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The Little Known Facts About The Music

A. Sizzle

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I'm always in threads in this forum and I always see some stuff about albums and songs that I didn't know. I just read in a thread that Quincy Jones did not want "Billie Jean" to be on Thriller! I wanted to open a thread about the music and some facts about them.

I'm sure we all know of sales figures, records, and billboard ranks. I'd like this thread to contain tidbits and facts about songs, albums, concerts etc. that you think people may not be familiar with. I consider myself a pretty big fan but it seems that people know a lot more facts about the music than I do, and I'm sure some other members may not have the knowledge many of you have.

So this thread is dedicated to the facts YOU think, or know that people aren't aware of concerning Michael's music. Share your knowledge with the rest of us!!!
 
I also heard that Quincy Jones didn't want Smooth Criminal to be on Bad
 
Did you know that "Thriller" has 13 "Thriller" steps in the intro..? Let's count them...
 
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Mick Jagger said that when they were recording State Of Shock, Mike would do scales for 2 hours before recording to warm up his voice and he (Mick) wasn't used to that.
 
Michael cried because he couldn't do what he wanted with his voice during the recording of Keep The Faith. Finally he got it, as you can hear...
 
i like it when i notice small and insignificant connections to Michael's music and especially production like which synthesiser (or even its presets) was used in which song etc. most of the time they come by coincidences.

here's one: the bridge/fill Teddy Riley produced for the dance sequence in the Remember The Time video is taken from the song' Just Can't Handle It' by Hi-Five [1990].
 
It's not really about the music but about a video, and not any video because I'm talking about Thriller.
The moon we can see when Michael becomes a werewolf has not been shot especially for the video. It's been taken from Landis' "An American Werewolf in London", the movie that inspired MJ for the Thriller video.
 
Michaels record company was about to rush thriller out to the market. From Moonwalk:

"Eventually we came under tremendous pressure from our record company to finish Thriller . When a record company rushes you, they really rush you, and they were rushing us hard on Thriller . They said it had to be ready on a certain date, do or die.
So we went through a period where we were breaking our backs to get the album done by their deadline. There were a lot of compromises made on the mixes of various tracks, and on whether certain tracks were even going to be on the record. We cut so many corners that we almost lost the whole album.
When we finally listened to the tracks we were going to hand in, Thriller sounded so crappy to me that tears came to my eyes. We had been under enormous pressure because while we were trying to finish Thriller we also had been working on The E.T. Storybook , and there had been deadline pressure on that as well. All these people were fighting back and forth with each other, and we came to realize that the sad truth was that the mixes of Thriller didn't work.
We sat there in the studio, Westlake Studio in Hollywood, and listened to the whole album. I felt devastated. All this pent-up emotion came out. I got angry and left the room. I told my people, "That's it, we're not releasing it. Call CBS and tell them they are not getting this album. We are not releasing it."
Because I knew it was wrong. If we hadn't stopped the process and examined what we were doing, the record would have been terrible. It never would have been reviewed the way it was because, as we learned, you can ruin a great album in the mix. It's like taking a great movie and ruining it in the ending. You simply have to take your time.
Some things can't be rushed.
There was a bit of yelling and screaming from the record people, but in the end they were smart and understood. They knew too; it was just that I was the first to say it. Finally I realized I had to do the whole thing - mix the entire album - all over again."
 
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arXter said:
i like it when i notice small and insignificant connections to Michael's music and especially production like which synthesiser (or even its presets) was used in which song etc. most of the time they come by coincidences.

here's one: the bridge/fill Teddy Riley produced for the dance sequence in the Remember The Time video is taken from the song' Just Can't Handle It' by Hi-Five [1990].
Click to expand...

I just checked out on Youtube, thats interesting. Keep em coming!!!
 
mjfan 1 said:
Michaels record company was about to rush thriller out to the market. From Moonwalk:

"Eventually we came under tremendous pressure from our record company to finish Thriller . When a record company rushes you, they really rush you, and they were rushing us hard on Thriller . They said it had to be ready on a certain date, do or die.
So we went through a period where we were breaking our backs to get the album done by their deadline. There were a lot of compromises made on the mixes of various tracks, and on whether certain tracks were even going to be on the record. We cut so many corners that we almost lost the whole album.
When we finally listened to the tracks we were going to hand in, Thriller sounded so crappy to me that tears came to my eyes. We had been under enormous pressure because while we were trying to finish Thriller we also had been working on The E.T. Storybook , and there had been deadline pressure on that as well. All these people were fighting back and forth with each other, and we came to realize that the sad truth was that the mixes of Thriller didn't work.
We sat there in the studio, Westlake Studio in Hollywood, and listened to the whole album. I felt devastated. All this pent-up emotion came out. I got angry and left the room. I told my people, "That's it, we're not releasing it. Call CBS and tell them they are not getting this album. We are not releasing it."
Because I knew it was wrong. If we hadn't stopped the process and examined what we were doing, the record would have been terrible. It never would have been reviewed the way it was because, as we learned, you can ruin a great album in the mix. It's like taking a great movie and ruining it in the ending. You simply have to take your time.
Some things can't be rushed.
There was a bit of yelling and screaming from the record people, but in the end they were smart and understood. They knew too; it was just that I was the first to say it. Finally I realized I had to do the whole thing - mix the entire album - all over again."
Click to expand...

Do u have anymore excerpts from the book?
 
When Rod Temperton played Michael "Rock With You", he said he realized that he HAD to come up with something that can compete with that. So, that's when he wrote "Don't Stop Til You Get Enough".

It was healthy competition.
 
IDK if this was known or not so I will just throw it in here. Is It Scary was one of MJ's favorite tracks he recorded for the HIStory album. However, he recorded SO much material for the album that he had to cut tracks or else it was gonna be a triple disc set (which we all wouldn't have minded). Is It Scary was one of the tracks that they HAD to cut, although Mike loved the track so much. SO, they were gonna use it as the theme for the Adams Family Values movie. At the last min, the studio cut it from the soundtrack because they felt that it did not fit well with the movie because of how dark the song was. Mike loved the song so much he just put it on the BOTDF EP.
 
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dabuzz4o8 said:
IDK if this was known or not so I will just throw it in here. Is It Scary was one of MJ's favorite tracks he recorded for the HIStory album. However, he recorded SO much material for the album that he had to cut tracks or else it was gonna be a triple disc set (which we all wouldn't have minded). Is It Scary was one of the tracks that they HAD to cut, although Mike loved the track so much. SO, they were gonna use it as the theme for the Adams Family Values movie. At the last min, the studio cut it from the soundtrack because they felt that it did not fit well with the movie because of how dark the song was. Mike loved the song so much he just put it on the BOTDF EP.
Click to expand...


Interesting. Do you have anymore information about how BOTDF came about? I heard it was gonna just be an EP as opposed to a remix album, but I don't really know the story
 
^ i think it was proposed for the Addams movie (1993) before being considered for HIStory. it's a shame it didn't make the cut. it didn't even get released as a single.. silly muppets.

speaking of Is It Scary, the Downtempo Groove Mix (also made by Jam and Lewis) is rumoured to be the original version that was written for the Addams movie around the early 1990's but was probably deemed too 'urban'.

Get this widget | Track details | eSnips Social DNA

that mix is on the ultra rare Smile promo vinyl.
 
arXter said:
^ i think it was proposed for the Addams movie (1993) before being considered for HIStory. it's a shame it didn't make the cut. it didn't even get released as a single.. silly muppets.

speaking of Is It Scary, the Downtempo Groove Mix (also made by Jam and Lewis) is rumoured to be the original version that was written for the Addams movie around the early 1990's but was probably deemed too 'urban'.

Get this widget | Track details | eSnips Social DNA

that mix is on the ultra rare Smile promo vinyl.
Click to expand...

Whoa, I've never heard that, thanks
 
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A. Sizzle said:
Interesting. Do you have anymore information about how BOTDF came about? I heard it was gonna just be an EP as opposed to a remix album, but I don't really know the story
Click to expand...

From what I know..Mike wanted to release BOTDF as an EP. He wanted it to be a way of a thank u to the fans for all the support we giving him. However, the record company thought it wouldn't sell as much if it was just an EP. So they decided to put the remixes along with the original material MJ recorded to make itan official album. And as we ALL know it is the highest selling remix album of all time with 6 million copies being sold.
 
mjfan 1 said:
Michaels record company was about to rush thriller out to the market. From Moonwalk:

"Eventually we came under tremendous pressure from our record company to finish Thriller . When a record company rushes you, they really rush you, and they were rushing us hard on Thriller . They said it had to be ready on a certain date, do or die.
So we went through a period where we were breaking our backs to get the album done by their deadline. There were a lot of compromises made on the mixes of various tracks, and on whether certain tracks were even going to be on the record. We cut so many corners that we almost lost the whole album.
When we finally listened to the tracks we were going to hand in, Thriller sounded so crappy to me that tears came to my eyes. We had been under enormous pressure because while we were trying to finish Thriller we also had been working on The E.T. Storybook , and there had been deadline pressure on that as well. All these people were fighting back and forth with each other, and we came to realize that the sad truth was that the mixes of Thriller didn't work.
We sat there in the studio, Westlake Studio in Hollywood, and listened to the whole album. I felt devastated. All this pent-up emotion came out. I got angry and left the room. I told my people, "That's it, we're not releasing it. Call CBS and tell them they are not getting this album. We are not releasing it."
Because I knew it was wrong. If we hadn't stopped the process and examined what we were doing, the record would have been terrible. It never would have been reviewed the way it was because, as we learned, you can ruin a great album in the mix. It's like taking a great movie and ruining it in the ending. You simply have to take your time.
Some things can't be rushed.
There was a bit of yelling and screaming from the record people, but in the end they were smart and understood. They knew too; it was just that I was the first to say it. Finally I realized I had to do the whole thing - mix the entire album - all over again."
Click to expand...
This is the bit that Quincy always leaves out when he speaks of re doing the album. he will never say that it was Michael that refused to let it go until it was redone. He is a great producer, but he cannot take all the credit for producing Thriller. he was ready to let it go.
 
George Martin, the Beatles' producer, did the production for 'Say Say Say' and 'The Man'.
 
DuranDuran said:
George Martin, the Beatles' producer, did the production for 'Say Say Say' and 'The Man'.
Click to expand...
both those tracks were cut before "the girl is mine". Quincy Jones's ex Wife Peggy Lipton who was married to Quincy during the time when "thriller" came out use to be Paul Mccartney's girlfriend back in the day.
 
It was Jermaine's idea for Mike to sing on Rockwell's "Somebody's Watching Me". Jermaine also sings background on the song.
 
Michael wrote The Way You Make Me Feel because his mom told him to. She told him he should write a song that had a "shag" beat to it and TWYMMF is what he came up with.

Ticie,
The JACKSONOLOGIST

By the way, the "shag" is a dance from the 1950's, not that British meaning, thingy.

Ticie
 
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JCO8 said:
It's not really about the music but about a video, and not any video because I'm talking about Thriller.
The moon we can see when Michael becomes a werewolf has not been shot especially for the video. It's been taken from Landis' "An American Werewolf in London", the movie that inspired MJ for the Thriller video.
Click to expand...


The soundeffects of Mike's werewolf transformation is also taken straight from An American Werewolf in London, odd but true...
 
if anyone is interested in the production of Dangerous, Teddy Riley gave a detailed interview with Keyboard magazine back in his heyday which gives some technical and general insights into his work with Mike.

http://www.soulandfunkmusic.com/content/view/242/102/

some MJ-related extracts:

 When you do have a bass part, it often has a strong analog feel, as on "Remember the Time."

For me, that song was true R&B. I didn't put hip-hop into it until the remix. For that, I used a real upright jazz bass on a hip-hop beat. I really like that one. I also changed the organ part on the remix and did it with my voice through a vocoder.

Some of Michael's early work with Quincy Jones was much more fully orchestrated. Were you consciously deciding to go in an opposite direction in your collaboration?

As far as my production, yeah. I didn't want to go the same way Quincy went, but I also didn't want to leave his style. So I took a little bit of each. I had my style and his style in my head, and I put them together.

What is there on Dangerous that reflects Michael's earlier style? On "She Drives Me Wild," for example, there seem to be some chordal echoes of "Thriller."

Well, that's what he wanted. He said, "You know what I'd like to have overlaid to new jack swing? I'd still like to have my strings. I want the strings to be really wide." So that's what we did, even on "Dangerous."

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Michael also seems to be referring to "Bil-lie jean" in his falsetto vocals on "Dangerous. "

"Dangerous" had already been recorded by Bill Bottrell [co-producer of four cuts on Dangerous), but the music didn't move Michael. I told Michael, "I like Billy. I like his producing, and everything about him. But this is your album, Michael. If this is the right tune, I can utilize what you have in your singing. Let me change that whole bottom and put a new floor in there." He said, "Try it. I guess we gotta use what we love." And we did. I'm quite sure that if anyone else had come up with a better "Dangerous," he would have used that. So it's not actually about me or Billy; it's about the music. I always say that the music is the star.

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​

Was there an element of having to follow in the formidable footsteps of Quincy Jones on this project?

Well, that's my plan. I want to be like Quincy Jones. I've always looked up to him, more than to any other producer out there. He's the one. Like Quincy, I just can't stay in one category. I'll do any kind of music. It's like being a scientist: You have to find the right method for solving a problem or curing a disease. That what producers do. When you're working with someone, you've got to find the right style, the right sound, for them. You have to draw a circle around each artist and make them fit into that circle.

How much of your work on Dangerous was based not just on finding a sound that works, but on finding a sound that contrasts with the one that Michael and Quincy developed?

Almost all of it.

So if you came up with something that sounded a bit too much like Thriller, for example, that was reason enough to abandon that approach and search for something different.

Yes. We didn't want to sound like another Thriller. We wanted to top it, even though that's impossible. I guess some people are saying that Dangerous is better than Thriller or Bad. But I won't say it's better until it sells as much as those albums. If Dangerous doesn't sell more than Bad, even with the recession that we're having, then I don't feel that it's better.

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You play keyboards on all of the cuts that you produce on Dangerous. But a number of players in addition to you are also credited as keyboardists on the opening song, "Jam."

Well, "Jam" was brought to me as just a drum beat. Rene Moore and Bruce Swedien came up with the idea and gave it to Michael as a beat, so you can't take that credit away from them. But it was just a stripped tune until Michael did his vocals and I came in with the icing. I actually added most of the keyboard parts, all of the percussion elements, all of the horn parts, and all of the guitar parts to make the tune what it is today.
​
 
The night before the Motown 25 taping, Michael had no idea of what he wanted to do for Billie Jean! Trans(Moonwalk):

"During the Thriller sessions, I had found a black jacket, and I said, "You know, someday I'm going to wear this to perform. It was so perfect and so show business that I wore it on Motown 25 .
But the night before the taping, I still had no idea what I was going to do with my solo number. So I went down to the kitchen of our house and played "Billie Jean." Loud. I was in there by myself, the night before the show, and I pretty much stood there and let the song tell me what to do. I kind of let the dance create itself. I really let it talk to me; I heard the beat come in, and I took this spy's hat and started to pose and step, letting the "Billie Jean" rhythm create the movements. I felt almost compelled to let it create itself. I couldn't help it. And that - being able to "step back" and let the dance come through - was a lot of fun.
I had also been practicing certain steps and movements, although most of the performance was actually spontaneous. I had been practicing the Moonwalk for some time, and it dawned on me in our kitchen that I would finally do the Moonwalk in public on Motown 25."
 
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