The Greatest Night in Pop Documentary

[Art Vandelay]

There's a pretty cool new documentary on Netflix, about the making of We Are the World. It's called The Greatest Night in Pop. Really gets into all of the pressure and rush involved with getting the song and video done, all while dealing with 40 celebrity egos.

I've only seen clips on YouTube from previous documentaries, so I learned some cool stuff from watching this. Steve Perry isn't interviewed, but does get some good screen time and praise from some of the people who were interviewed. Springsteen has nice words to say about his singing.

Check it out.

[Loneman1]

I watched it with my fiancee a couple of nights ago, whenever it premiered. Very cool peek behind the curtain, lots of new footage which is awesome! How all that happened basically in one night is still to this day extremely impressive.

[ADALBL]

Yeah Bruce Springsteen says "Steve Perry can sing"." Then he laughs in sort of a "I think I just won the 2024 Award For Stating The Most Obvious Thing That Could Possibly be Said Award. He then adds " He's got that great voice up in that Sam Cooke register." There is a little clip where Perry is trying to help Huey Lewis, Cindy Lauper and Kim Carnes work out their harmonies and he sings something on the spot that sounds really good.

Perry is very underrated as both a songwriting and producer. I finally realized he has that Michael Jordan effect in that he makes everyone around him better. Think about it. Caine wasn't sure what to do with Open Arms until Perry helped him do that. Caine wrote Faithfully himself which is a great song, but is it anywhere near as big a hit if Perry did not help arrange and sing it? Perry knew that in Don't Stop Believin' you had to wait three and a half minutes to get to the chorus - which pretty much anyone would say is ridiculous, but he was right. Neal Schon is likely never known as the best melodic guitar player of our generation if Perry is not inspiring him and pulling these types of performances out of him. Perry's innate sense of exactly what a song needs and how to create music in a way that connects with people so emotionally is really rare and again, very underrated.

As for the documentary, it was a very interesting, and in my opinion, worthwhile, entertaining watch.