January 28th 1985 was a shade over seven months since Prince had released one of the greatest selling albums of the year – which would eventually grow to a 25 millioner amongst the best selling albums of all time – ‘Purple Rain‘ – and He had ten nominations at that night’s American Music Awards that He was attending. There was a special buzz around that night’s particular AMAs, part of which revolved around Prince going up against His eternal rival Michael Jackson in several categories. This was a non event though, as Prince won awards for Favorite Pop/Rock Album, Favorite Soul/R&B Album and Favorite Soul/R&B Song for When Doves Cry, while Jackson (moon)walked away with nothing. Anyway, in a series of decisions that history was sure to look kindly on, neither Prince nor Jackson could compete with Lionel Richie, who walked away with six awards including Favorite Soul/R&B Male Artist and Favorite Soul/R&B Male Artist. Prince’s performance of Purple Rain that night – which Billboard would later name as the greatest performance in the awards’ history – would ensure those decisions would look immediately ridiculous.

But the 1985 AMAs were most notable for the fact that, right after the ceremony that night, this absolute royalty of popular recording artists would – rather than spend the night covered in so much gak that their face resembled Elizabeth I and being serviced by heavily narcoticised groupies whom IDs was encouraged not to be checked by the entourage, as would usually be the case for successful music artists in the 80’s – they would all be whisked off to the Hollywood AGM studios to record We Are the World, a song written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie and produced by Quincy Jones to benefit ‘USA for Africa‘ (America’s version of Band Aid). It would become the fastest selling single in US history and serve as the climactic singalong at that July’s Live Aid Philadelphia concert.

Prince, though, wasn’t really feeling it.

Ahmed Alaa Abd Al-Majeed Issa