainment, Inc.
  • George, Nelson (2004). Michael Jackson: The Ultimate Collection booklet. Sony BMG.
  • Official website of USA for Africa
  • Official website for "We Are the World 25 for Haiti"