A Chorus Big Enough for the Planet

On a January night in Los Angeles
when the air held its breath between aftershocks
of fame and famine,
they gathered—
not for trophies,
not for the bright narcotic of applause,
but for a quieter emergency.

Outside, the city glittered
like a sequined jacket shrugged across the hills.
Inside, beneath fluorescent mercy,
voices warmed their instruments of bone and breath.
Gold records slept in distant mansions.
Here, coffee steamed in paper cups.
Here, lyric sheets trembled
in hands accustomed to certainty.

They came trailing rumors of rivalry,
perfume, and stadium light—
yet the room leveled them.
A handwritten sign on the door
asked them to check their egos
like fur coats at the threshold.
No entourage could harmonize hunger.
No limousine could outsing drought.

The song itself was simple—
almost naïve in its architecture:
a ladder of chords sturdy enough
for anyone to climb.
It did not try to be clever.
It aimed to be carried—
from radio towers to kitchen tables,
from vinyl grooves to the cracked earth
of a continent most listeners
could not find on a map.

One by one, the famous throats
leaned toward a common microphone—
a ritual of proximity.
Soloists who could fracture glass
softened into blend.
Vibrato met vibrato,
braiding into something
less jeweled, more human.

And somewhere beyond the studio walls
were the photographs:
rib-thin cattle,
children with eyes too large for their faces,
dust like a second sky.
The eighties—so lacquered, so loud—
paused long enough to hear
a quieter arithmetic:
If enough people buy this record,
if enough stations play this chorus,
if enough hands reach into pockets
without being asked twice—
perhaps distance can be shortened
by the length of a melody.

Critics would later weigh it:
call it earnest, call it grandiose,
call it a glittering bandage
over a wound older than pop.
But for that moment,
earnestness was not a flaw.
It was a bridge—
fragile, maybe,
yet walked upon.

Children learned the refrain
before they understood geopolitics.
Office radios hummed it into coffee breaks.
Church choirs borrowed its spine.
A planet, briefly synchronized,
counted itself in measures of four.

What was the phenomenon?
Not merely the constellation of names,
nor the sales tallied in columns of gold.
It was the sight—unprecedented—
of celebrity bending toward need
without irony.
It was the gamble
that sentiment could be currency,
that a chorus could be convoy.

“We are the world,” they sang—
a dangerous pronoun,
an inclusive spell.
For four minutes and change,
the borders blurred into breath.
The microphone did not discriminate.
The record did not ask for passports.

The song still lingers,
sometimes parodied, sometimes praised,
its sleeves worn soft by decades.
Yet if you listen past the synthesizer sheen,
you can hear it:
a roomful of singular stars
agreeing, however briefly,
to burn as one sun—

bright enough
that even across oceans,
someone might feel
a little warmth.