Check Your Ego at the Door
What real leadership looks like.
In 1985, a famine that would eventually take one million lives had swept across Ethiopia. Harry Belafonte, a Black American singer famous for hits like “The Banana Boat Song,” was also a humanitarian and civil rights activist, and he was deeply affected by this crisis. As a singer working amid a zeitgeist of socially-conscious pop hits, Belafonte naturally wanted to bring awareness to this issue through music. Belafonte started recruiting his contacts in Hollywood to help create a song, and the interest was immediate. Soon, 1980s music industry megastars Lionel Richie, Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, and Quincy Jones–along with many other famous singers–came together to create and record “We Are the World.” The song became one of the best-selling singles of all time.
Now on Netflix, The Greatest Night in Pop tells the behind-the-scenes story of how “We Are the World” came together. Largely recalled through the eyes of Lionel Richie and other industry insiders, the story takes us back to the 1985 American Music Awards, then a very well-attended and high-profile event. Capitalizing on the fact that so many famous singers would be in Los Angeles for the ceremony, Richie and his co-writer Michael Jackson composed a song for all of the participants to learn and record in a secret location right after the awards show. Recording the song would take place in one packed all-nighter. Legendary producer Quincy Jones would conduct and produce the song, with the involvement of Stevie Wonder and others.
Our narrators’ recollections of these events are funny and fascinating. King of Pop Michael Jackson exclusively addresses Lionel Richie as “Lion-el” and begs him to pet his monkey Bubbles while they are writing the song. For Richie, Bubbles is actually far preferable to Jackson’s pet snake, who later sneaks up on Richie out of nowhere. The incident terrifies Richie, who recalls telling himself, “I gotta get outta here quick…I saw this horror movie, and it’s not good for the brother.”
The Greatest Night in Pop makes its story more compelling than it otherwise would be by foregrounding the egos and personalities of the song’s 46 musical contributors. The movie suggests that the real achievement here is that this group of stars–with all their fame and insecurity–briefly overcame their egos to unite artistically for an important cause. This suggestion raises the stakes of the movie, as viewers begin to reconsider how childish this night could have become. Seeing these celebrities arranged on risers as if they were a high-school chorus, you start to glimpse their inner teenagers. This image is aided by details like Cyndi Lauper’s technicolor hair, Diana Ross’s decision to gamely sport a “USA for Africa” sweatshirt, and Kenny Rogers’s wide, ecstatic smile throughout the song. Several singers are also wearing sunglasses in the dimly-lit studio.
Old adolescent dynamics also emerge in this long night of recording. Smokey Robinson challenges his childhood friend Michael Jackson about one detail of the song, Prince never shows up, and Bob Dylan cannot figure out how to harmonize with the group until Stevie Wonder steps in to help him. There are grumblings and suspicions about the distribution of solos. Dionne Warwick and Willie Nelson, who must share a microphone for theirs, seem wary of one another.
It is charming to witness the sheer artsiness of these artists. With an aw-shucks humility, hunky Huey Lewis timidly steps up as a back-up soloist. He does such a great job that the song now is unimaginable without his one-line contribution. Cyndi Lauper’s jewelry is so loud when she moves that it causes audio interference in other people’s headphones. Recalling that he wasn’t told the studio’s location in advance, a completely unconcerned Kenny Loggins tells us, “I, like many artists that I know, don’t remember shit.”
The tensions among people who are used to being the main attraction find release in a few ways. One is the ice-breaking moment when Diana Ross turns to Daryl Hall and asks for his autograph. Suddenly, our narrators tell us, the whole room erupts with enthusiastic requests to sign each other’s sheet music. It turns out that beneath the insecurity, they are rightly starstruck by one another.
These stars are also lassoed into cooperation through the expert leadership of Quincy Jones. Jones unassumingly emerges as the night’s unsung hero. He knows and understands the perhaps self-centered and demanding personalities of these individuals. Jones doesn’t try to fix or change them, but he asks them to be conscious that—for this one night—they are part of a group. Jones even posts a sign in the studio that says: “Check Your Ego at the Door.” It’s a humorous way to acknowledge and address the climate of the room.
During the recording, Jones is encouraging and patient. He is able to get the best out of every performer and understands each one’s wildly divergent musical gifts. Jones is self-possessed enough as a leader not to be affected by the vicissitudes of these singers’ moods; he is clear on the goal and he’s going to get the group there. Importantly, he helps these superstars–who are far more privileged than anybody affected by a famine–to maintain perspective and get through a stressful, strange all-nighter.
The brain trust for this song–including Richie, Jackson, Wonder, Jones, and of course Belafonte–mostly consists of Black men. Peoplehood appears as a suggested motivation throughout the movie. At the film’s start, Belafonte says that Black people should be helping Black people. Blackness–which these men represent and embody in different and varying ways, as several of them are multiracial–is an emotional force here. It animates a certain diasporic desire to provide aid to Africans, with the help of non-Black collaborators. At the end of the night, Jones marvels: “Man, those white boys really brought it.”
There is also a certain peoplehood here that the movie’s Angelenos embody. Richie and others are LA locals, and you can feel their connectedness to the city. And of course, the whole group–and the project itself–just could not be more American.
Then there’s peoplehood in the sense of the wider human family. When the group finishes recording, Diana Ross starts crying; she doesn’t want the night to end.
Right now for many of us, it is impossible to pay attention to much else besides the current catastrophic unfolding of events very far away. On October 7, Hamas terrorists infiltrated the south of Israel and committed atrocities that even now seem impossible to fully emotionally comprehend. In response, Israel has launched a war to dismantle Hamas’s leadership in Gaza. Israelis are dying fighting, and Gazan civilians–many of whom are children–are being killed and mutilated, as are their parents. What is happening to Palestinian kids makes me feel despairing and isolated, while the ongoing torment of Israeli hostages in Gaza makes me more blindingly angry as the time passes.
Israel’s war on Gaza has lit up a chain of undergraduate protests at universities across the United States. These protests are occurring after a series of truly disastrous Congressional testimonies by university presidents in the wake of October 7. Watching all of these events transpire, I feel convinced that these leaders have lost their way. Administrators seem so intent on preempting and avoiding criticism that they are taking actions that seem entirely divorced from their institutions’ guiding principles and stated policies. It’s as if these leaders don’t even know what their policies–or even their values–are. Leadership fails when you’re so focused on perception that you’ve lost your own internal compass.
Amid this mess, there are people and universities that are providing real clarity about how complex issues of censorship, free speech, and on-campus civil disobedience should be handled. Young people are also showing us what poised, calm leadership looks like. Columbia Spectator Editor-in-Chief Isabella Ramírez just shared a thorough, detailed, and fact-filled account of the distressing events at Columbia University during a lengthy interview with CNN.
The war is a constant topic of conversation for so many of us, and we can’t help but bring our egos into these conversations. It’s not always clear during these times where to fully put your pain.
I am a reader and learner who doesn’t specialize in foreign policy or on-campus free speech. So like many others, I am looking to the experts for guidance and insight. I am looking for leaders. The other night, it was oddly comforting to watch a sprightly, quietly confident Quincy Jones, filled with love for and knowledge of his craft, expertly and kindly corralling a brilliant chorus of oddballs.
Great leaders approach situations with preexisting clarity about their values and mission. They are helpers who work in service of those whom they lead. Great leaders are also under absolutely no illusions about who their stakeholders and collaborators really are. They work within reality. To create “We Are the World,” Jones extracted something amazing from his endearing, talented, deeply human singers.
The artist listed under “We Are the World” simply states “USA for Africa.” It’s an earworm if there ever was one. Listen below.
