DJariya

Premieres January 29th on Netflix


I saw an early cut of this documentary a few months ago. It’s excellent. Really showed how hard it was for Michael, Lionel and Quincy Jones to put together this group of talent. The recording of the music video and song was a challenging process. It was not that easy.

Great music documentary. I recommend you all check it out. It’s a huge part of music history.

TomOpus

I'll definitely check it out.

OldBoy

this could be awesome.

Count Dooku

Makes me think of this

Ash Ketchum

I remember liking "The Making of Sun City" a great deal. It came out at the same time as the all-star anti-apartheid "I Ain't Gonna Play Sun City" music video came out (1985), as I recall, and not 40 years later as this one appears to be.

Brian T

This got me remembering that there was a “doc” made about WATW at the time it came out (it’s the source of a lot of the footage in the Netflix show). It’s on YouTube for the adventurous. I could barely watch it then, and won’t now — I can’t stand watching wealthy celebrities fellate themselves over their good deeds, and all of these charity-thons kinda irritated me at the time, and still do. A bunch of Canadian pop stars also did one of these things back in the 80’s, which was included on the WATW LP, so we’re accomplices, too. And then there was that British Christmas variant. They probably should’ve just made a doc about all of them.

GuessWho

Variant?

"Do They Know it's Christmas" came first. All of the others, including WATW, were the variants/copycats.

Ash Ketchum

They did one in Taiwan in 1985 featuring various Taiwanese pop stars and actors. There was one person in it I knew and now I can't remember who that was. The cause they were promoting was relief for earthquake victims in China, I think. Doubtful they'd do such a thing today. It's a really catchy song, too (in Mandarin). It was on YouTube, but I'd have to look up any notes I took when I came across it.

Brian T

Variant. Copycat. Meh. First and worst, I'll give it that.

It really was like a virus back then. I read there was also one teaming up South American pop stars. Ego-fests every one (despite signs on recording studio doors ). And yeah, I don't recall any big Taiwan or Hong Kong song love-ins during China's big earthquake in 2008, but the CCP probably didn't want all that footage of their cheaply built, toppled buildings and schools backgrounding a bunch of teary-eyed millionaires. It wasn't too many years later that China cracked down on its own celebrities for being too successful.

Daytripper

“Do They Know It’s Christmas?” is great and “We Are The World” (while an impressive lineup) sucked. Nothing is worse than that.

Decker

WATW is a pretty bad song, honestly. It was cool seeing all these pop icons in one place (besides Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles who were inserted later), but the song was pretty insufferable and SO repetitive.
I'm glad it raised money for hunger relief, but wish it was ruled ineligible for Grammy consideration. Even by 1980s standards, it's embarrassing that in a year that gave us Don't You Forget About Me, Money For Nothing, Close to Me, Everybody Wants to Rule the World, Would I Lie to You, Voices Carry, Road to Nowhere and dozens of other amazing songs, this is the one that the Grammys chose to anoint as Record of the Year and Song of the Year. I have always wondered if they gave like 50 different people the Record of the Year Grammy.

Brian T

No, they all suck (lineups, reasons, melodies, arrangements, etc notwithstanding), and nothing is worse than all of them combined.

The Cow

This one was great, and the voting is closed.

windom

Clearly the best one is the Doctor Who related "Doctor in Distress". I guess it sold so poorly that they couldn't give any money to charity. I think I still have the 45 that I bought at a Doctor Who convention back then.

Brian T

Spiderbite

If you listened to the radio back then, you couldn't get away from this song or "That's What Friends Are For." As a kid I despised both songs. It seemed those two songs were literally played after every other song back then. You could not escape hearing them if you wanted to.

As an adult, I will watch the documentary but still likely despise the song.

I remember hearing the "Do They Know It's Xmas" song being played but it got nowhere near the play in my area as the aforementioned songs so it doesn't bother me as much. My hate for it is smaller.

The Hair Metal one is fine. It got basically zero play in my area.

As kids, we thought Springsteen sounded and looked like he was taking a shit during his part. Come to find out later that he always looks and sounds that way.

Brian T

I think the “Bruce” in this version picked up on that. Might be wise not to watch this before bedtime though. Could be nightmare fuel:

DJariya

I can think of 2 more "We are the World" type songs from the States

"Voices that care" to support the troops in Desert Storm. I think David Foster produced it and Celine Dion was one of the vocalists. It came out as a single when I was in High School.

"Hands across America" This was late 1980s. Not sure what the charity was, but Americans were supposed to form one continuous line holding hands from California to NY and it failed.

DJariya

This is now up on Netflix

92% on RT

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the...t_night_in_pop

As I said in my OP, I saw this 2 months ago in an early screening. It's a good documentary, but I know not everyone here may be interested in it.

I will say that I found it interesting in the film that the song and music video were made the same night and had to be pieced together in post. And it had to be done all in one night because all the performers were in town for the 1985 AMAs.

and apparently Al Jarreau was drunk when they recorded and filmed the music video.

TomOpus

I enjoyed it. Very insightful. Funny how the one cameraman didn't realize it was all voluntary.

Jaymole

I am torn on watching this as I am interested in how they got everyone involved in making the song, but I find the song to be excruciating, right up there with "We Built This City" as the worst 80's song to my ears. Maybe I can turn the sound off and watch it with subtitles.

devilshalo

Interesting how they aligned all the voices so everyone is paired with people within their ranges. After MJ, it's the group with all the vocal fry. Poor Sheila E. got screwed.

JeffTheAlpaca

I have not seen this but I bet there could be a separate standalone doc on the Prince vs MJ rivalry.

TomOpus

Felt bad for her because she still feel hurt over being used because they wanted to get Prince to sing but he wanted to play a guitar solo. I couldn't imagine that on the song.

And Al Jarreau starting to celebrate early and was wasted by the time to record.

MLBFan24

I enjoyed this. The 80s are awesome haha

Maybe they’ll do a sequel for the Haiti version.