The Paul Anka tracks -- 1980 or 1983?

[AlwaysThere]

This has been pestering at me for a while, and I want to see what the rest of you think.

As we all know, Michael and Paul Anka collaborated on three songs for the latter's Walk a Fine Line, a duets album which was released in early August 1983. Though the MJ Estate have earmarked the songs as having been written and recorded over a two-week period in 1983, numerous people (most notably Damien Shields) have claimed a creation date of 1980.

Here's where that logic has crumbled in my personal opinion:

1.) I've yet to find an iota of evidence suggesting that Walk a Fine Line entered production three years prior to its release.

2.) Michael's schedule was overloaded in 1980: the Destiny Tour concluded on January 13, and the Triumph sessions (during which, by all accounts, Michael steered the ship) spanned the early spring and late summer. This means that Michael wouldn't have been available for the two-week songwriting outing until the fall, during which time Anka was preoccupied with his own album, Both Sides of Love, released in April 1981.

Comparatively, Michael's 1983 itinerary was more or less confined to promoting Thriller via filming music videos ("Billie Jean" in January, "Beat It" in March, and "Thriller" in October) and performing at the Motown 25 celebration, not to mention periodic studio sessions with Buz Kohan and Freddie Mercury.

3.) In 2009, when the Estate was under fire for not properly crediting "This Is It," Anka himself said the song was recorded in 1983.

In my opinion, Damien Shields (who I find to be rather insufferable in some ways) is pushing a false narrative because of his noted anti-Estate crusade. There's absolutely NO evidence to suggest that the Anka songs came from 1980.

What do you all think?

[OnirMJ]

I love Damien Shields, I thing he is great. Love his articles and his books.

About Paul Anka sessions, I thought about that multiple times. I also think those songs are from 1983. There is no evidence for 1983 nor for 1980. There are photos of MJ and Anka from 1980 and also from 1983 so it can be both years. The problem is that Anka himself contradicted himself multiple times. He said the songs were recorded in 1983 but he also said that his songs could have been on Thriller album if they had finished them.

[mj_frenzy]

Michael Jackson and Paul Anka apparently worked together on these duet songs in 1983, and according to certain sources these sessions lasted nearly a month rather than two weeks.

But when Michael Jackson enjoyed the big success of his ‘Thriller’ album in that year (1983), he realized that he did not need these duet songs that he had just recorded with Paul Anka, so he abandoned the songs, these sources also said.

In any case, the interesting part of this whole story is not really the year in which these duet songs were recorded (1980 or 1983), but Paul Anka’s claim that people from Michael Jackson’s management team (or even Michael Jackson himself) stole the master tapes of these duet songs from Paul Anka’s studio right after the end of the sessions.

[Mikky Dee]

In my opinion, Damien Shields (who I find to be rather insufferable in some ways) is pushing a false narrative because of his noted anti-Estate crusade. There's absolutely NO evidence to suggest that the Anka songs came from 1980.

What do you all think?

I agree with you, with regard to Damien Shields. He is insufferable to me, as well. The expression in Australia is that he is "up himself".....meaning arrogant, disengenuous and basically "full of it". I am sticking with 1983 as the correct year. In addition, (as per mj_frenzy's post) it wouldn't surprise me at all if Paul Anka's story of the theft of the session tapes by Michael's management team, turned out to be correct...I don't think he has anything to gain by lying about something like that.

[Sophia2023]

The Paul Anka tracks were actually recorded in 1983.

[StellaJackson]

The Paul Anka tracks have a creation date of 1980 as per the US Copyright Office registrations.

https://cocatalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pw...01165103&SID=1

https://cocatalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pw...01164918&SID=1

https://cocatalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pw...01165015&SID=1

[Billyjeanplxiv]

Maybe they were written in 1980, but Michael didn't record until 83?

[OnirMJ]

The Paul Anka tracks have a creation date of 1980 as per the US Copyright Office registrations.

https://cocatalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pw...01165103&SID=1

https://cocatalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pw...01164918&SID=1

https://cocatalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pw...01165015&SID=1

These are the evidence that we needed! Damien was right and the real year is 1980. Paul Anka was wrong. He is pretty old and he mixed up the years in multiple interviews he gave.

[AlwaysThere]

Interesting. Maybe they were written for something else, and brought up for the duets album?

Either way, case closed! Thank you, StellaJackson!

[OnirMJ]

No, they were written (and recorded - as that was the only way MJ was writing music) for MJ and Anka in 1980. As MJ left the project, they gave the songs away to other artists - Johnny Mathis in 1984 (LNFSG) and Sa-Fire in 1991 (This Is It).

[AlwaysThere]

No, they were written (and recorded - as that was the only way MJ was writing music) for MJ and Anka in 1980. As MJ left the project, they gave the songs away to other artists - Johnny Mathis in 1984 (LNFSG) and Sa-Fire in 1991 (This Is It).

I know. What I'm saying is, given all the available information, it's implausible to think that Paul Anka began production on a duets album in 1980, shelved it after spending two whole weeks on it with a single other artist, moved on to a solo project, then picked it back up again three years later.

My theory is that the Paul Anka songs weren't specifically written for any one album. Similar to the Barry Gibb and Freddie Mercury collaborations, they were the product of two artists coming together to make music, with no true end goal. Perhaps at one point or another they were up for consideration for Triumph or Both Sides of Love, but they weren't written/recorded under the guise that they were clear-cut contenders. Then, three years later, Anka comes up with a concept for a duets album and decides to pull up the MJ tracks once again, but Michael's already moved on.

To me, that makes more sense than the Damien Shields angle.

[AmitLal92]

Interesting to note that out of the unreleased tracks released so far the Paul Anka tracks have been the most commercially successful.

[Nite Line]

Interesting to note that out of the unreleased tracks released so far the Paul Anka tracks have been the most commercially successful.

That was because both LNFSG and Don’t Matter To Me had two very successful contemporary artists as features. I doubt the commercial success of both songs had anything to do with the quality of the tracks.

[mj_frenzy]

My theory is that the Paul Anka songs weren't specifically written for any one album. Similar to the Barry Gibb and Freddie Mercury collaborations, they were the product of two artists coming together to make music, with no true end goal. Perhaps at one point or another they were up for consideration for Triumph or Both Sides of Love, but they weren't written/recorded under the guise that they were clear-cut contenders.

All of the three duet songs that Michael Jackson and Freddie Mercury worked on together were originally contenders for the ‘Thriller’ album, according to Freddie Mercury himself.

“…I think one of the [three] tracks would have been on the ‘Thriller’ album if I finished it but I missed out…” (Freddie Mercury, 1983)

In a later interview in 1991, Freddie Mercury confirmed that again:

“…I was going to be on ‘Thriller’…We had three [duet] songs in the can, but, unfortunately, they were never finished…” (Freddie Mercury, 1991)

Freddie Mercury cited as the reason that he left unfinished these three duets songs the fact that he was being annoyed in the recording studio by Michael Jackson’s pet chimpanzee Bubbles.

[OnirMJ]

I know. What I'm saying is, given all the available information, it's implausible to think that Paul Anka began production on a duets album in 1980, shelved it after spending two whole weeks on it with a single other artist, moved on to a solo project, then picked it back up again three years later.

My theory is that the Paul Anka songs weren't specifically written for any one album. Similar to the Barry Gibb and Freddie Mercury collaborations, they were the product of two artists coming together to make music, with no true end goal. Perhaps at one point or another they were up for consideration for Triumph or Both Sides of Love, but they weren't written/recorded under the guise that they were clear-cut contenders. Then, three years later, Anka comes up with a concept for a duets album and decides to pull up the MJ tracks once again, but Michael's already moved on.

To me, that makes more sense than the Damien Shields angle.

To me everything is clear now. Paul Anka and MJ worked together in 1980 on unnamed Paul Anka project in his studio. At some point MJ decided to leave the project because he become big star (probably Off The Wall fame). The songs were registered in US copyright office in 1983 probably because that's when Anka and MJ agreed to give Love Never Felt So Good to Johnny Mathis.

In The View interview Paul Anka basically confirms everything. He says the year was 1980/1981 and that MJ was 21 years old. So that has to be 1980. He says that MJ left the project because Thriller was coming out but that can't be right. It's probably Off The Wall fame, Triumph and Triumph Tour.

In that same video the hosts and video clip says 1983 but that is probably false information provided by the Estate and they got that year from US copyright office which is the year when the songs were first registered.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfRz...ature=youtu.be