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Songs that inspired Michael

mj_frenzy;4188455 said:
Chanté Moore’s slight bitterness (towards Rodney Jerkins) makes sense. I can completely understand how she feels about that.

But, if you ask me, Puff Daddy is to blame for that mess-up. He should not have intervened in the first place. Yet, Daddy’s avariciousness does not surprise me at all!

I also gather that Chanté Moore implies pressures from Jennifer Lopez’s camp (by mentioning that Lopez “had such a machine at the time”) for not releasing the song ‘If I Gave Love’ as her next single.

When it comes to movies, I am firmly convinced that many filmmakers copy shamelessly other movies, & ‘pay homage to’ is merely a euphemism for ‘copy blatantly from’.

Take the horror movie genre for instance (which, by the way, is the only genre that appeals to me). I never understood what was so special about ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ to the point where so many subsequent horror movies keep taking elements from that one. I want original horror ideas.
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In general, when something becomes popular, record labels & Hollywood put out a bunch of of the same thing. There's not really all that much that can be done with movies & TV shows. Sitcoms, dramas, soap operas, cop shows, etc. have been around since TV began and before that with radio shows. They're just updated to the years they appear in, like with fashion & slang words. Look at Tarantino, pretty much his entire career is based on copying old, sometimes obscure cult movies. Since the sources are not that well known by the mainstream, it seems original.
 
DuranDuran;4188585 said:
In general, when something becomes popular, record labels & Hollywood put out a bunch of of the same thing. There's not really all that much that can be done with movies & TV shows. Sitcoms, dramas, soap operas, cop shows, etc. have been around since TV began and before that with radio shows. They're just updated to the years they appear in, like with fashion & slang words. Look at Tarantino, pretty much his entire career is based on copying old, sometimes obscure cult movies. Since the sources are not that well known by the mainstream, it seems original.
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He even admits it publicly when he is asked about that in various interviews.

Quentin Tarantino’s extensive use of copying other movies’ material spells to me also lack of confidence (as a filmmaker) on his part.
 
mj_frenzy;4188876 said:
He even admits it publicly when he is asked about that in various interviews.

Quentin Tarantino’s extensive use of copying other movies’ material spells to me also lack of confidence (as a filmmaker) on his part.
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Bearing in mind QT is the best film maker of the last 25 years, I would challenge this. He's done in film exactly what MJ did in music, he learned from the greats & enhanced it to become the best.
 
Re: Everything Is A Remix

Tony R said:
Bearing in mind QT is the best film maker of the last 25 years, I would challenge this. He's done in film exactly what MJ did in music, he learned from the greats & enhanced it to become the best.
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Hmm, well I used to agree. Back when he made films like Reservoir Dogs, Jackie Brown and Pulp Fiction he was a genius.

BUT - Inglorious Bastard, Django Unchained and The HAteful eight... That's just mainstream Hollywood productions. QT's casual everydaylife dialouges used to be what really made his films genius. - His early movies are no doubt the best - low budget films. IMO Reservoir Dogs is by far his best movie. - not really a big fan of Kill Bill - but that's still classic QT. - His new movies are OK movies - but any director could have made them really, the QT's touch is missing...
 
Re: Everything Is A Remix

Hess said:
Hmm, well I used to agree. Back when he made films like Reservoir Dogs, Jackie Brown and Pulp Fiction he was a genius.

BUT - Inglorious Bastard, Django Unchained and The Hateful eight... That's just mainstream Hollywood productions. QT's casual everydaylife dialouges used to be what really made his films genius. - His early movies are no doubt the best - low budget films. IMO Reservoir Dogs is by far his best movie. - not really a big fan of Kill Bill - but that's still classic QT. - His new movies are OK movies - but any director could have made them really, the QT's touch is missing...
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Nah man....Inglorious & Django are cracking!

Hateful 8 was too long but had great moments.

Agree that PF & RD are still his best two though.

Reservoir Dogs is his Thriller, Fiction his Bad. i guess Django is his Dangerous - a bit darker and less accessible but worth the push :)
 
Superfly Sister

The guitar riff on Superfly Sister reminds me of Roger Troutman, or some old funk tune, particularly by James Brown's band. They called that kind of playing "chicken scratch".
 
Re: Everything Is A Remix

Tony R said:
Bearing in mind QT is the best film maker of the last 25 years, I would challenge this. He's done in film exactly what MJ did in music, he learned from the greats & enhanced it to become the best.
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Oh I strongly disagree with this.
 
Randy on Questlove Supreme (October 31, 2018)

According to Randy's new interview with Questlove (https://www.pandora.com/station/play/4147710052636865495Episode 108), the groove from Shake Your Body came from the Teddy Pendergrass song Get Up, Get Down, Get Funky, Get Loose.
Randy doesn't mention it, but I already knew that the chorus was influenced from a chant on the long version of Marvin Gaye's Got To Give It Up. It's at 9:30
Questlove asks Randy if the line "5 minutes later" in Things I Do For You came from the Earth Wind & Fire song Jupiter which has "15 seconds later". They are both said in the same way. You can here it here around 0:30.
Randy says the melody from the Isley Brothers' Harvest For The World was an influence on All Night Dancing. I'm very familiar with the Isley song and I've never noticed that before, probably because it's slower and the song is acoustic. But I hear it now particularly around 0:09.
Randy said he sang on some of the Jackson 5 songs like Dancing Machine, but Motown didn't want to make him an official member because the label thought that would confuse the public. Randy also mentioned that Mike listened to Seals & Crofts, Bread, and America a lot during that time. I guess that explains a few of Janet's songs that either sounds like America's songs or has direct samples from their records, plus Mike's Place With No Name. Janet's producer Jimmy Jam mentioned liking America too. Jimmy said that's what they played in Minneapolis, because at the time the radio stations there didn't play much R&B, funk or black artists.
 
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George Benson

I think the rhythm on The Girl Is Mine sounds a little like a slowed down version of Turn Your Love Around. But a lot of songs of that era had that sound called "Westcoast", and they often had the same LA session musicians playing on them like members of Toto or Jay Graydon. In the modern era, comedians joked about this music style and gave it the name "yacht rock".
Another example of Westcoast is Baby Be Mine and the later song Spice Of Life which was released in 1984.
 
John Oates

Here's a new interview where John talks about The Jacksons coming backstage to one of Hall & Oates shows in the early 1980s and Mike telling them about I Can't Go For That. This happened before We Are The World.
 
A playlist of songs that Michael loved, according to Taj. :)



Taj is going to discuss these in his next live stream today at 12 pm (pacific time).
 
Teddy Pendergrass' song "get up, get down, get funky, get loose" and Marvin Gaye's Got to give it up both were instrumental in creating "shake your body (down to the ground).
 
ScreenOrigami said:
A playlist of songs that Michael loved, according to Taj. :)



Taj is going to discuss these in his next live stream today at 12 pm (pacific time).
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Oh cool, hope someone will make a thread about it when it's done so I'm up-to-date with it.
 
Jackie, Marlon, & Tito were recently on Questlove Supreme. It can be heard here. Tito doesn't say that much, but he had a solo interview with Questlove in 2020. Randy did one too in 2019.

 
This thread is incredible.
The Dokken song and the Beat It start up are brand new to me. It's blowing my mind!!
 
Maybe this one is just random ! But the the ending of Prince's "Let's go crazy" makes me think of the way MJ finished some songs live:
[video=youtube;dmwLlj51iTA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmwLlj51iTA[/video]


Also this seems to have inspired the intro of the Black Or White video:
[video=youtube;V9AbeALNVkk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9AbeALNVkk[/video]
 
analogue said:
I'm not accusing Michael of ripping anyone off. Artists get inspired by other artists all the time, so it's not a big deal if Michael took inspiration from songs from other artists.

It's been said that the drum beat from Billie Jean was inspired by Hall and Oates I Can't Go For That (No Can Do)

I think that Hall and Oates even spoke about it in an interview one time, and they said they didn't mind. Which is a good thing. Some artists can get real petty and would try to sue someone.


So does anyone know of any other songs that inspired Michael?
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I was baffled, when I heard this. But he did something great with it. And it is more commen, than you would think…
 
AlwaysThere said:
This video has a lot. The biggest surprises to me were those for “The Way You Make Me Feel” and “Black or White.”
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Man, this is spooky!!! I was *just* about to bump this thread for the Beatles / Dig It post upthread. Maybe I'll do it anyway, lol.

This was awesome, really cool. The TWYMMF thing? Didn't see that one coming. So interesting.

I wasn't surprised by the Duran Duran / BOW thing. I would love to know what Michael thought of Duran Duran - the videos more than the songs.
 
AlwaysThere said:
This video has a lot. The biggest surprises to me were those for “The Way You Make Me Feel” and “Black or White.”
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Nice, thanks for sharing. Hadn't seen the TWYMMF comparison before either.

Variations of the BoW-riff are really common. For example, the Stones' Soul Survivor (from 1972) features a very similar riff in the chorus (and they re-used that riff themselves a bunch of times). Another one is Lou Reed's Dirty Blvd, which was released in 1989. I think many of the songs being compared may just be similar because they're based around pretty standard riffs or rhythms, and not obviously the result of MJ consciously or unconsciously being inspired by them (though we'll never know, of course).

The one that most took me by surprise was this (wait for it):
Given the extensive melodic similarity and MJ's known love for John Williams, I really have a hard time believing that this one's a coincidental similarity.
 
Makes me wonder what's the line between inspiration and plagiarism. The line gets so blurred sometimes it's hard to tell. (I'm not accusing Michael of plagiarism btw). But I think the majority of music artists know and understand that not everything can be 100% original and things will be copied. Intentionally or not.
 
I'm re-listening to Randy's interview with Questlove and he says parts of Can You Feel It came from the Bee Gees song Tragedy. I played Tragedy and I guess he's talking about the part at around 17 seconds into the song, it's also repeated later on the track.
 
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