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EXCLUSIVE: Michael Jackson’s ‘She Was Loving Me’ (also known as ‘Chicago’)

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Below is a chapter from my book Michael Jackson: Songs & Stories From The Vault, revised for this article. The full book is available via Amazon and iBooks.
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The Grammys is the biggest annual awards ceremony in the music business. Every year the who’s who of music gather to honor the industry’s greatest talents – from artists and producers to engineers and record executives.

Michael Jackson was all too familiar with the ceremony, having won thirteen Grammys throughout his four decades in the music business, including an astonishing eight awards during the 1984 ceremony at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, California.

Fifteen years later, the Shrine Auditorium yet again played host to the star-studded event, with the biggest names in the business flocking to L.A. to attend the 41st Annual Grammy Awards on February 24, 1999.

But as the industry toasted the impending end of the 20th century, its brightest talent was not present.

Rather, he was holed up in a recording studio called Marvin’s Room, with his sights set squarely on the new millennium. 

Marvin’s Room is an iconic studio on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, founded in 1975 by R&B legend Marvin Gaye.

Two decades later, in 1997, the studio was acquired by record executive and artist manager John McClain, who restored the facilities and rebranded the studio as Marvin’s Room.

At the time of the ’99 Grammys, Jackson was working at Marvin’s Room with a songwriter and producer called Dr. Freeze on new songs for a new album. McClain, who was managing both Jackson and Freeze at the time, was responsible for orchestrating the collaboration.

Jackson’s record label at the time, Epic Records, was hoping to release the new album sometime before the new millennium, and a tentative release date of November 1999 was set by the label’s parent company, Sony Music.

However, after several postponements, it became apparent that Jackson was not interested in meeting their desired deadline, and as of early 1999, the label had not heard any of the new material he’d recorded in the preceding months.

But that was about to change.

The Senior Vice President of Sony Music at the time, Cory Rooney, remembers being invited to the studio by Jackson for a rare listening session with some of his fellow executives from the company.

“Michael invited us to the studio to listen to some music because we were all out there in Los Angeles for the Grammys,” recalls Rooney.

The prospect of hearing what Jackson was working on was mouth-watering for the executives at the label.

“For Michael to want to unveil some music, that was a big treat for us because he never did anything like that,” Rooney explains.

“You would rarely get the chance to hear what he was working on.”

The Sony team, including Rooney, took Jackson up on his extraordinary offer and headed to Marvin’s Room, where Jackson was set to debut the music for them.

“It was myself, Tommy Mottola, John Doelp, Polly Anthony, and David Glew – all the top Sony Music and Epic Records people,” recalls Rooney of the listening session.

“So we walked in the studio, and he played one record. Just one record.”

The song Jackson played during the listening session was “Break Of Dawn” – a track written and produced by Dr. Freeze which would ultimately be released on the Invincible album two-and-a-half years later.

Although they went in expecting to be shown more than just one song, the executives were thrilled with what they heard.

Tommy Mottola, Chairman CEO of Sony Music at the time, commented that if the rest of the record was as good as “Break of Dawn,” they had a guaranteed smash hit album on their hands.

Mottola’s appetite had been whet and he wanted to hear more.

Jackson indicated that he would oblige Mottola before long, with Rooney recalling that “Michael promised us that he would send another record a few weeks later.”

During their flight home from Los Angeles to New York, Mottola proposed that Rooney, who had been producing hits for a host of other artists, should write and produce a song for Jackson to record.

Rooney jumped at the chance and got straight to work the moment he arrived home from L.A.

“I got home, went in my house, and I wrote this song,” recalls Rooney. “I did the music at my house, then I brought the musical track to the Sony studios to write the lyrics and record the demo.”

When working on the lyrics for the track, Rooney took inspiration from a conversation he’d recently had with one of Jackson’s collaborative partners, prolific songwriter Carole Bayer Sager, who urged him to write a song that ‘tells a story.’

“Michael loves to tell a tale,” Bayer Sager told Rooney. 

“I’ve always wanted to be able to tell stories, you know, stories that came from my soul,” explains Jackson.

“Make people see pictures, make them cry and laugh, take them anywhere emotionally with something as deceptively simple as words… to tell tales to move their souls and transform them. Songwriting uses those skills and creates the emotional highs and lows…”

And so, putting Bayer Sager’s advice into practice, Rooney went about writing a story for Jackson. That story became a tale of passion, lust, betrayal and shame called “She Was Loving Me.”

Rooney had barely finished piecing the track together at Sony Studios when Tommy Mottola heard it for the first time.

“Tommy came in the studio with Danny DeVito,” recalls Rooney. “It’s funny, Danny was intrigued. He loved the track so much he was like, ‘Play that again, play that again. Oh my god, this is amazing!’”

Mottola was impressed as well, and insisted that Jackson hear the track as soon as possible.

“Tommy took a very, very nasty, rough, scratch demo,” recalls Rooney, “and he said, ‘Man this is a great song. I’m sending it to Michael right now.’ And he sent it to him, just in its rough stage.”

Initially, Rooney was apprehensive, concerned that sending Jackson his incomplete demo may deter him from wanting to record the track.

“I was actually like, I don’t know if that was a good idea,” recalls Rooney, “because, you know, if he’s gonna hear it in its rough stage, then I might have blown my opportunity.”

Mottola sent Rooney’s rough demo to Jackson that night, a Thursday. Jackson, who was still in Los Angeles at the time, got it the next morning.

“Tommy sent it on the Thursday; Michael heard it on the Friday; and I promise you, by that Monday, [Jackson] was in New York,” recalls Rooney.

“He called my house and he said, ‘I’m ready. I’m prepared. I’m ready to sing the song.’ And he was ready. I was blown away.”

Despite already being an accomplished songwriter, producer, and record executive, the opportunity to work with the King of Pop was a humbling honor for Rooney.

“I’d already had so much success in my career with Mariah Carey, Jennifer Lopez, Marc Anthony, Mary J. Blige, and Destiny’s Child,” says Rooney.

“Then all of a sudden you’ve got Michael Jackson calling you and saying, ‘I love your song.’ I couldn’t believe it!”

The Hit Factory, a sprawling building boasting seven luxurious recording studios and five rehearsal suites, would become Jackson and Rooney’s home for nearly a month between late March and mid-April 1999, during which time they recorded Jackson’s vocals and worked further on the track.

Located at 421 West 54th Street in New York City, The Hit Factory has hosted the recording sessions for some of music’s most important albums, including Songs in the Key of Life by Stevie Wonder (which was the first album ever recorded there), Born in the U.S.A. by Bruce Springsteen, Graceland by Paul Simon, and a sizeable portion of Michael Jackson’s own HIStory album.

Prior to his arrival at The Hit Factory for their first session together Rooney was anxious about what the studio experience might be like with Jackson, and what the King of Pop’s creative process was when recording other people’s songs.

“Sometimes [artists] will say they love the song but they wanna change this verse, and they wanna change this melody,” explains Rooney.

But to his surprise, Jackson came in the studio and expressed that he loved the demo exactly as it was, and did not want to make any changes at all.

“Rewind it. Rewind it. I like the way you phrase that. Hold on. Let me do that again. I wanna make sure I get the timing like you got it,” Rooney remembers Jackson insisting.

“I was blown away. I’m like, This is amazing! For this guy to accept and love every inch of my song, every part of it, you know, it was so surreal. It makes you emotional.”

When it came time to lay the vocals for the track, Jackson had just one request. Under the advice of his longtime singing coach, Seth Riggs, Jackson proposed that he should record the vocals for the track over two separate days.

“The song ‘She Was Loving Me’ goes from [Jackson] singing really low in the verses, to singing really high in the choruses,” explains Rooney.

“So it was two different types of vocal. It was like Michael Jackson’s ‘Billie Jean’ voice and his ‘Dirty Diana’ voice in one record.”

“He was very polite,” recalls Rooney of Jackson’s temperament.

“He asked me, he said: ‘Um, if it’s okay with you I’d like to sing the verses today because I’ve warmed my voice up for the low part. And then I’d like to sing the high chorus parts tomorrow, because when I’m doing songs and I’m screaming up, like a ‘Dirty Diana’ type of thing, I like to warm my voice up for that in particular.’ I thought it was amazing that he was asking me if it was okay. And asking for my permission to do it that way when, you know, he’s Michael Jackson.”

“Michael is polite and kind,” agrees Bruce Swedien, who recorded and engineered on all of Jackson’s solo albums from Off The Wall through Invincible.

“He’ll say, ‘Can I hear a little more piano in the earphones, please?’ I turn up the piano in his cue mix, and then he’ll say, ‘Thank you.’ This is an industry where you don’t hear those words a whole lot. So for that reason I totally respect Michael. His musical integrity is so astounding.”

“I was expecting him to tell me how he works, what he does and what he doesn’t do, because so many artists are like that,” adds Rooney.

“If this was Jennifer Lopez, or even Lindsay Lohan, they’d be giving me orders. But not Michael.”

After warming his voice up for around 25 minutes, Jackson stepped into the booth.

“He was in the vocal booth at The Hit Factory and we dimmed the lights for him just enough for him to be able to read his lyric sheet,” recalls Rooney.

“I met her on the way to Chicago, where she was all alone,” sang Jackson in a low, sultry tone to the sound of his own finger snaps, “and so was I, so I asked her for her name/ She smiled and looked at me/ I was surprised to see that a woman like that was really in to me.”

“His vocals were so smooth and so perfect,” recalls Rooney.

“But the most amazing part about him being in the booth was his dancing. He danced between the takes. He danced through the takes. He snapped his fingers. He stomped his feet. You could barely hear a take without him snapping his finger or stomping his feet to the rhythm.”

“When Bruce Swedien recorded Michael he would create a whole stage, like a platform, for him to stand on,” explains Rooney.

“When you strip down the music, you hear him singing but you also hear him snapping his fingers, shuffling paper; you hear him stomping his feet, and the rhythm just takes over him at that point.”

Rooney recalls that Jackson remained in the vocal booth until he was happy with his performance.

“Some singers are in and out of the vocal booth. In and out. In and out. But Michael stayed in the vocal booth until he got the job done.”

Once they had completed the first session—the lower parts of the track and the background vocals—Jackson asked Rooney what time he should return the following day to record the choruses.

“I said: ‘Michael, what time would you prefer to work?’ And he said: ‘Cory, it doesn’t matter to me. You’re the producer. I’m here to work with you. You’re the boss. So you tell me what time you want me to be here. If you want me to be here at seven in the morning I’ll go home and get some rest and I’ll be here for seven.’ It was mind-blowing.”

The next morning, Jackson didn’t show up. He’d fallen ill and wasn’t feeling well enough to attend the planned session.

“I didn’t have children before [when recording] the other albums, so I caught a lot of colds [this time],” explains Jackson.

“I was sick a lot because my children would catch colds and I would catch colds. So we had to stop and start again and stop and start.”

Rooney explains that working with major stars can often lead to a lot of wasted time.

“Normally, if you’re working with someone like J-Lo or Mariah Carey, you can be in the studio for days just waiting for them to show up,” says Rooney.

“And they won’t so much as call to let you know they’re on their way, or running late, or not coming at all.”

The King of Pop, on the other hand, was not only courteous enough to call when he couldn’t make it, but also sent a gift package to express his sincere apologies for missing the session.

“He sent me a basket so big that I had to call a truck service just to come take it home,” recalls Rooney.

“It was full of DVDs, a DVD player, a little popcorn maker, all of these cool little books on the movies, almost like comic books, like little vintage magazines about vintage movies and stuff. So that was really, really cool.”

Accompanying the basket was a handwritten note from Jackson.

“The note on it, which I still have, it was just something he sent me to say, ‘Forgive me for not being able to come,’ because of his illness.”

Rooney called Jackson to thank him for the package, and the two ended up talking on the phone for quite some time.

Then, after a couple of days’ rest, Jackson returned to the studio, again with singing coach Seth Riggs in tow.

Jackson would invite Riggs to every session, and he would warm the singer’s voice up based on what type of sound he was aiming to achieve during that particular session.

In this case, it was the gritty “rock” style for the chorus parts.

“She said she didn’t have no man,” erupted Jackson powerfully from within the booth. “She lied to you, lied to me/ Because she was loving me, loving me, yeah!”

Jackson, a true professional, knocked out the vocals flawlessly.

“You could feel the magic in the room,” recalls Rooney. “Everyone was excited about it. It was crazy!”

Once all the vocals had been recorded the only thing left to do was to review them, select the best takes, and create a composite for editing.

“Michael comped the final vocal himself,” reveals Rooney.

“He comped all his own stuff. He sat there with a pen and paper and went through all his takes and picked out all his favourites. He pieced it all together. It took him about half an hour, because he did multiple performances of it.”

“If you go back and listen to the takes you can hear him say little things, and imitate the instruments and sounds,” says Rooney.

“We even used some of the vocals I recorded from his warm-up with Seth Riggs. We used them as ad-libs in the middle of the song because they sounded so amazing. He was very pleased with it.”

Once he was satisfied with the vocal composite, Jackson referred Rooney to his trusted arranger, Brad Buxer, to polish the transitions.

“Michael sent me to meet with Brad [Buxer],” says Rooney, “who helped me do a few little edits here and there to clean up what we had comped as his vocal.”

Although the recording process did not take long at all, Jackson and Rooney spent nearly a month in the studio, working on the track.

“We spent so much time—I would say we worked for a good two weeks—on tweaking alone,” recalls Rooney.

“It took two weeks because we spent [a lot of] time laughing, joking, talking, and having such a good time in the studio. We stretched it out just to have fun. In the end, we spent most of April in the studio kind of plotting and planning. We used that as our kind of headquarters to really get the record in line.”

At one point during their sessions at the Hit Factory, Jackson and Rooney left the studio to watch renowned magician David Blaine perform a stunt in which he buried himself alive.

Blaine was laid to rest about six feet into the ground at a Donald Trump development, facing New York’s elevated West Side Highway by the Hudson River.

“It was a big display and everyone was going to see him,” recalls Rooney.

“You could look down at the ground and see him through the Plexiglas. Michael was like, ‘Wow!’ because he absolutely loved magic, so we went down there to check it out.”

Although it was Rooney’s job to produce hit songs for Sony Music artists, he felt that Jackson needed more than just his name at the top of the charts. He felt Jackson needed both an ally at the record label, and a friend.

“I could have taken advantage of the situation, tried to produce six songs, and get Michael to record them, but I didn’t care for that. I just wanted to give him anything at that time that he needed. And I felt like he needed to have fun, and to have a friend more so than some guy trying to push songs on him. That was genuinely what I truly felt in my heart. We had a great time.”

Rooney recalls that one of the most special musical moments he shared with Jackson in the studio came about by chance, and had nothing to do with the song they were working on.

“One day I was sitting at the keyboard, and I’m playing the chords to ‘Never Can Say Goodbye’ by The Jackson 5,” tells Rooney.

“So I sing the first two lines: ‘Never can say goodbye, no, no, no, no I, never can say goodbye.’ Then all of a sudden I hear this voice start singing: ‘Even though the pain and heartache seems to follow me where ever I go.’ But really, like, singing it. Not just humming it or playing around, like, singing it. For real! And I just kept on playing, and he kept on singing. And that was the way he came in the studio one day.”

“If only I had a camera, because that was a magic moment. I’m gonna be telling that story to my children’s children, and I hope they continue to tell the story as well. I went from singing the two lines, to feeling someone put their hand on my shoulder as if to say ‘keep it going. Keep it going.’ So I do, and I hear this guy really killing it. Singing it with conviction. Not just humming it—killing it! I couldn’t believe it.”

“‘She Was Loving Me’ was a great song, but it wasn’t going to be the first single,” explains Rooney.

“It wasn’t what the record label was looking for. Michael wanted it to be a single at some point, but he wanted that big rhythmic thing for the lead single, and we hadn’t got that yet for the record.”

After concluding the “She Was Loving Me” recording sessions with Rooney, the collaborative relationship between Jackson, Rodney Jerkins, and his ‘Darkchild’ production team almost completely took over.

Rooney strongly believed that Jerkins was the man who could deliver the type of track that Jackson was striving for. However, following their first meeting regarding a possible collaboration, Jackson was not convinced.

“It’s not that he isn’t talented—he is very talented,” Jackson said of Jerkins, tells Rooney, “but his work sounds like everything else that’s out right now. I need a new ‘Michael Jackson’ sound… I want to take people somewhere they’ve never been sonically.”

So instead of polishing the music for “She Was Loving Me,” Rooney spent a good part of the next year nurturing the relationship between Jerkins and Jackson.

To point him in the right direction, Rooney reminded Jerkins of the valuable advice previously given to him by songwriter Carole Bayer Sager: tell a story.

And so Jerkins and his team put that advice into practice, writing stories in the form of rhythm-driven tracks for Jackson, including songs like “You Rock My World,” “Unbreakable,” “Threatened,” and several others.

Meanwhile, Jackson had been writing songs of his own.

Back at Marvin’s Room, during the February 1999 listening session for “Break of Dawn,” Jackson had promised Sony boss Tommy Mottola that he would send more of his newly crafted material.

And true to his word, although much later than promised, Jackson delivered.

“I was in Mottola’s office, talking to him about something,” recalls Rooney.

“Tommy was eating lunch, and he said, ‘Oh, while you’re here, Michael sent another record. Let’s listen to it.’ So he puts in the CD, and all you hear is, ‘Your love is magical. That’s how I feel.’ It’s, you know, the song ‘Speechless.’ It was just amazing.”

Rooney recalls that Mottola was blown away by Jackson’s vocals on the track.

“Tommy was like, ‘Oh, my god! Did you hear that voice? Now that’s the Michael I’m talking about!’ I mean, that intro alone, with just his voice, blew Tommy away. And then it just drops in, ‘Speechless, speechless, that’s how you make me feel.’ It just really blew his mind.”

According to Rooney, by the end of the year 2000, “Speechless” was just the second track being considered for Jackson’s new album that Mottola had heard. At this point, he hadn’t even heard the version of “She Was Loving Me” with Jackson’s voice.

In fact, Rooney recalls that he hadn’t even completed the music for the track, let alone done the final mix.

“It was up to me to finish the music for ‘She Was Loving Me’ – to make the music track better and stronger,” explains Rooney.

But in the end, he never got around to doing it.

“I completely lost the opportunity to do that because I got so caught up in trying to help Rodney Jerkins deliver for Michael. And before you knew it, the Invincible record was done.”

“Then Michael and Tommy started to fall out. And because everyone in the world knows that I worked so closely with Tommy, people started to try and put things between us.”

“Tommy kind of like played a little game,” adds Rooney.

“He pulled me off the MJ project and started a Jennifer Lopez album, a Marc Anthony album, and a Jessica Simpson album, all at the same time. I was so caught up in [those projects] that the Invincible ship started to sail, and I couldn’t double back to finish ‘She Was Loving Me’ for Michael.”

By the time the Invincible album was released in late October 2001, things had turned completely sour between Jackson and Sony.

Later, Jackson accused Mottola of sabotaging his album’s sales, of conspiring against the label’s artists, and of being racist.

Pictured: Late pop superstar Michael Jackson speaks out against Sony Music at public event in 2002.

And because of Rooney’s close working relationship with Mottola, all kinds of rumours began to swirl, including an allegation that Rooney was acting as Mottola’s personal ‘spy.’

Such rumours were completely untrue, according to Rooney, who says that Jackson pleaded with him to not let the media or agenda-driven record executives ruin their friendship.

“Michael reached out to me personally and said, ‘Cory, do not let these people do to us and our friendship what they do to everyone else,’” recalls Rooney, maintaining that he saw himself as Jackson’s only true ally at Sony.

Following the release of Invincible, Rooney began to wonder what the fate of the unreleased “She Was Loving Me” would be.

“The last time I spoke to Michael was in late 2008, around eight months before he passed away,” says Rooney.

“We talked about the track and laughed and joked about a couple of things. He told me that he was in Las Vegas and that he was going back and forth between there and L.A. I told him I was going to be in Vegas at a certain time and I was hoping we could meet when I got there. But I actually never made it out to Vegas.”

“In that final conversation we talked about using ‘She Was Loving Me’ for his next project,” Rooney reveals. “He was talking about getting in a position where he was going to start lining up new songs and things like that. He said, ‘This record is so good, we gotta figure out something good to do with it.’”

Unfortunately, Jackson never had the chance to hear “She Was Loving Me” in its final state.

After Michael’s death Rooney, with the help of the King of Pop’s nephew, Taryll Jackson, completely transformed “She Was Loving Me” from a tranquil R&B track somewhat reminiscent of “Liberian Girl,” into a hard-hitting rock anthem.

“The version that Taryll and I reworked is better, in my opinion,” says Rooney.

“It’s stronger. I did the original, original version fifteen years ago. It was a different feel, and there was a different thing going on then. But Michael and I had always planned on kind of reworking it and turning it into what the Taryll Jackson version became.”

The Taryll Jackson version of “She Was Loving Me” was produced in 2010 for the Michael album – the first full compilation of unheard material to be released since Jackson’s death.

But a final mixdown was never done and Taryll’s version was not submitted to Sony.

When questions were raised about the authenticity of the vocals on some of the tracks on Michael, Rooney stated that he would not want his song to be included on the project.

Four years later, the track received yet another remix – this time by produced by Timbaland, for Sony’s second posthumous Jackson album called Xscape.

“She Was Loving Me” was released on Xscape under the title “Chicago,” which initially caused confusion among Jackson’s fans.

Epic Records, who released the track, took the liberty of renaming it “Chicago” for the album – a title that neither Jackson, nor Rooney, had ever used when referring to the song.

When Rooney handed the song over to Sony, the track sheets and associated paperwork all noted the song’s title as “She Was Loving Me.”

In fact, Rooney had even registered the song’s legal title as “She Was Loving Me” with BMI.

Rooney’s BMI registration for “She Was Loving Me” as performed by Michael Jackson.

Rooney did, however, recall Jackson’s fascination with his decision to use Chicago as the city in which the man meets the woman in the song. 

“Why did you pick Chicago,” Jackson asked Rooney during one of their 1999 Hit Factory recording sessions.

“Because it just sounds better than any other city,” responded Rooney.

“I’ll prove it to you. Try to sing that line with any other city in place of Chicago. It won’t sound right.”

And so, just for fun, Jackson went about trying to sing the “I met her on the way to Chicago” line with other cities in Chicago’s place.

I met her on the way to San Francisco… I met her on the way to New York… I met her on the way to Los Angeles,” sang Jackson, giggling.

“See, I told you,” laughed Rooney.

“Chicago is the only city that works. But the song was never called ‘Chicago.’ Never, ever. It has always been called ‘She Was Loving Me.’”


Damien Shields is the author of the book Michael Jackson: Songs & Stories From The Vault examining the King of Pop’s creative process, and the producer of the podcast The Genesis of Thriller which takes you inside the recording studio as Jackson and his team create the biggest selling album in music history.

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37 Comments

37 Comments

  1. Casey Rain

    August 29, 2013 at 7:03 pm

    Brilliant article – I hope the song surfaces!

  2. James Alay

    August 29, 2013 at 7:17 pm

    Wow. A track no one knew anything about has essentially become the most anticipated unreleased track! I can’t wait to hear it! Legendary. Thank you, Damien!

  3. Dr Holley

    August 29, 2013 at 8:07 pm

    Amazing article!!!

  4. Jamon Bull

    August 29, 2013 at 9:08 pm

    Damien,

    Wow. Just wow. This is by far your best article so far IMO. MJ fans are so lucky to have someone so connected to Michael’s collaborators writing about him. You give so much valuable detail and insight into his recording process and art. Thank-you SO much for writing this article. I can only hope that fans get the opportunity one day to hear the track in a positive way that Michael would have wanted. Amazing. Makes you wonder how many little gems are out there that Michael recorded that we don’t know about…

    Jamon

  5. Adam

    August 30, 2013 at 1:29 am

    Damien..

    Is the Number 1 source for MJ related news..
    This is without doubt your best article yet!
    Hope this track doesn’t leak, I want it to be officially released

    AB

    • Diana Rose

      May 8, 2014 at 6:06 am

      it has. good thing it’s only a week till the albums out. they can’t pull it this close to release

  6. Gene Washington

    August 30, 2013 at 1:35 am

    Amazing article. Nice to hear insights to Michael’s professional career. I heard about another “great” song he recorded a long time ago, when he was a teenager, a song called “Buffalo Bill”, that was supposed to be a big hit but never got released. I’m sure there are enough unreleased songs he at least finished the vocals to that could be made into a gold album – with the right producers and arrangers. Maybe his estate can get a project like that in motion. In the mean time, Happy Birthday, Michael! Fan for life.

  7. Q. Gabriel-Smith

    August 30, 2013 at 5:13 am

    Bravo Damien bravo. What a supurb article to release on Michael’s birthday. Thankyou so much for sharing this story and details with us through your website! Hearing, not only about his music, but the way we worked, and interacted with people, that insight into HIM and how he approached his art, is such a treasure. Well written again, my thanks to you!

  8. Logan

    August 30, 2013 at 5:38 am

    Phenomenal article Damien! The only downside is reading your last few paragraphs which heavily suggest that you’ve heard the song. Lucky man!

  9. Rishi

    August 30, 2013 at 5:45 am

    Great article, thanks! I do hope we hear the track some day.

  10. anil

    August 30, 2013 at 2:05 pm

    wow…awesome damien you rock always with your articles 🙂

    thank you so much for giving us the insight of the song She was Lovin me..on Micheal’s Birthday..

    Wish we all could hear the song someday..:)

  11. ray doran

    August 30, 2013 at 5:03 pm

    great article, Invincible was a lost hit in terms of the marketing, while the same core fans listened to it back to back all day and all night potential new costumers didn’t even know that MJ had a new album out, shame for shame…don’t get me started on the never filmed videos…

  12. rachel

    August 31, 2013 at 1:45 am

    thanks, great story………

  13. mksmurf

    August 31, 2013 at 11:08 pm

    They will do it again like the way they did to the 2010 MICHAEL album

    with duets…

    I really don’t like they way estate / $ony does to mj stuff.

    • mksmurf

      September 1, 2013 at 9:24 pm

      Thank u DAMIEN, i forgot to say thanks 🙂
      Like your article…

    • Arjun Sanyal

      November 16, 2013 at 12:00 pm

      The duets idea is probably now a stupid one – the only duets that Jackson fans want are the ‘Llama Recordings’ – considering the backlash to the leaked ‘Slave 2 The Rhythm’ with Justin Bieber and the general distaste to a duets album with artists Michael never or rarely worked with (e.g. Madonna), Sony will probably not release a duets album. Also, will.i.am has refused to release his duets with Michael, and the only other artists that Michael properly worked with were – no one! Although I suppose Janet Jackson, N*SYNC and Slash come close…

  14. Paula

    September 1, 2013 at 11:19 am

    Great article once again Damien. Always a pleasure reading what you have written. Yes it is a shame about the ‘Invincible’ album not getting the marketing it deserved, though Michael did a great job on his own. I do remember the album coming out here in Australia and me buying it, and hearing the single ‘You Rock My World’ on the radio played quite often when it first came out, but nothing much more than that here, and I am a hard core fan! Not one video here to go with the album!
    As for the song ‘She Was Lovin’ Me’, it would be great to hear one day, provided they keep it true to Michael.
    Thank you again!

  15. Tristan

    September 1, 2013 at 11:35 am

    I hope Rooney is smart enough to never give it to Branca.
    The picture this excellent article paints is that “She Was Lovin Me” is a masterpiece.
    If the MJEstate get it, they’ll probably get some irrelevant producer to dilute it into a Katy Perry remix.

    I enjoy this site. It’s so nice to read about Michael the ARTIST crafting his work for a change.

    #MJForever.

  16. Zakk

    September 1, 2013 at 5:08 pm

    this song sounds like a truly mesmeric classic from michael, i truly hope it is released some day and they stay true to michael’s wishes that it won’t just end up on some compilation by sony. it deserves to be the first track from a new album for sure and i hope the estate don’t lose this opportunity to bless the world with this track.

  17. Helma Spengler

    September 4, 2013 at 10:17 am

    What a pleasure reading this! Thank you Damien and of course mr. Cory Rooney for sharing what fans love to hear!

    AAArrggg…I want to hear that song with fingersnapping, feetstomping, talking and all!

  18. Korgnex

    September 11, 2013 at 3:59 pm

    You know what’s too funny?
    Ashley Adkins aka “Kingofthedancefloor” who is a scammer claimed (among other BS) to actually own this song, take a look yourself:
    http://www.mjjcommunity.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1618877#post1618877

    “Im quite surprised to see this online for sale as ive just purchased a “Money” Acetate just last friday i didnt know more were about great to see though gives more fans the chance to own them.Demos are the best and real intresting to hear.
    Im currently on the look out for more as i already have:
    2 Bad Acetate
    Scream Acetate
    Jam Acetate
    She was loving me Acetate”

  19. S. L. Trout

    September 11, 2013 at 9:19 pm

    What a story! I simply can’t wait to hear this one. It’s so disconcerting, really. The recording and entertainment industry is at once a brilliantly lit stage where one can shine like a newly minted star and at the same time, it can swallow one into a dark hole that seems impossible to resurface from. I always wondered about the details of the the Jackson/Mottola falling-out. Clearly, Invincible was his greatest body of work to date and Sony failed him big time in terms of promotion. After reading this great article about this song, we’re left to wonder just what incredible gems lie in the vault, unfinished, waiting to be nurtured and birthed. There are so many “if only’s”. It drives me crazy. Thank you, thank you, Damien!

    • Arjun Sanyal

      November 16, 2013 at 11:55 am

      I agree – we never really got to see what Michael wanted to do with ‘Invincible’ – we can only dream about what could have happened with a ‘Threatened’ short film and ‘Unbreakable’ & ‘Break of Dawn’ singles.

  20. S. L. Trout

    September 11, 2013 at 9:34 pm

    Please Cory Rooney, don’t give in to mediocrity. Keep this precious jewel under wraps until the proper time and medium reveals itself. It will astound.

  21. Michael Jackson Lovers Indonesia

    September 16, 2013 at 9:48 am

    This is our treasure! Wow…

    Thank you for sharing these beautiful memories.
    You have no idea how this story is so touching for us.

    We love you, Damien! 🙂

  22. Tatyna

    November 15, 2013 at 10:13 am

    Какая прекрасная песня. Я слушаю, слушаю и не могу наслушаться. Как жаль, что её не включили в альбом. Как трогательно её поёт Майкл, что мурашки идут по телу.

  23. Zakk

    January 28, 2014 at 4:32 pm

    firstly, people shouldn’t want this track to be leaked.. because if it is.. then they’ll say ”why the hell they releasing leaked song’s???” it’d be your fault only.. not the estate’s. hypocritical. same situation with a place with no name. #LOGIC

  24. Diana Rose

    April 1, 2014 at 6:45 am

    this is going to be included on xscape….hopefully it won’t be a death by remix.

    • Enrique

      April 17, 2014 at 12:42 am

      The track will also be released in its original form in the Deluxe edition.

  25. Brian Method

    May 3, 2014 at 11:31 am

    See…this is the Michael Jackson album that needs to be released. A quadruple CD with unreleased songs like this one, Carousel, and countless others that MJ sung and are all sung.

    btw…take a look at the giveaways on the best comments on my blog posts on TheBrianMethod.blogspot.com

  26. Francis

    May 4, 2014 at 5:34 pm

    Biggest dissapointment is “lOVE NEVER FELT SO GOOD” featuring Justin Timberlake? they done it again just like the Akon song. Bad idea. Micheal rarely featured people on his albums maybe Rap stars because they are in a different genre or guitarists not singers who want to sound like him. what happened to hearing Queen leader singer with Micheal? he did songs with such a great artist but he never released them. One wonders why release a Justin Timberlake version? it ruins the party. Then more bad news is that Mary J and D-Angelo sing on his album? i mean if this happens, i will return the cd i ordered to sony and request them to digitally erase anything with Mary J or D Angelo. It doesn’t just make sense. Here is a thing, if sony ruins this album, i will be in the forefront spreading the news to all fans across the world to dismiss the album and not to buy it. I ordered album so i see what they will do to preserve Micheal’s Legacy. If i was sony, i would look youtube and see his biggest fans and ask them more about what to release than today’s journalists or producers. Who is it? Stranger in Moscow, earth song or D.S were big songs to the fans but maybe not to billboard but sales don’t lie. The song Love never felt so good is a Pharrel like copy and it is a shame!

  27. Patricia Smith

    May 6, 2014 at 2:59 pm

    I have read this article again today and it is much more relevant to me as I have just heard from Amazon that Xscape will be delivered on the l2 May. I am so looking forward to hearing Love never felt so Good, aka Chicago Damien I just love your writings I think the Estate should hire you to do their PR.

  28. Diana Rose

    May 8, 2014 at 6:14 am

    there’s a leak of this now. it sounds like the music is sampled from a sega game.. decap attack or something…

  29. Mister Adam

    May 8, 2014 at 10:58 pm

    I honestly don’t know what Rooney is on about, I just heard his version of ‘Chicago’ and it’s really nothing special. Even forgetting MJ was the man that gave us the biggest selling album of all time and so many classic tracks, this is just mediocre at best.

  30. R.J.

    May 15, 2014 at 12:25 am

    Something does not sit quite right with the original. Yes, it’s Michael and he sings wonderfully crisp. But the percussion and melody feels fairly bland and doesn’t bode well with the guitar strings. I assume it was an unfinished demo that was reworded by John McClain and Teryle Jackson. I wonder how this track sounded before MJ passed away?

  31. Sorina

    September 7, 2014 at 11:22 pm

    Wow!!! 18 min short-film for Unbreakable. Imagine that!!!! So many “What if’s ” running through my head right now… :'(

    Thanks for the article, though – always fascinating, reading about the Master in his “creation” mood.

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    July 19, 2019 at 8:07 am

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Creative Process

Invincible, ‘Xscape’ and Michael Jackson’s Quest for Greatness

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Below is a chapter from my book Michael Jackson: Songs & Stories From The Vault, revised for this article. The full book is available via Amazon and iBooks.
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In order to fully appreciate the origins and evolution of “Xscape” – an outtake recorded for Michael Jackson’s Invincible album – it’s important to first understand Jackson’s relationship with its co-writers.

The journey begins in early 1999, when in-demand producer Rodney ‘Darkchild’ Jerkins received a phone call from renowned songwriter Carole Bayer Sager.

Bayer Sager’s working relationship with Michael Jackson dates back to the late 1970s, when she and producer David Foster co-wrote “It’s The Falling In Love” – a duet recorded by Jackson and R&B star Patti Austin, which was released on Jackson’s Off The Wall album in 1979.

Two decades later, Jackson and Bayer Sager were again working together.

During her 1999 phone call with Jerkins, Bayer Sager explained that she and Jackson were writing songs for Jackson’s next studio album at her home in Los Angeles, and that they wanted Jerkins to join them.

“He was this guy who went around Hollywood, and around the industry, saying his dream was to work with me,” explains Jackson.

“I was at Carol Bayer Sager’s house, who is this great songwriter who has won several Academy Awards for her songwriting, and she said: ‘There’s a guy you should work with… His name is Rodney Jerkins. He’s been crying to me, begging to meet you. Why don’t you pick up the phone and say hi to him?’”

Jerkins recalls that in the end, Bayer Sager made the call:

“Carole called me and said that she was gonna have a writing session at her house with Michael Jackson and she wanted me to do a track. I was like, are you serious?”

And so the producer immediately booked a flight from New Jersey to Los Angeles and headed straight to Bayer Sager’s home.

“I went over there and it was just an amazing experience. I was in awe,” recalls Jerkins.

“I’ve always heard people that worked with him say, ‘When you meet Michael, it’s crazy!’ But I’m the type of guy who’s like nah, I’ma be okay, I’ma be cool. It’s just another artist. And then once I got there, and was in his presence, I was like whoa, this is crazy!”

Jerkins explains that not seeing Jackson at the industry events or private parties added to his untouchable mystique, but that once the pair got in the studio together a friendship was born:

“Once I got in the studio, and once he felt comfortable with me, and I felt comfortable with him, it was like the best thing ever. And we just built a really solid friendship throughout the years. And we stayed working and stayed in contact and he was just a great guy.”

But the collaborative relationship between Jackson and Jerkins almost didn’t come to fruition.

Jackson recalls that when he met Jerkins at Carole Bayer Sager’s home in early 1999, Jerkins asked Jackson if he could have two weeks to work on a collection of ideas to present to him:

“He came over that day and he said, ‘Please, my dream is to work with you. Will you give me two weeks and I’ll see what I can come up with.”

Two weeks later, Jackson met with Jerkins for a second time, and Jerkins played him the collection of tracks he’d come up with.

“The day that Rodney met with Michael, he played him all these records,” recalls Cory Rooney – a songwriter and producer who was working as the Senior Vice President of Sony Music at the time.

“Michael was like, ‘It’s not that the guy’s not talented, but everything he plays me sounds typical. Like Brandy and Monica,’ whom Rodney had worked with previously.”

According to Rooney, the pop star didn’t want to fit in with the current industry sound of the time. Jackson wanted to pioneer his own new sound.

“And Michael just said, ‘I don’t wanna sound like Brandy and Monica. I need a new Michael sound. Big energy.’ And this is after Rodney played him twenty records.”

At this point, Jackson wasn’t sure whether Jerkins was the right man for the job.

“So Michael came back to me and said, ‘I don’t know if he’s the guy.’ And I was so sure that Rodney Jerkins was the most rhythmic, hard-hitting sound out there in terms of producers – other than Teddy Riley who was that at one point for Michael – I just said this is the guy. Rodney’s the guy.”

Rooney’s belief that Jerkins could essentially be Jackson’s ‘new Teddy Riley’ was no coincidence given that Jerkins grew up idolising Riley’s production style.

“Teddy Riley was the producer that changed my life,” recalls Jerkins.

“I remember being eleven years old and trying to emulate Teddy Riley. He was everything. He was everything to my career. Then having the opportunity to meet him at fourteen years old, and to play my music for him, and him telling me that I was good enough to make it was the inspiration and extra encouragement that I needed to know that this was real; that I wasn’t just some kid in a basement trying to make beats, but actually someone who could have a career.”

Riley went on to mentor Jerkins for years, and was reportedly responsible for Jerkins’ first encounter with the King of Pop at age sixteen, five years before he got the chance to work with Jackson.

And so despite his reservations, based on Rooney’s strong recommendation that Jerkins could deliver, Jackson remained open-minded about working with the producer.

“So Michael said, ‘I’ll tell you what, Cory. Do you think Rodney would mind me telling him that he kind of needs to reinvent himself for me?’” recalls Rooney.

“I said of course Rodney wouldn’t mind. I said I’ll have the conversation with Rodney, then you can have the conversation with Rodney. So I went, on my own, and talked to Rodney and told him what Michael felt.”

Following Rooney’s heart-to-heart conversation with Jerkins, the producer met again with Jackson. Rooney recalls:

“At that point, Michael set up the meeting and said to Rodney, ‘I want you to go to your studio and I want you to take every instrument, and every sound that you use, and throw it away. And I want you to come up with some new sounds. Even if it means you’ve gotta bang on tables and hit bottles together and make new sounds. Do whatever you’ve gotta do to come up with new sounds and use those new sounds to create rhythmic big energy for me.’ Michael put the challenge to Rodney, and Rodney accepted.”

“I remember having the guys go back in and create more innovative sounds,” recalls Jackson.

“A lot of the sounds aren’t sounds from keyboards. We go out and make our own sounds. We hit on things, we beat on things. They are pretty much programmed into the machines. So nobody can duplicate what we do. We make them with our own hands, we find things and we create things. And that’s the most important thing, to be a pioneer. To be an innovator.”

“He changed my whole perception of what creativity in a song was about,” explains Jerkins.

“I used to think making a song was about just sitting at the piano and writing progressions and melodies. I’ll never forget this crazy story. Michael called me and says, ‘Why can’t we create new sounds?’ I said, what do you mean? He was like, ‘Someone created the drum, right? Someone created a piano. Why can’t we create the next instrument?’ Now you gotta think about this. This is a guy – forty years old – who has literally done everything that you can think of, but is still hungry enough to say ‘I wanna create an instrument.’ It’s crazy.”

Jerkins recalls that following Jackson’s orders, he went out and began sampling sounds to use in their records:

“I went to a local junkyard and I started gathering trash cans and different things, and I began to hit on them to try to find sounds. Michael told me to. Michael said, ‘Go out in the field.’ That was his term. He used to say, ‘Go out in the field and get sounds. Don’t do it like everybody else and go to a store and buy equipment. Go out in the field and get sounds.’ So I went out in the field and got sounds.”

After building a library of junkyard sounds to use in the tracks Jerkins, his brother Fred, and songwriter LaShawn Daniels – who form the Darkchild production team – started the writing process.

But they were unsure of exactly how to write for Jackson, especially since he hadn’t been thrilled with the first batch of songs.

Cory Rooney recalls:

“Rodney called me and said, ‘Cory, we’re still confused. We don’t know what to write about. We don’t know what to do.”

At the time, Rooney had just written a song for Jackson called “She Was Loving Me,” which Jackson had flown to New York to record with Rooney at the Hit Factory.

Above: Invincible outtake “She Was Loving Me” by Michael Jackson

Upon his return to LA, Rooney says that Jackson played the track for Jerkins and his team.

“Rodney said, ‘Cory… he loves your song. All he keeps playing for us is your song. What is it about your song that you think he loves? So I told him I got a little tip from Carole Bayer Sager. She told me that Michael is a storyteller. She said Michael loves to tell stories in his music. If you listen to Billie Jean, it’s a story. If you listen to Thriller, it’s a story. If you listen to Beat It, it’s a story. He loves to tell a tale.” 

The Darkchild production team began working on music for Jackson at an LA studio called Record One, where other Jackson collaborators including Brad Buxer, Michael Prince and Dr. Freeze were already working on their own ideas for the pop star.

“Rodney was running his sessions like twenty-four hours per day,” remembers Prince.

“They even brought beds in to sleep on. When Rodney would get tired, he would go and lay down and Fred would come in and work on lyrics. When Fred would get tired, he’d go and wake up LaShawn, who would come in and work on some things.”

“Michael would call the studio at two or three o’clock in the morning to just check in and see what we were doing,” recalls Rodney’s brother, Fred Jerkins III.

“He was constantly motivating us to think beyond the scope of our normal imagination with these songs. It was incredible.” 

“I used to sleep in the studio,” recalls Rodney.

“At every studio that I worked, I would make sure that they had a pull-out bed or something brought in for me because I would stay there for weeks at a time.”

Recording engineer Michael Prince recalls that the Darkchild production team worked so hard that the studio engineers couldn’t keep up:

“At some point, I remember the engineers coming to me and saying, ‘We can’t keep doing this. This is killing us!’ And I was like, just tell them. They’re people too! But they hung in there as long as they could.”

Producer Rodney Jerkins says that his work ethic was inspired by Jackson.

“He told me that if I was willing to really work hard, that we could make some magic together, and that’s what I did… I went in the studio and just really locked in and started creating nonstop every day.”

“We were in the studio for maybe a month before Mike came in, and we had all our ideas down. We had our melodies down, everything,” recalls Darkchild songwriter LaShawn Daniels.

“So when Mike finally came in, it was like the President coming in. The place was swept. Security came in, and it was going crazy.”

But it was Jackson’s knowledge of each member of the Darkchild production team that impressed Daniels the most:

“He came into the room and – surprisingly – he knew who each one of us was and what we did in respect to the project! Mike was so in tune with music as a whole that the stuff he told us still blows my mind.” 

In a further attempt to point the Darkchild production team in the right direction when working on songs for Jackson, Cory Rooney suggested that they start simple:

“I told Rodney, let’s start with the rhythm. I said if you’re confused on the rhythm, just start with that four on the floor beat, because that never goes wrong. And just create your rhythms to counter the four on the floor.

With that advice in mind, the Jerkins brothers and LaShawn Daniels wrote a song that they believed was a hit.

“And that became the track for You Rock My World. And the rest is history because LaShawn Daniels and everybody dug in and wrote a story to it.”

Rodney Jerkins explains how “You Rock My World” came to be:

Rock My World came about because I’m a fan of old Michael – like Off The Wall, Thriller, and The Jackson Five.”

Jerkins recalls that while Jackson was demanding new sounds, he felt it was also important to write songs that retained Jackson’s classic sound:

“Michael was like, ‘I want you to go outside and to take a bat and smash it against the side of a car and sample it.’ And I was doing it! He had me at junkyards with DAT recorders. And I was like, that’s all good, I’ll give you that, but you have to do this over here. And Rock My World was actually the first song that we wrote for Michael.”

By the time the demo to “You Rock My World” was ready for Jackson to hear, studio sessions had been shifted from Record One in Los Angeles to the Hit Factory and Sony Studios in New York City.

Rooney recalls that at that time, the Darkchild production team called him and invited him to come down to the studio to take a listen:

“They called me at the Hit Factory and said, ‘Cory, you’ve gotta come over. We think we’ve got it.’ When I walked in and they played me Rock My World, I almost passed out! I thought it was so amazing that I almost passed out. I was really, really blown away.”

Rooney recalls that he took the song to Jackson, so that he could hear the track:

“When I first played it for him he, asked me: ‘Do you love it?’ And I said yeah, yeah, I love it! And he said, ‘Well, I know you wouldn’t have come over here and played it for me if you didn’t like it, but do you love it?’ And I looked him right in his eyes and said Michael, I love it. I love this record. And he said, ‘Okay. I’ve got to be honest with you. I do like it. I don’t know if I love it yet, but I like it, and I’m going to just keep on living with it.’”

Rooney continues:

“If Michael is just a little bit interested in a song, you’re never gonna get him in the studio to record it. And so he lived with it, and showed up at the Sony studios in New York about a week later, with Rodney, and he kind of ran through the record.”

Darkchild songwriter LaShawn Daniels – who was an integral part of writing “You Rock My World” – remembers the moment Jackson came to the studio to work on the track.

“He had Rodney just play the track, and he said, ‘Who’s the guy doing the melodies?’ And it was me!”

Above: Snippet of the “You Rock My World” demo sung by LaShawn Daniels

Daniels continues:

“So I came into the room and Michael is standing there – freakin’ Michael Jackson! – and Mike comes up to me and says, ‘Rodney, play the track.’ And Rodney says, ‘Sure.’ Then Michael says to me, ‘Can you sing the melodies into my ear?’ And I’m like, are you serious? He’s like, ‘Just sing it in my ear.’ So I go right next to him, and I pull towards his ear, and I start singing.”

Daniels recalls that Jackson stopped him, and suggested they make minor change.

“He puts his hand on my shoulder and says, ‘No. Let’s change this part.’ And I’m like, oh, my god! When he asked me to do that, I was done. I couldn’t even continue, and I had to stop. I said, Mike, listen, I appreciate you being so cool, but you can’t be this cool with me. I don’t even know what to do right now. And I can’t concentrate on the melodies because I’m singing to Michael Jackson! And he burst out laughing and just made us comfortable.”

Former Sony executive Cory Rooney recalls that from there, Jackson had Jerkins repeat the track a few more times before recording a scratch vocal to see how he felt about it with his own voice on it.

“He played with it a little bit and sang the first few lines. And then he played it back, listened to it with his voice on it, and said, ‘Okay, now I love it! So let’s go to the top, and I’m gonna kill this record.’ And everybody was so relieved.”

Rooney recalls that Jackson loved the background vocals LaShawn Daniels had recorded, and he wanted to include them on the Darkchild tracks – something that Jackson had also done with songs he recorded with producer Dr. Freeze a year prior.

“Michael said: ‘Man, you’re killing it. I love it! Sounds great.’ He loved LaShawn Daniels’ background vocals so much that he left them on You Rock My World and other songs they worked on together. Michael did the main notes but he left LaShawn in the background.”

Once “You Rock My World” was completed, Jackson challenged his newfound collaborative team to create even greater material.

“Those times with Michael… he taught me to challenge myself,” recalls Daniels.

“When we came up with the Rock My World melodies and everything, it felt great. We knew that was the record. But he came back and he said, ‘Challenge yourself. I’m not saying that this is not it, but can you beat it? If you can beat it, you’ve only touched greatness even more!’”

To guarantee that their focus would be on his project – and his project only – Jackson reportedly paid Rodney Jerkins the Darkchild production team not to work with anyone but him.

“He told me he wanted me to camp out and work on his album,” recalls Jerkins.

“I was slated to do about seven or eight artists… and Michael said, ‘No, no, no. You have to really focus on my project. I need you to really focus on this.’ And I was like yeah, but I got bills to pay. And he said, ‘I’ll take care of those. Tell me what they’re gonna pay you and how many songs and I’ll take care of it.’ So I ended up not working with all those different artists and just focusing on Michael.”

As production on the album progressed, the Darkchild team returned to New Jersey to continue working on unique sounds for Jackson, crafting rhythmic tracks from their library of sampled sounds – including sounds from those initial junkyard recordings.

“The process of working with Michael Jackson was so intense because he pushed me to the limit creatively,” explains Jerkins. 

“He loves to create in the same kind of way that I like to create,” Jackson says of Jerkins.

“I pushed Rodney. And pushed, and pushed, and pushed, and pushed him to create. To innovate more. To pioneer more. He’s a real musician. He’s a real musician and he’s very dedicated and he’s really loyal. He has perseverance. I don’t think I’ve seen perseverance like his in anyone. Because you can push him and push him and he doesn’t get angry.”

“Michael would call me at four o’clock in the morning and say, ‘Play me what you got,’” remembers Jerkins.

“I’m like, um, I’m about to go to sleep. But that’s how he was. He was so into the creative zone. On most of the stuff I did with him, the snares were made out of junkyard materials.” 

One of the songs that sprouted from the 1999 Darkchild sessions in New Jersey sessions was “Xscape” – originally penned as “Escape” per an early ASCAP Repertory listing.

Xscape was a record that I actually wrote the hook for myself,” recalls Fred Jerkins III, adding that he even sang the very first demo of the track:

“I don’t do any singing on songs at all. But on that one I actually had to sing the demo first, before it went to LaShawn to do the final demo version. So I actually had to get in the booth and sing it, and then the rest of the song was built around the hook idea.” 

An early demo of “Xscape” was first shown to Jackson during a phone call with Rodney Jerkins.

When Jackson heard what they’d come up with, according to Jerkins, he went crazy:

“He was like, ‘That’s what I’m talking about! That’s what I’m talking about!’ It made him want to dance… Michael, he just loved to dance and would always tell me, ‘Make it funky.’ So musically I kept the promise and he kept the promise melodically, and we made up-tempo songs that made you wanna dance.”

As with Cory Rooney’s “She Was Loving Me” a few months earlier, Jackson was so in love with “Xscape” that he wanted to recording it immediately.

Instead of travelling to New Jersey – where the Darkchild production team was working – Rodney Jerkins had Jackson use a new recording technique designed by EDnet that allows engineers to capture high-quality audio through a phone line.

And so Jackson sang the background vocals – usually the first part of a song Jackson would record – down the phone while Rodney recorded them.

“From that point we would go in and do the complete demo version,” recalls Rodney’s brother, Fred Jerkins III.

“LaShawn was the one who would demo on all of the songs for Michael, and he did a good job of trying to imitate him. We would try and provide the best feel for Michael about how the song should be.”

When the demo was ready, producer Rodney Jerkins collaborated with Jackson on the lyrics before recording the lead vocals. Co-writer of the track, LaShawn Daniels, explains:

“What we did with Michael – because he was a great songwriter – is we had the tracks and we put the rhythm of the melodies down so when he came in he could hear the basic idea of what we wanted to do, but allow him to be a part of the creative process of lyrics and all that type of stuff.”

Allowing the hook to lead the way, the track’s lyrics became a defensive musical exposé in line with previously-released tracks like “Leave Me Alone” and “Scream” – about how the pop star’s privacy is rarely respected, and how details of his private life are often twisted or fabricated when reported on in the media.

Above: Invincible outtake “Xscape” by Michael Jackson

As with all of his music, Jackson was intimately involved with every nuance of “Xscape”.

Over the course of two years, Jackson and Jerkins continued to tinker with the track, adding new sounds and samples while bringing it closer and closer to completion.

“I tell them to develop it, because I’ve got to go on to the next song, or the next thing,” explains Jackson of his collaborative relationship with producers and songwriters.

“They’ll come up with something, working with my] ideas, and they’ll get back to me, and I’ll tell them whether I like it or not. I have done that with pretty much everything that I have done. I am usually there for the concept. I usually cowrite all the pieces that I do.”

“That was our process,” explains Rodney Jerkins.

“That’s the way we worked. We just kept at it until it was ready. We just worked on ideas, added this and that to the mix. Michael was like, ‘Dig deeper! Where’s the sound that’s gonna make you want to listen to it over and over again?’”

Engineer Brian Vibberts recalls working with Jerkins on “Xscape” at Sony Music Studio in New York City during the summer of 1999.

Vibberts, who also worked on Jackson’s HIStory album in 1995 and music for his Ghosts film in 1996, claims that Jackson was physically present at the studio far less during the Invincible sessions when compared to previous projects.

“Rodney would send the song to Michael, then talk to him on the phone. Michael would give him input on the song and request the changes that he wanted made. Then we would do those changes.”

One of the changes that was made to the original Darkchild demo was the addition of a cinematic spoken intro.

“He called them vignettes,” says Rodney Jerkins. “I call them interludes.”

“It was a really fun process, working on that project,” adds Rodney’s brother, Fred.

“We would actually sit in the studio in LA and act out the whole Xscape concept, the intro, just acting crazy and making video footage and all that kind of stuff. Almost like our video concept of the song.”

Another interesting addition to “Xscape,” which Jackson brought to the table, is the Edward G. Robinson line from the 1931 film Little Caesar: “You want me? You’re going to have to come and get me!”

Fifteen years prior, the same line was lifted from the film and sampled in an unreleased version of Jackson’s demo for a song called “Al Capone,” as outlined in the Blue Gangsta chapter of my book Michael Jackson: Songs & Stories From The Vault.

In “Xscape,” however, Jackson himself speaks the famous line, shortening it to: “Want me? Come and get me!” ‘

Of the decision to include the Little Caesar line, producer Rodney Jerkins says: “It was MJ’s idea.”

By the middle of the year 2000, the Jackson’s new album seemed to be nearing completion.

Since he started working on it in 1998, Jackson had recorded more than a dozen tracks including “She Was Loving Me,” “You Rock My World,” “Xscape” and “We’ve Had Enough” – the latter of which spawned from the early 1999 writing session Jerkins attended at Carole Bayer Sager’s home in LA.

Above: Invincible outtake “We’ve Had Enough” by Michael Jackson

With enough tracks in the bag to finish the album, the mixing process began.

To assist Jackson’s team with mixing the album, producer Rodney Jerkins brought an engineer named Stuart Brawley on board.

“Michael’s longtime engineer of many years, Bruce Swedien, was looking for someone to come on board to help mix what we all thought at that time was a complete record,” recalls Brawley.

“It was supposed to be a month-long mixing process in Los Angeles and I just jumped at the opportunity to be able to work with both Michael and Bruce.”

But what was supposed to be just one month of mixing ended up being much more.

“It turned into a thirteen-month project because as we were mixing the record that we thought was going to become Invincible, Michael decided, in the mixing process, that he wanted to start writing all new songs,” recalls Brawley.

“He was like, ‘Let’s start from scratch… I think we can beat everything we did,’” recalls Rodney Jerkins of Jackson’s decision to start afresh by writing new songs.

“That was his perfectionist side. I was like man, we have been working for a year, are we going to scrap everything? But it showed how hard he goes.”

“It just turned into an amazing year of watching him create music,” recalls engineer Stuart Brawley. “We ended up with a completely different record at the end of it.”

While some of the early material – including “You Rock My World” – would ultimately make the cut, the majority of what became the Invincible album was recorded between 2000 and 2001.

During this period, the Jerkins brothers and LaShawn Daniels continued working on new songs, while Jackson’s longtime producer Teddy Riley also joined the team.

At the time, Riley was working out of a studio that was built inside a bus.

Upon joining the project, Riley would park his bus outside whichever studio Jackson was working in, and and the pop star would bounce back and forth between Riley and Rodney Jerkins.

Meanwhile, arranger Brad Buxer and engineer Michael Prince worked out of makeshift studios set up in local hotel rooms.

Towards the end of the project, Riley moved his sessions to Virginia – where he had a recording studio – to finish the tracks he was working on.

Recording engineer Stuart Brawley – who was instrumental in recording and editing some of the newer songs, like “Threatened” – recalls what it was like to work with Jackson:

“It was amazing just to have him on the other side of the glass when we were recording his vocals. It literally was that ‘pinch me’ moment, and I don’t get those. He was just one of a kind. There was no one else like him.”

“Being in the studio and just having the a cappella of Michael’s vocals and listening to them, you start to really understand how great he really was,” explains Rodney Jerkins of Jackson’s performance on “Xscape.”

“The way he crafted his backgrounds, the approach of his lead vocals, and how passionate he was. You can hear it. You can hear his foot [stomping] in the booth when he’s singing, and his fingers snapping.”

During the second phase of the Invincible album’s production – between 2000 and 2001 – Jackson and Jerkins continued to work on “Xscape.”

“Wait until the world hears Xscape,” Jerkins recalls Jackson saying to him.

“MJ loved everything about it. The energy, the lyrics. It’s kind of a prophetic song. Listen to the bridge. MJ says, ‘When I go, this problem world won’t bother me no more.’ It’s powerful.”

“The thing about Michael is he will work on a song for years,” adds Jerkins.

“We never stopped working on the song Xscape.”

“A perfectionist has to take his time,” explains Jackson.

“He shapes and he molds and he sculpts that thing until it’s perfect. He can’t let it go before he’s satisfied; he can’t… If it’s not right, you throw it away and you do it over. You work that thing till it’s just right. When it’s as perfect as you can make it, you put it out there. Really, you’ve got to get it to where it’s just right; that’s the secret. That’s the difference between a number thirty record and a number one record that stays at number one for weeks. It’s got to be good. If it is, it stays up there and the whole world wonders when it’s going to come down.”

Jackson continues:

“I’ve had musicians who really get angry with me because I’ll make them do something literally several hundred to a thousand times till it’s what I want it to be,” says Jackson. “But then afterwards, they call me back on the phone and they’ll apologise and say, ‘You were absolutely right. I’ve never played better. I’ve [never] done better work. I outdid myself.’ And I say, ‘That’s the way it should be, because you’ve immortalised yourself. This is here forever. It’s a time capsule.’ It’s like Michelangelo’s work. It’s like the Sistine Chapel. It’s here forever. Everything we do should be that way.”

After three years of work, the Invincible album was released on October 30, 2001.

Above: Television commercial for the Invincible album

The album contained 16 songs. But to the surprise of some who worked on the project, “Xscape” was not one of them.

“There’s stuff we didn’t put on the album that I wish was on the album,” explains Jerkins, whose unreleased material includes “Get Your Weight Off Me” and “We’ve Had Enough” – the latter of which was later released by Sony on a box set called The Ultimate Collection in 2004.

A number of tracks Jackson recorded with Brad Buxer and Michael Prince also missed the cut, including “The Way You Love Me,” which was also released on The Ultimate Collection box set.

Several tracks Jackson worked on with producer Teddy Riley did make the cut. But one, called “Shout,” did not.

Above: Invincible album outtake “Shout” by Michael Jackson

“Shout” was slated to be on the album, but was replaced at the last minute by a track Jacksons’s manager, John McClain, brought brought to the table called “You Are My Life” – co-written by McClain with Kenneth ‘Babyface’ Edmonds and Carole Bayer Sager.

“I really want people to hear some of the stuff we did together which never made the cut,” laments producer Rodney Jerkins.

“There’s a whole lot of stuff just as good – maybe better [than what made the album]. People have got to hear it.”

Despite it not being included, Jackson continued working on “Xscape” with Jerkins.

The producer explains that selecting the tracks for an album isn’t always about which tracks are best in isolation, but which tracks fit together to create a cohesive and organic flow:

“Michael is like no other. He records hundreds… really, hundreds of songs for an album. So what we did [was] we cut it down to 35 of the best tracks and picked from there. [It’s] not always about picking the hottest tracks. It’s got to have flow. So there’s a good album’s worth of [unreleased] material that could blow your mind. I really hope this stuff comes out because it’s some of his best.”

Engineer Michael Prince recalls a conversation he had with fellow engineer Stuart Brawley about the unreleased track “Xscape” after the Invincible album had been released.

“I was talking to Stuart Brawley on the phone… And I said to Stuart, this song is awesome! And he goes, ‘I know. It’s an amazing song. I really, really wish they would have put that on the album and took something else off. I told Rodney, I told Michael, but they’re not putting it on the album.’ And after I heard it I felt the same way. I really like the song Xscape.”

“I had a conversation with MJ in 2008, and I asked him if he was a fan of the British act Scritti Politti,” adds Prince.

“He said he was. I asked him that because the original version of Xscape has some of the same type of short staccato sounds and sampled percussive sounds that Scritti Politti use in their music. They also used very inventive sequencing, as Michael and Rodney Jerkins did on Xscape.”

“When we originally did Xscape, Mike felt it was some of his best new music,” recalls Rodney Jerkins.

“So I asked him, Michael, how come Xscape is not going on Invincible? And Michael was like, ‘Nah… I don’t want it on this project. I want it on the next project.’ Michael was very clear in telling me that one day that song has to come out… It was one of his favourite songs… It was one of those songs where he specifically said to me, ‘It has to see the light of day one day’… He felt compelled to let the fans hear it. What does it do for a song that Michael really loved to just sit in the vault somewhere?”

And eventually Jackson’s fans did hear it – but not in the way he or Jerkins had hoped.

In late 2002, “Xscape” leaked online.

“The reality is that you get upset when something gets out there that’s not supposed to be out there,” explains Fred Jerkins of his feelings about the leak.

“You want it to come out the way it should, and to give it the best possible chance of doing what it needs to do. But at the same time, as a fan – if you step aside from the songwriter side – you’re excited that you have something out there. And you watch other people get excited.”

Reflecting on their work with Jackson on “Xscape” – and the Invincible project as a whole – the thing that sticks with Darkchild teammates Rodney Jerkins and LaShawn Daniels more than anything is his desire to be great.

“Michael embodied greatness in everything that he did,” says Jerkins.

“Not just as an artist, but as a humanitarian and as a person. That was his life. He was all about being great and he preached it all the time.” 

Since he was a teenager, Jackson’s artistic philosophy has been to ‘study the greats and become greater,’ and for the duration of his four-decade career, that pursuit of greatness never faded.

“Michael would be in the lounge watching footage on Jackie Wilson, James Brown and Charlie Chaplin,” recalls Jerkins.

“And I walk in and I say, what are you doing? And he said, ‘I’m studying.’ Now mind you, he had all of the Grammys, millions and millions of albums sold, and I said why are you studying? And he said, ‘You never stop studying the greats.’ And he was about 40 years old when we were working together. That was a serious, serious lesson for me as an up-and-coming person to hear him say that, and to witness that.”

“Even if you’re sweeping floors or painting ceilings,” explains Jackson, “do it better than anybody in the world. No matter what it is that you do, be the best at it.”

In 2013, President of Epic Records at the time, L.A. Reid, recruited several of A-list producers to reimagine 8 unreleased songs from Jackson’s vault.

Rodney Jerkins was one of those producers.

Initially Jerkins was hesitant to be involved, and resisted producing his remix until he had heard the material other producers were contributing.

“I care,” explains Jerkins.

“Michael was a friend of mine. I had a good relationship with him. He knew my family and I knew his family. So I would tell L.A. I’m not doing a song until I hear the rest of the album… I wanted to make sure that everything stood up to what Michael would have wanted. That was important to me.”

Eventually, when he felt the project was worthy of Jackson’s dedication to greatness, Jerkins agreed to participate.

The song he produced was “Xscape”.

Above: Rodney Jerkins’ remix of “Xscape” from the Xscape album

On May 9, 2014, five years after Jackson’s death, “Xscape” was officially released by Epic Records on an album of the same name.

“It’s about being great. It’s about being groundbreaking. If it can’t be great, we shouldn’t be doing it,” explains Epic boss L.A. Reid of his philosophy when putting the album together, adding:

“Michael Jackson tapped us on the shoulder and said would you just do me one small favour and remind people that I’m the greatest.”


Damien Shields is the author of the book Michael Jackson: Songs & Stories From The Vault examining the King of Pop’s creative process, and the producer of the podcast The Genesis of Thriller which takes you inside the recording studio as Jackson and his team create the biggest selling album in music history.
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‘Blue Gangsta’ and Michael Jackson’s Fascination with America’s 20th Century Underbelly

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Below is a chapter from my book Michael Jackson: Songs & Stories From The Vault, revised for this article. The full book is available via Amazon and iBooks.
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Released in 1987 as part of the Bad album, “Smooth Criminal” is the culmination of years of Michael Jackson toying with the idea of doing a song based on early 20th-century organised crime in America.

The King of Pop’s ongoing fascination with the mobsters and gangsters of the criminal underworld is well-documented, and extends beyond his songs to his film projects.

For example, the “Smooth Criminal” short film borrows from the narrative of the life of Jack ‘Legs’ Diamond, an Irish-American gangster based out of Philadelphia and New York City during the prohibition era.

During the final years of his life, Jackson had reportedly wanted to direct a full-length feature film based on the concept, even inviting longtime collaborative partner Kenny Ortega to join him as co-director on the project. 

The song “Smooth Criminal” itself evolved from Jackson demo of the same era called “Al Capone,” named after the infamous Chicago-based gangster figure.

Above: “Al Capone” by Michael Jackson

An unreleased version of Jackson’s “Al Capone” demo took inspiration from yet another gangster tale of the same era – the William R. Burnett-written book and subsequent 1931 film adaptation Little Caesar, which tells the story of a hoodlum who ascends the ranks of organised crime in Chicago until he reaches its upper echelons.

Directed by Mervyn LeRoy, and starring Edward G. Robinson in his breakout role as Caesar Enrico “Rico” Bandello (a.k.a. ‘Little Caesar’), the film includes the famous scene in which a defiant Rico shouts: “You want me? You’re going to have to come and get me!”

Producer and musician John Barnes, who helped Jackson bring “Al Capone” to fruition, sampled Rico’s words in the unreleased version of the track.

Together with producer and engineer Bill Bottrell, Barnes also sampled a series of gunshot sounds, as well as vocals from various James Brown songs.

The samples were pieced together and edited to create a virtual gangster-inspired duet between the King of Pop and the Godfather of Soul – something that Barnes says Jackson absolutely loved.

An even earlier song called “Chicago 1945” – which Jackson worked on during the Victory era with Toto band member Steve Porcaro – also makes reference to Al Capone in its lyrics.

And so when songwriter and producer Dr. Freeze came to Jackson with a demo called “Blue Gangsta,” the pop star was excited about the idea of resurrecting his fascination with gangster themes in his music.

Written by Freeze and recorded by Jackson during the very early Invincible sessions, “Blue Gangsta” originates from the same era as “Break of Dawn” and “A Place With No Name.”

All three songs were recorded by Jackson during his time collaborating with Freeze and engineer CJ deVillar at the Record Plant in 1998.

“I introduced him to many songs,” explains Freeze, who also worked with Jackson on a number of tracks that were never completed, including one called “Jungle.”

For “Blue Gangsta,” Freeze says:

“I wanted to make a new ‘Smooth Criminal.’ Something more modern and rooted in the 2000s. That was the idea.”

Above: Michael Jackson’s short film for “Smooth Criminal”

Freeze composed the original “Blue Gangsta” demo on his own – including the background vocals, synthesisers and horns – before presenting it to Jackson.

Then, once Jackson had given the demo his tick of approval, the pop star brought in some of the industry’s best session musicians to play on the track. 

Brad Buxer – who did everything from digital edits to arrangements on all of Jackson’s albums from Dangerous in 1991 to The Ultimate Collection in 2004 – plays keyboards on the song.

Greg Phillinganes – who contributed his talents to each major studio album Jackson participated in between 1978 and 1997 (with the exception of Victory in 1984) – plays the Minimoog.

And legendary orchestrator Jerry Hey – who did the horn arrangements on everything Jackson did from 1978 to 1997 – fittingly leads the horn section on “Blue Gangsta.”

“The song was just awesome,” recalls engineer Michael Prince of “Blue Gangsta.”

Prince, along with arranger Brad Buxer, spent several years working on music with Jackson and Freeze.

“Michael obviously loved ‘Blue Gangsta’ because to bring in some of those musicians is very expensive,” says Prince.

“I mean, you’ve got Jerry Hey doing the horn arrangement – it’s no wonder the brass on ‘Blue Gangsta’ was so incredible.”

“Michael was the world’s biggest perfectionist,” says Buxer.

“Not only with music, but with sound. How loud it is. How it affects you. Where it hits your ear. What frequencies. A million things. So you’re not just talking about songs or mixing – you’re talking about arrangement, amplitude, and the instruments selected for the production.”

Talented percussionist Eric Anest – who played on a number of Jackson’s demos in the mid-to-late 90s, including “Beautiful Girl,” “The Way You Love Me” and “In The Back,” – was also given a copy of “Blue Gangsta” to see what he could bring to the table.

“Eric did wonderful percussion work,” recalls Buxer.

“Industrial types of percussion,” adds Prince, explaining that Jackson would never settle on an idea, sound or musician until he’d explored all the available options.

“Eric, Paulinho Da Costa or even Steve Porcaro might get the track for a day or two, and then send it back to us with forty tracks of what they’d added. Then we’d have to figure out what we were keeping, and what we weren’t. Sometimes we scratched it all.”

As previously noted by engineer Michael Prince, the caliber of session musicians used by Jackson on “Blue Gangsta” was a reflection of his love for the song. They weren’t just tinkering about the studio.

The same applies to the team of engineers who worked on it.

“Sonically, we always try to make sure we have pristine, detailed sounds,” explains Jackson, adding that he uses, “the best engineers and the best technicians available.”

And he wasn’t kidding.

Jackson recorded his lead vocals on the track were recorded by an all-star cast of engineers including CJ deVillar, Jeff Burns and Humberto Gatica.

Gatica in particular is one of the most acclaimed engineers in the history of modern music, having not only worked on Jackson’s Thriller, Bad, HIStory, and Invincible albums, but also on tracks with Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, Andrea Bocelli, Barbra Streisand and many others.

An early version of Jackson’s 1998 recording of “Blue Gangsta”

Engineer and musician, CJ deVillar, believes that it’s possible that Jackson was at the peak of his vocal powers during the “Blue Gangsta” recording sessions.

“He may have been in his prime at that time,” says deVillar.

“Michael was forty years old when he recorded ‘Blue Gangsta.’ His mental attitude combined with his physicality was at its height, in my opinion. The calisthenics he was pulling off and the way he worked the microphone… it was ridiculous!”

DeVillar continues:

“When I was in that chair recording him I felt totally educated. And usually I’m running it. I’m producing it. But I felt totally educated when recording him. The responsibility was enormous to me.”

“Working with Michael Jackson was amazing,” recalls engineer Jeff Burns of the recording sessions.

“He really is an American treasure and a once-in-a-lifetime talent. The first day I met him, we were recording his vocals. I was running the recorder for him that day and was a little bit nervous to do punch-ins on his vocals. I had worked with a few singers where I did lots of ‘punches’ on their vocal tracks to correct timing or pitch problems. Anyway, I was amazed when Michael started singing that his voice was in perfect pitch and was just pure and magical. I didn’t have to do any punches on his vocal – he sang it perfect all the way down.”

“His tone is insane,” adds deVillar.

“Insane! It would be impossible to not be able to mix his vocal correctly. And Michael was even good with his plosives; when you breathe and blow air on the microphone. Those sizzles, you know, they f*ck up a microphone. But Michael was in complete control of those things. Most singers are nowhere near his vicinity. Michael understood the process so well that when he would hear himself in playback in the studio over the years, he found a way to get rid of those problems. Because when you go from the vocal booth back to the control room and listen, it’s a different dynamic. The microphone sensitivity is different depending on how you hit it, and of course Michael knew that. So I never heard a plosive or sizzles that were over the top.”

DeVillar continues:

“By the time he recorded ‘Blue Gangsta’ you’re seeing thirty years of a genius molding his vocal sound to fit the records. There’s the youth and power in the voice, but then there’s the smarts. Michael had them both going on and I think they really peaked at that point when we were recording him. The smarts, the experience, and the power just married and it was incredible. I was just beside myself.”

While Jackson recorded his leads, Freeze completed his own vocals for the choruses and background harmonies. 

Singing background vocals on the songs he writes and produces is Freeze’s signature, and he did it on all of the songs he recorded with Jackson, including “Break of Dawn” and “A Place With No Name.”

“Freeze would stack all his own backgrounds first,” explains engineer Michael Prince.

“And then Michael would come in and go: ‘That sounds perfect.’ Then he would sing one note of each of the harmonies so that there was a little bit of him on there too.”

From there, Jackson took a copy of “Blue Gangsta” home to study – to find areas that, in his artistic opinion, required improvement.

“It was incremental work,” recalls Freeze.

“He listened to the different mixes and changed some details around here or there. He was in full creative control.”

Jackson explains that when he listens to a work-in-progress copy of a song, his ears instantly identify everything that is missing.

“When you hear the playback, you think of everything that should be there that’s not there,” explains Jackson. “You’re hearing everything [in your head]. You wanna scream because you’re not hearing it [on the playback].”

Freeze recalls that when Jackson identified the missing pieces, they were added:

“When he returned [to the studio], changes were made and ideas were proposed. He listened attentively… Ultimately, all decisions were his. He was the boss. He was open to any criticism or suggestions beneficial to the song.”

Over time, several embellishments were made to the original recording.

For example, on March 6, 1999, Jackson wanted some very specific percussion sounds added to the track.

His instructions were so specific that Jackson had to phone Brad Buxer and Michael Prince at the Record One recording studio and have the call patched into Pro Tools in order to get down exactly what he was hearing in his head. 

“We set it up so that Michael could just call and record straight into Pro Tools,” explains Prince, “so he wouldn’t have to carry a tape recorder around with him all the time to capture his ideas.”

With Jackson on the line, Buxer and Prince opened up the “Blue Gangsta” Pro Tools session and played the track.

Then Jackson, over the phone, proceeded to orally dictate the precise percussion sounds he was hearing in his head by beatboxing them over the track.

“That’s how we would get it in the actual session, in the exact spot MJ wanted it, with the exact timing he wanted,” explains Prince, who recorded the call while Buxer communicated back and forth with Jackson amidst his private beatbox master class.

Buxer: “Killer! Killer!” (to Jackson as he orally dictates the percussion)

Jackson: “You know what I mean, Brad?” 

Buxer: “Yes, Michael.”

Jackson: “Are you hearing how I’m doing it?” 

Buxer: “Yeah. It’s killer! Killer. We got it!”

The very next day, Jackson had a fleeting Spanish guitar sound in “Blue Gangsta” replaced with the country-and-western whistle sound made famous in the theme from the 1966 Sergio Leone film The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, which was composed by Ennio Morricone.

Above: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly theme song.

Jackson had previously used the sample in live renditions of “Dangerous” – a performance which also includes gunshot sounds as well as the “You’ve been hit by, you’ve be struck by” line from 1987’s  studio version of “Smooth Criminal.”

“As I said, I wanted to make a new Smooth Criminal,” reiterates Freeze of “Blue Gangsta.”

“It was our objective – the new Smooth Criminal.”

Gunshots, whistles and beatbox percussion weren’t the most obscure sounds that Jackson experimented with in his music.

“Michael used to create sounds and put it in a record,” remembers Freeze.

“He’d thrown an egg on the floor and we’d record that… He would let me hear music from Africa, Japan, and Korea, and he would study this kind of stuff. He would really school me with that.”

Jackson explains that he’s inspired by music from every corner of the globe.

“I’ve been influenced by cultural music from all over the world. I’ve studied all types of music, from Africa to India to China to Japan. Music is music and it’s all beautiful. I’ve been influenced by all of those different cultures.”

After adding the whistle, Jackson also had the second half of the bridge extended so that it crescendoed with greater effect, allowing Freeze’s chorus vocals to slowly creep back in from underneath Jackson’s post-bridge vocal arrangement.

And after that, the song was shelved, remaining unreleased in Jackson’s vault for many years.

Then, in December 2006, two songs produced by American rap artist Tempamental emerged online – one called “Gangsta” and another called “No Friend Of Mine” – both of which were built around Jackson’s then-unreleased track “Blue Gangsta”.

The songs included rap verses from Tempamental, with “No Friend Of Mine” also featuring a verse by Pras of The Fugees.

This was the public’s first time hearing “Blue Gangsta,” albeit in a slightly abstract, reimagined way.

Tempamental’s “Gangsta” remix stays relatively true to Jackson’s arrangement, while “No Friend Of Mine” – the more popular of the two thanks to the highly publicised Pras feature and the song’s high-quality release via Myspace – rearranges the original track, repurposing Jackson’s first verse as the bridge.

Above: Tempamental’s “No Friend Of Mine” remake of “Blue Gangsta” featuring Pras

Shortly after they appeared online, Jackson’s then manager, Raymone Bain, commented that Jackson had not released any new music, indicating that the pop star was not directly involved with either of the Tempamental tracks.

“When I heard this remix, I could not believe it,” Dr. Freeze recalls.

“Many people called me because of it. I don’t understand what happened. The concerning thing is that I don’t even know who released the song… Why did they do that? Where did this rap originate? In fact, we knew nothing about it – neither me nor Michael. We really don’t understand where this leak came from.”

“‘No Friend Of Mine’ is not the name of the song,” adds Freeze. “It’s just the chorus that contains these few words. ‘What you gonna do? You ain’t no friend of mine,’ was just the chorus. The real title is ‘Blue Gangsta.’ This highlights the ignorance of people who are causing the leaks on the Internet. They take the song and put it online without knowing its origin. The song was not presented to the public [the way it should have been]. A guy has just stolen the song, added a rap, and swung it on the internet. I was not even credited. It just landed here without any logical explanation.”

Four years later, in late 2010 – 18 months after Jackson’s death – the latest version of “Blue Gangsta” leaked online.

Four years later, on May 9, 2014, an earlier version of the original track was posthumously released by Epic Records as part of the Xscape album, along with a remix produced by Timbaland.

Above: Timbaland’s remix of “Blue Gangsta”

Engineer Michael Prince insists that the record label’s decision to release the more primitive ‘original’ version – lacking all the changes Jackson went on to make – doesn’t align with the pop star’s artistic vision for the song.

“Michael was involved in every nuance of every sound on the record,” explains Michael Prince, “from the hi-hat to the snare to the sticks. If those sounds are removed from the track, it immediately takes a step away from his vision.”

“He’s totally consistent,” adds arranger Brad Buxer.

“He’ll never say one day, ‘Take this part out,’ and then the next day [ask], ‘Where is that part?’ He’ll never do that. He’s totally consistent. So all you’ve got to do is be on your toes and you’ll have a blast working with him. I’ve worked with him for a long time and it’s been the most wonderful experience.”

Producer Dr. Freeze reflects on working with Jackson:

“He was simply the most wonderful person with whom you could ever dream of working… From dusk till dawn, he created sounds, melodies, and harmonies… He could do everything himself. Michael was truly a living instrument.”

“His artistry and inspiration was something you could feel in the air when he walked in the room,” recalls engineer Jeff Burns. “He really demanded the best work out of everyone around him, and that has impacted me to this day.”

“He not only taught me how to create songs correctly, but also gave me advice on the music industry as a whole,” adds Freeze.

“He was an absolute genius. I was fortunate to have learned from one of the greatest entertainers of all time. I try to apply his advice to the projects I undertake today. I try to keep the artistic spirit of Michael Jackson alive. It’s like I graduated from the university of Michael Jackson. There are not enough words to describe what I learned from the King of Pop.”


Damien Shields is the author of the book Michael Jackson: Songs & Stories From The Vault examining the King of Pop’s creative process, and the producer of the podcast The Genesis of Thriller which takes you inside the recording studio as Jackson and his team create the biggest selling album in music history.
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Michael Jackson Meets America in Invincible Album Outtake ‘A Place With No Name’

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Below is a chapter from my book Michael Jackson: Songs & Stories From The Vault, revised for this article. The full book is available via Amazon and iBooks.
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On May 20, 1997, Epic Records, released Blood on the Dance Floor: HIStory in the Mix – a compilation album including five new songs by Michael Jackson and eight remixes of tracks taken from his 1995 album, HIStory.

While some of the new songs are arguably among the best of Jackson’s illustrious career, only three of them had never been heard at the time of Blood on the Dance Floor’s release, leaving fans hungry for more new music from the pop star.

And so in 1998, Jackson turned his attention towards his next full-length album, returning to the recording studio to work on ideas with his team of trusted collaborators. 

As was customary when recording a new album, Jackson also invited a number of new personnel into the fold with whom he had not yet worked, to see what they could bring to the table.

The newest member of Jackson’s team was singer, songwriter, and producer Elliot Straite, who goes by the name Dr. Freeze in the music industry.

Prior to working with Jackson, Freeze was best known for his New Jack Swing style production, and for having co-written the 1991 hit “I Wanna Sex You Up” for boy band Color Me Badd, and “Poison” for Bell Biv DeVoe.

In 1998, Freeze had been working on an album with one of his collaborative partners. But unfortunately, the album never saw the light of day.

“After completing the album, things did not go as planned and we had to cancel the project,” Freeze recalls in a 2011 interview with MJFrance.

At the time, Freeze was being managed by record executive John McClain.

Disappointed that his prior project had failed, Freeze recalls that he received some news from McClain that changed his life forever:

“I was very upset. And then John McClain said, ‘Don’t worry, Freeze. I have another project for you. You’ll be in business with Michael.’ I said, ‘Michael who?’ And he said, ‘Michael Jackson!’”

At first, Freeze thought McClain was crazy, not believing that Michael Jackson would actually want to work with him.

But then, Jackson called Freeze, telling the producer that he was returning to the studio to record another album, and he wanted Freeze to join him.

The collaboration was possible for Freeze because McClain was also managing Jackson at the time. And soon after their initial phone call, Freeze began preparing a collection of songs to present to Jackson.

When the songs were ready, the pair got to work on the tracks Jackson liked best.

“I introduced him to many songs,” recalls Freeze.

“The main songs on which we worked were ‘Break Of Dawn,’ ‘A Place With No Name,’ and ‘Blue Gangsta.’ These three songs were our priorities. He adored them.”

Though already an accomplished artist in his own right, and fully capable of holding his own in a recording studio, Freeze was intimidated during his first studio session with Jackson.

“It was pretty scary for me,” recalls Freeze.

“I felt like I was back in primary school, and not knowing anything about production. With Michael, I relearned everything. The other producers and I were [like] students facing a teacher. With Michael, it was as if we knew nothing [about] the business. We had to start over and relearn everything. He taught us to do everything the best way possible. Michael was a perfectionist… I was very nervous. Very nervous, but very honored. He knew all about the music industry; everything about everything. Nothing was foreign to him, and he taught me a lot.”

“Michael and I, we have a knack for melody,” Freeze continues.

“So every time I proposed something, it was easy for him to study the song because it was as if he already knew it. I gave him some songs that he adored. He cherished them… I did all the music, and he only had to learn the lyrics.”

For “A Place With No Name,” Freeze envisioned a hypnotic song themed around escapism.

“[It’s] a song where you just close your eyes to find yourself instantly transported into a wonderful world,” explains Freeze.

“This song is very cinematic. It would have been a perfect song for a movie like Avatar, because it reveals to us a wonderful world where people are different, but happy. This song is like an escape from everyday life. [It] was inspired by ‘A Horse With No Name,’ by the group America. The lyrics of this song are very deep. I wanted to refresh it and make a version for the 2000s.”

“Michael knew the guys from America,” recalls Jackson’s recording engineer, Michael Prince, who worked on the track with Jackson and Freeze.

Jackson also knew America’s longtime manager, Jim Morey, who had co-managed Jackson with Sandy Gallin for a period of time years prior.

“So he called them to ask if it was okay to use the sample from ‘A Horse With No Name,’ and they said yes,” explains Prince.

“I know from my personal time with Michael that he was a musical fan of America. He mentioned it to me several times, actually,” recalls Morey.

“Michael himself never actually spoke to Dewey Bunnell, who is the original writer of the song. What happened was a publishing rep from Warner-Chappell Music notified me that there was going to be a use of the song which Michael had changed and needed permission for. Dewey agreed to the changes subject to payment and I negotiated the fee with Michael’s lawyer. It was very simple. No dramas.”

This wasn’t the first time that Jackson had taken someone else’s song and covered or repurposed it for his own project.

Jackson performed a rock version of The Beatles’ 1969 number one hit “Come Together” in his 1988 feature film Moonwalker, later including the track as a B-side on his “Remember The Time” single in 1992, and again on the HIStory album in 1995.

The HIStory album also features a stunning Jackson rendition of “Smile,” originally composed as an instrumental by Charlie Chaplin for his 1936 film Modern Times and later recorded by Nat King Cole in 1954 featuring newly written lyrics by John Turner and Geoffrey Parsons.

Jackson and Freeze’s 1998 reimagining of “A Horse With No Name” also wasn’t the first – or the last – time a Jackson family member had recorded a track inspired by America’s music.

In 1985, Michael’s sister, Janet Jackson, was working on what would become the Control album.

At the time, Janet had recently hired John McClain as her manager, and McClain brought Minneapolis-based production duo Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis on board to help bring the album to fruition.

One of the first tracks Jam and Lewis penned for Control, released in 1986, was “Let’s Wait Awhile,” which bears striking similarities to America’s 1975 hit “Daisy Jane.”

Fifteen years later, Jam & Lewis penned another America-inspired track for Janet, called “Someone to Call My Lover,” released as part of her All For You album in 2001.

“Someone to Call My Lover” directly samples the Dewey Bunnell-written guitar riff from America’s 1972 track “Ventura Highway.”

“I love sampling,” explains Jimmy Jam, who together with Terry Lewis worked on some of the most sample-heavy songs of Michael Jackson’s career, including “History” and “Tabloid Junkie” from Jackson’s 1995 HIStory album.

“I’m not into stealing. I’m not into taking something illegally and using it. But if people get credit for it, [I love] the idea of introducing people to new music through old music, and music I grew up with.”

Dewey Bunnell recalls that “Ventura Highway” was inspired when he, his brother, and their father encountered a flat tire during a family trip many years earlier.

“It was 1963, when I was in seventh grade,” recalls Bunnell. “We got a flat tire, and we’re standing on the side of the road, and I was staring at this highway sign. It said ‘Ventura’ on it, and it just stuck with me.” 

In what appears to be an unimaginable coincidence, thirty-five years after the Bunnell family’s highway flat tire, the lyrics to first lines of “A Place With No Name” go like this:

As I drove across on the highway,
My jeep began to rock.
I didn’t know what to do so I stopped and got out,
And looked down and noticed I got a flat.

“America loved the idea,” says Freeze of he and Jackson’s new version of the 1971 chart-topper.

“They found this update absolutely terrific. They were really excited about [the] project.”

“A Place With No Name” was first worked on at Record Plant Recording Studios in Los Angeles in August of 1998.

At the time, CJ deVillar was the Record Plant’s chief engineer.

DeVillar is not only an engineer, but also an accomplished musician. In the early 1980s, deVillar played bass guitar in a couple of moderately successful bands, one of which was signed to Epic Records in 1984 – the same time that Michael Jackson and The Jacksons were.

As chief engineer at the Record Plant, deVillar was responsible for overseeing the recording sessions of high-profile artists, and was always present to ensure the more technically challenging sessions ran smoothly.

When Jackson first arrived at the Record Plant to begin working on new music with Dr. Freeze in the summer of ’98, Jackson wanted to hire a new engineer to assist with their sessions. DeVillar, who had worked with Jackson before, was assigned the task of helping him find the best man for the job.

To test out their skills, Jackson threw several tasks at the engineers, including asking each of them to compile a vocal using a variety of multi-track machines.

However, unfortunately for the engineers, Jackson’s requests were too complex, with deVillar having to constantly step in and fix a problem, or complete the task on his own.

After trialling three different engineers, it became clear that deVillar himself was far more capable of giving Jackson what he needed than any of the engineers they’d trialled.

“So three or four days later,” recalls deVillar, “Michael looked at me and said, ‘Why don’t you be my engineer?’ And I said, ‘Yeah! I’m ready. Let’s do this. Let’s work.’ And he said, ‘Great!’ And the next day I was working in the studio with MJ.”

The first track deVillar, Jackson and Freeze worked on was “Break of Dawn,” which Freeze had written for Jackson.

Production on “Break of Dawn” moved quickly, with Jackson recording it early on in the Record Plant sessions, before moving on to other songs, including “Blue Gangsta” and “A Place With No Name.” 

During an early collaborative session for “A Place With No Name,” Jackson recorded a scratch vocal for the track with Freeze, deVillar, and another engineer, Eddie Delena, with whom Jackson and deVillar had previously worked a few years earlier.

At one point during the session, Freeze mentioned to deVillar that he wanted to have a ‘real’ (live) bass guitar on the track.

“Michael’s music usually uses a synth bass,” explains deVillar in an interview with The MJCast,

“So the minute I heard [Freeze say he wanted live bass] I was like, ‘I play bass! I’ve played for years. I could drop in and see if you guys like it.’ And they were like, ‘Yeah, bring it down!’” 

DeVillar took Freeze at his word, bringing his bass guitar to the studio.

“I bring it down, and I take it out of the case,” recalls deVillar, “and I sit it in the corner so they can see it. Because I’m not gonna mention it again. I don’t want to be forward and rude [and] I don’t want to be forceful.”

But he didn’t have to be forceful at all. Before long, Freeze had suggested the timing may be right for deVillar to plug in and see what he could come up with.

Jackson, however, was still at the studio, and deVillar insisted that he and Freeze should wait for Jackson to leave the studio before entering the booth to record the bass.

DeVillar’s concern was that he didn’t want to jeopardize his position as an engineer on the project by being caught playing something that Jackson had not requested. And so they waited.

“Michael usually left around the same time every evening,” recalls deVillar, “so we waited for him to leave before I did my thing. The reason I didn’t want Michael to see me play was in case he didn’t understand that I’m also a bass player. I was scared of him seeing me and wondering why his engineer was messing around with his song. I didn’t want to get fired.” 

It was a Tuesday evening on August 25, 1998, when deVillar finally laid down his bass parts at the Record Plant. And it was that same night that his worst nightmare became a reality, with Jackson catching him in the act almost immediately after plugging his bass guitar in.

“I saw Mike appear from the studio lounge through the glass right when I had just started playing,” recalls deVillar, “and I was like, ‘Oh, God!’”

Jackson asked deVillar what he and Freeze were doing, to which deVillar replied sheepishly: “Laying down some bass, Mike.”

Jackson wanted to hear what they’d done so far, and questioned whether anything had been recorded.

“Um, no, Mike,” said deVillar. “I’m just trying to find a vibe.”

Jackson encouraged deVillar to keep playing, and for Freeze to record it all, which is exactly what they did.

Jackson liked what he heard so much that he entered the booth and began rocking out with deVillar.

“I had Michael in my face, and he cranked the speakers up loud,” recalls deVillar.

“I’m hearing his voice, he’s dancing, popping and locking. I’ve got total Michael Jackson immersion. It was like I’d been zapped, like some crazy channeling was going on. It was like some kind of musical blessing that his aura and his power ended up in my space. And that bass line was created. It wouldn’t have happened if he wasn’t there, because he’s standing right in front of me. He’s dancing. He’s making faces. He’s cheering me on. He’s playing air guitar. He’s giving me affirmations while I’m playing, and I’m absorbing these affirmations like he’s a fan in the audience. It was like a live concert, and he was producing me live on stage. He kept saying, ‘Oh, yeah, CJ. That was stinky. Hurt me! Let’s do another.’ His enthusiasm was inspiring me. It was hypnotic, and Freeze wanted the track to be hypnotic.” 

“I dropped in a total of five or six times, with the last one being a solid groove track so we didn’t have to compile a bunch of bass ideas to make the song listenable right away,” explains deVillar.

“After a few loud playbacks, I put together a quick rough mix and made him a DAT tape to listen to. He graciously thanked me again and then went home for the day… I had a lot of fun recording [with] Michael and Freeze. It showed me Michael’s relentless musical energy so vividly… The whole session went down in about thirty minutes, and it gave me a whole new level of respect for Michael.”

The next day, Jackson arrived back at Record Plant Recording Studios ready to record the background vocals and “na nas” with Freeze.

While the majority of the background vocals on the track belong to Freeze, there are a few instances where he and Jackson have recorded in harmony, with their vocals being layered seamlessly together by engineers.

Early versions of “A Place With No Name” ran eight minutes in length and were recorded across forty-eight tracks including conga drums, wind effects, shakers, claps, the guitar sample from America’s original version of the song, and, of course, deVillar’s live bass part.

After about a week of tweaking and editing the rough “A Place With No Name” mix, Jackson was ready to record the lead vocals.

The recording session, engineered by Eddie Delena with the assistance of deVillar, took place at the Record Plant on September 8, 1998.

Dr. Freeze recalls what it was like to witness Jackson in full force, recording vocals in the booth:

“When he came into the studio to record, he stood before the microphone and set fire to the song. As he left, the studio was in ashes and our jaws on the floor. It was really impressive to see.”

“He sang so well that when he was in the booth, magic was coming out,” recalls deVillar.

“I had to hold my emotions, because I’m more of a music guy than an engineer. When Michael would sing, sometimes he would hit these notes where I would jump out of my seat like, Oh, my god! And I’d have to stop myself, because I’m the engineer and I can’t jump out of my seat. But I did a few times!”

DeVillar continues:

“The pyrotechnics that came out of this man were ridiculous. And it came out like that all the f*cking time. It’s powerful. It’s magic. It was like he was channeling when he would sing. It was scary sometimes. He would actually grab the microphone with his hands and roar and just get into it. Then the part would be over and he would let go of the mic and he would just sit there and simmer. And I would wait sometimes up to twenty or thirty seconds until he got his composure back. He was gathering up energy, widening up his body and then, Bam! Letting it loose. Then relaxing, composing himself, a slight little five-second meditation and then we’d do another take. He was really focused on every part, every swing at the ball. There was a lot of force behind every single take.”

Jackson’s lead vocals were recorded using a Neumann M149 microphone.

Additional leads were recorded on October 16, 1998, by engineer Mike Ging at the Ocean Way Recording facility – commonly referred to as Record One.

The following day, Ging worked on a new mix.

From there, “A Place With No Name” did some serious studio hopping.

“It was such a round robin back in those days,” recalls engineer Michael Prince, who was bouncing back and forth between a room with Jackson’s longtime arranger, Brad Buxer, and another with Dr. Freeze.

“At one point we ended up at Marvin’s Place. We then moved back to Record Plant, then back to Record One again.”

“Typically, I was working mostly on the songs Brad and MJ were writing,” recalls Prince. “We had our hands busy with about five or six songs.”

Two of those songs were “The Way You Love Me” and “Hollywood Tonight.”

“A Place With No Name” was again revisited throughout February 1999, with Jackson, Prince, Buxer and Ging making further edits to the track at Record One.

“We were very happy at Record One, and that’s where we got the majority of our work done,” recalls Prince.

“That’s when Rodney Jerkins joined the team. Rodney, Fred Jerkins, and LaShawn Daniels were there for at least the last month that we were at Record One.”

Then, at the end of March 1999, Jackson flew out to New York to work at The Hit Factory recording studio with producer Cory Rooney on the song “She Was Loving Me,” which Rooney had written specifically for Jackson.

After a month of recording, editing and hanging out in the studio, Jackson decided to leave the completion of “She Was Loving Me” in Rooney’s hands, while he moved on to other songs.

But Jackson wouldn’t resume recording in Los Angeles.

Jackson’s month on the east coast had inspired him to move a selection of his production team from LA to New York City, where they would continue working at The Hit Factory, Sony Music Studios, and even in Jackson’s hotel room.

Much to their disappointment, CJ deVillar and Mike Ging did not receive a call to join Jackson in New York. Brad Buxer and Michael Prince, on the other hand, packed their bags and headed to the Big Apple.

Moving studios was a major task back in the days of recording to tape, especially the way Jackson composed songs.

Some of Jackson’s more complex pieces consisted of upwards of one hundred individual tracks.

“It took us days to make copies of all the tapes and hard drives, and to label them,” recalls Prince, “and then everything got shipped to The Hit Factory in New York and we spent months there.”

In early May 1999, once all the tapes had arrived in New York, Hit Factory engineer Paul J. Falcone worked on yet another mix of “A Place With No Name.”

However, as recording sessions for the work-in-progress album advanced, “A Place With No Name” was put on the backburner, along with Cory Rooney’s “She Was Loving Me” and Freeze’s “Blue Gangsta.”

At that time, Jackson shifted his focus to working with producer Rodney Jerkins, and Jerkins had done the same in return.

In the end, the Invincible album was released on October 30, 2001, and “A Place With No Name” was not included.

Years later, in early 2004, when working on music in a makeshift studio at his Neverland Valley Ranch, Jackson revisited the track with engineer Michael Prince.

“It has improved gradually,” explains Freeze.

“It was incremental work. He listened to the different mixes and changed some details around here or there. He was in full creative control. We wanted the song to be perfect… It was a bit like a director looking to improve his film by changing the script or changing players. This is the type of process that was used to create this song, and overall, the album Invincible… All that interested him was to have number one hits.”

Freeze’s sentiments about Michael wanting to have hits have been echoed by many over the years, including producer RedOne, and also by Jackson himself.

“Michael always has been focused on having hits,” says RedOne, who spent time working with Jackson during the final years of his life. “He always records a lot of songs and takes the best of them. That’s his formula, which I love.”

“It was Tchaikovsky that influenced me the most,” revealed Jackson in an interview with Bryan Monroe from Ebony magazine.

“If you take an album like Nutcracker Suite – every song is a killer. Every one! People used to do an album where you’d get one good song, and the rest were like B-sides. They’d call them ‘album songs,’ and I would say to myself, ‘Why can’t every one be like a hit song? Why can’t every song be so great that people would want to buy it if you could release it as a single?’ So, I always tried to strive for that… That was the whole idea… I worked hard for it.”

The 2004 version was briefly considered for a box set called The Ultimate Collection, released by Epic Records on November 16 the same year. But as with the Invincible album three years prior, it was again not included.

The track was then shelved for four more years, before being resurrected merely a year prior to Jackson’s death.

In January 2008, Jackson and his three children had moved into a rented mansion in Las Vegas.

The property was equipped with a home recording studio, in which Jackson began working on music, including with a producer called Neff-U, with whom Jackson had worked for several years.

During their 2008 collaborative sessions, Neff-U was also given a number of Jackson’s unreleased songs from the vault, to see if he could give them a fresh new sound.

“Michael had favourite songs, or songs that were works in progress,” explains engineer Michael Prince.

“Once Neff-U took over in 2008, Michael brought out some songs, including ‘A Place With No Name,’ and said: ‘Here, work with this song. See what you can come up with for this song.’ The vocals were always pretty much the same, but Neff-U would put new music on them.”

Minor edits were made by Neff-U in 2008, at Jackson’s home studio in Vegas. And coincidentally, the song’s original producer, Dr. Freeze, also visited Jackson at his home studio that year.

The pair had reunited to discuss the next chapter of Jackson’s musical journey.

“I was in the studio with him shortly before his death,” recalls Freeze.

“To be precise, I remember going to see him at his residence in Vegas, and there was a studio there… Nothing was recorded. We just brainstormed. We were about to start recording sessions… I offered a few new songs I had written especially for him. He loved [the songs] very much,” says Freeze.

But their work musical reunion wasn’t to be, with Jackson tragically passing away on June 25, 2009 – before they’d actually got in the studio and recorded the new songs.

“This was our last discussion,” recalls Freeze.

“He said ‘I love you’ and voila, it was over. He wanted to [record the songs], but he died.”

Three weeks after Jackson’s death, in July 2009, a short snippet of “A Place With No Name” leaked online, and it was quickly identified as a remake of America’s “A Horse With No Name.”

Following the leak, the writer’s of its predecessor – America’s Dewey Bunnell and Gerry Beckley – expressed their desire for Jackson’s rendition of their 1972 hit to be released in full.

“We’re also hoping it will be released soon so that music listeners around the world can hear the whole song and once again experience the incomparable brilliance of Michael Jackson,” they said in a joint statement in July 2009, adding: “We truly hope his fans – and our fans – get to hear it in its entirety.”

Despite America’s enthusiasm for it to be released, the Jackson’s version remained unreleased for five more years.

Then, in May 2014, the track appeared on Xscape – the second posthumous album of Jackson material from the singer’s estate and Epic Records.

Two versions of “A Place With No Name” appear on Xscape – an original version and a remixed version.

The remix was done by Norwegian production duo Stargate, who had met with Jackson shortly before his death to discuss a potential collaboration.

Above: Jackson with production duo Stargate.

President of Epic Records at the time, LA Reid, who was overseeing the Xscape album project and recruiting the team of A-list producers who worked on it, discusses Stargate’s approach to their “A Place With No Name” remix.

“They approached it was so creative,” recalls Reid.

“They listened to the time signature of the song, which was a 6/8 time signature. So the guys from Stargate asked: ‘Which songs have had the 6/8 time signature?‘ There were songs like Stevie Wonder’s ‘Higher Ground,’ which was an influence… It’s a really special record.”

Stargate’s remix indeed had a strong Stevie Wonder “Higher Ground” vibe about it.

Tor Erik Hermansen recalls how Jackson’s rhythmic vocals inspired he and Stargate co-producer Mikkel Eriksen when working on the remix:

“When I listened to Michael, he’s in the booth snapping his fingers, clapping his hands and stomping his feet. He’s doing all these energetic things that gave us a vibe where this track should go. That’s when we started to experiment with the bassline. We didn’t even have the drums on it yet, just the bassline and a chord progression that really worked for something more danceable. Then we started working on drums. But all of that stuff really came from Michael Jackson.”

On August 13, 2014, Stargate’s remix of “A Place With No Name” was released as the second single from the Xscape album, along with a music video directed by Samuel Bayer.

The original version of “A Place With No Name” included on Xscape is what Jackson heard during those 2008 collaborative sessions with producer Neff-U and recording engineer Michael Prince.

“Compared with the 2004 version, you can hear the drums are different in the final version,” observes Prince.

“It has a different kick drum pattern, a little stronger snare, and the ‘na nas’ are copied to repeat through the fade.”

One element of the track that Jackson never changed, however, was engineer CJ deVillar’s bass part.

“That bass credit is the greatest highlight of my career,” beams deVillar, “because no one told me what to play. Michael just said he wanted to hear some live bass, and I played. Michael used that bass, made it part of his lexicon, sang to it, and kept it on the track for the next decade. He never had anyone redo it. He never removed it. He kept that bass for over ten years. How on earth did I get that privilege? I’m beside myself just thinking about it.”

“Michael loved that song. I mean, who didn’t love that song? It’s still a huge classic,” recalls deVillar of Jackson’s affection for the original, original version – “A Horse With No Name” – by America.

“Michael was a real artist’s artist. He wanted to work on things just because he wanted to. I don’t think Michael made plans with music. I think he sort of just mused and had fun with music [and] I think he just loved that song so much.”

DeVillar continues:

“In hip hop culture it’s just so natural to flip anything – just flip any song you want. And so that was just Michael and Freeze putting love into it. I don’t think they went after that track like it was supposed to be put on a record. I think it was even more personal than that. The feeling I got during that time was that they were just having so much fun trying to play with the melody and the lyrics and the music, and were really just having a great time flipping this classic track. And a successful flip isn’t easy, but I thought that was just wonderful.”

The song’s original writers, Dewey Bunnell and Gerry Beckley, agreed.

“We’re honoured that Michael Jackson chose to record it, and we’re impressed with the quality of the track,” they said.

“Michael really did it justice. It’s really poignant.”


Damien Shields is the author of the book Michael Jackson: Songs & Stories From The Vault examining the King of Pop’s creative process, and the producer of the podcast The Genesis of Thriller which takes you inside the recording studio as Jackson and his team create the biggest selling album in music history.
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