Is this the worst pop song ever recorded?

On a cold January night 39 years ago in Los Angeles, 46 of the world’s biggest egos gathered together to record a song that was, according to Netflix ‘The Greatest Night In Pop.’ The song was the grandly titled ‘We Are The World’, a hastily composed follow up to the monumentally successful British charity single ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’? Just seven weeks earlier.

Band Aid’s effort was hardly a great song but the occasion captured the UK’s imagination and wallets so soon after pictures of starving Ethiopians had sent shockwaves across the nation. But ‘USA For Africa’, as the American supergroup called themselves, was seen as a poor follow-up. A sequel less like Godfather II and more like Weekend At Bernie’s II and the song itself has been described by veteran music journalist and writer David Quantick, this week, as ‘one of the worst records ever made.’

That has not stopped Netflix from its over-the-top description which it plans to inflict on paid subscribers at the end of this month with behind-the-scenes footage including some never seen before. Perhaps this includes the full buffet in the back room waiting for the stars when they’d finished singing about the horrors of famine.

Written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie, reportedly in one night, it was a lacklustre dirge, barely scanning and without rhyme even if it had reason – namely to raise millions of dollars to show that anything we could do, they could do better. Except it wasn’t better. As an exercise in solipsism it remains unsurpassed. As a musical feat, it will go down as one of the worst songs in the back catalogue of most who performed.

In a recording studio in January, 1985, Wacko Jacko and Lionel assembled a group that included genuinely stellar stars such as Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder and Bruce Springsteen with lesser known talents including Huey Lewis, Kim Carnes and James Ingram hanging on their coat-tails knowing they would get another number one to their CV.

One imagines their agents and record company PR execs furiously ringing up clients telling them ‘Bobby baby, imagine what this will do to your career’. To his credit, Dylan looked totally embarrassed and confused while others rolled out their full repertoire of emotional gurning – head upwards, hands over headphones, eyes closed and the anguished pained look of someone desperately hoping this will give their flagging career a boost.

At least those appearing in the British version came across as less wholesome and more honest, some arriving at the studio looking like they’d been up all night, others going through the motions because to be seen not to join in would ruin their reputation and even a much-repeated rumour that a couple of the stars had brought round a decent stash of cocaine which they shared out among those wanting to keep the mood going throughout.

Of course, on each side of the Atlantic, the events were, in the worlds of Smashey and Nicey, the obnoxious DJ creations of Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse, ‘all for charidee’ but along with the predictable glut of sales, the US version it was also met with a healthy dose of cynicism.

The satirical writer P.J. O’Rourke, in his book Give War A Chance pointed out that the opening line ‘we are the children’ was being sung by a group whose average age was 40 and the line ‘we’re saving our own lives’ was merely ‘absurd.’

Reviews were, at best, mixed. One American journalist, Greil Marcus, said the song felt like a Pepsi jingle because the lyrics ‘there’s a choice we’re making’ were similar to the soft-drinks trademarked ‘the choice of a new generation’ and that both Jackson and Richie were contracted to the company. At least Pepsi’s pop is fizzy compared to the flatness of ‘We Are The World’. Marcus wrote at the time:

‘We Are The World’ says less about Ethiopia than it does about Pepsi and the true result will likely be less that certain Ethiopian individuals will live, or anyway live a bit longer than they otherwise would have, than that Pepsi will get the catchphrase of its advertising campaign sung for free by Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen and all the rest.

It should be pointed out that the single helped raise donations from the public and corporations totalling more than 50 million dollars and did lead to much needed humanitarian aid.

But for those of us around back then, it was seen as an attempt by the US to outdo the Brits and led to some gloriously cruel but funny parodies, perhaps most notably by Spitting Image whose grotesquely exaggerated puppet versions of Jagger, Tina Turner et al performed the song ‘We’re Afraid of Bob’ in reference to Band Aid’s originator, Bob Geldof.

Even the Americans themselves joined in. An episode in the third series of The Simpsons, when it was still funny, showed the real Sting and a host of Springfield’s residents performing a charity single ‘We’re Sending Our Love Down The Well’ when they thought a child was stuck down a well.

Despite all this, however awful ‘We Are The World’ was, a new version in 2010 to raise money for victims of an earthquake in Haiti was arguably even worse as it featured Janet Jackson ‘duetting’ with her dead brother, a rap section and Wyclef Jean singing one of the final lines in a wavering voice that the San Francisco Chronical described as ‘not unlike a cross between a fire siren and the sound of Wyclef giving himself a hernia.’