Patti Austin A Big Part Of ‘We Are The World’ Remake
Feb 7th, 2010 by Bilal Ali
Grammy Award-winning vocalist Patti Austin was instrumental in helping mentor Quincy Jones and Lionel Richie make “We Are the World - 25 for Haiti.” “Here we are 25 years later,” Austin told Entertainment Tonight. “Sadly we have this horrible thing happen in Haiti, but fortunately we have this great piece of music to represent and hopefully raise more and more money to help this situation … We changed the phrasing a little bit, we changed a note here and there - and adapted it for this new crop of people that we have out there that are most recognizable.”
Stars who participated included Barbra Streisand, Celine Dion, Miley Cyrus, P!nk, Jennifer Hudson, The Jonas Brothers, Josh Groban, Natalie Cole, Snoop Dogg, Kanye West, Tony Bennett, Jamie Foxx, Nicole Richie, Jeff Bridges and Vince Vaughn, among many others.
Austin says her dream moment was getting to work with Streisand to produce her solo segment of the song. “I had a great relationship with her,” she told ET. “It was amazing to get into the studio with her and work on this wonderful line that she was going to sing that kind of introduces the melody for the first time.”
“We Are the World – 25 For Haiti” will premiere later this month during the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics in Vancouver on NBC.