( CNN ) Thirty years ago Wednesday , more than three dozen stars -- many fresh from the American Music Awards -- checked their egos at the door and piled into a recording studio to record `` We Are the World . '' The basic tracks for the Lionel Richie-Michael Jackson composition had been done a week earlier , but it was this January 28 , 1985 , session that counted -- the one that included Bruce Springsteen , Bob Dylan , Ray Charles , Billy Joel and many other of the biggest artists of the day ( and , in many cases , of all time ) . `` We Are the World '' was a way to raise money to fight a famine in Ethiopia and other parts of Africa , following in the harmonious path blazed by Band Aid 's `` Do They Know It 's Christmas ? '' The single , credited to USA for Africa , sold more than 20 million copies and topped the charts for four weeks in April and May . It was a big deal at the time . Even `` Doonesbury 's '' Garry Trudeau got involved . In the decades that have followed , there have been other attempts at all-star charity records and performances , some hugely successful , others all but ignored . ( Quincy Jones helmed both the original 1985 record and its remake , a 2010 fund-raiser for Haiti , which was n't as big a hit . ) The original song -- and video -- have been widely parodied . And we wo n't even mention `` Hands Across America . '' ( Whoops . ) It was a long time ago , was n't it ? Check the gallery to see how the soloists fared in the years since .
Three dozen stars recorded `` We Are the World '' 30 years ago on January 28 , 1985 . The song was written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney in a studio session at EMI Studios in London during their first recording sessions for what would become'Let