Janet and Michael vs Molly and me

Working on Janet Jackson songs made me want to see if she did any tracks with Michael. Here’s what the internet has to say: Michael sings backup vocals on Janet’s early album Dream Street. Janet sings backup on Michael’s “PYT.” She’s in the part towards the end where he says “Pretty young things, repeat after me.”

Janet and Michael have similar musical sensibilities. They like jazz harmony. “Remember The Time” uses C7(9) nine for long stretches. Jazz musicians could go to town on that with diminished scale. Janet uses diminished in the chorus of “What Have You Done For Me Lately.”

This song. So much to love about it. The verse melody is an A flat seven sus to A flat loop over an E flat minor ostinato in the synth bass. The chorus follows the E flat diminished lick with the vocal’s unexpected jump to E flat major in the “ooooh yeah.” The bridge is a bummer, but then the overdubbed rap breakdown totally makes up for it. There’s even some bebop piano snaking around back there towards the end.

“What Have You Done For Me Lately” was co-written and produced by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. They also produced the one track that Janet and Michael co-released as adults. Michael and Janet’s “Scream” is mostly musically sophisticated and sonically futuristic and everything you’d want in a song, but the lyrics are scary. There’s a creepy Disney interlude and some unnerving baby talk during the breakdown section. Wikipedia says “Scream” is directed at the media. Sounds more to me like it was also directed at Michael and Janet’s dad. The B-side to the “Scream” single is called “Childhood.”

John Jeremiah Sullivan’s posthumous GQ profile of Michael includes a description of Michael working ideas with Janet and Randy into a tape recorder at home.

People want to know, Why, when you became a man, did your voice not change? Rather, it did change, but what did it change into? Listening to clips of his interviews through the ’70s, you can hear how he goes about changing it himself. First it deepens slightly, around 1972-73 or so. (Listen to him on The Dating Game in 1972 and you’ll hear that his voice was lower at 14 than it will be at 30.) This potentially catastrophic event has perhaps been vaguely dreaded by the family and label for years. Michael Jackson without his falsetto is not the commodity on which their collective dream depends. But Michael has never known a reality that wasn’t susceptible on some level to his creative powers. He works to develop something, not a falsetto, which is a way of singing above your range, but instead a higher range. He isolates totally different configurations of his vocal cords, finding their crevices, cultivating the flexibility there. Vocal teachers will tell you this can be done, though it’s considered an extreme practice. Whether the process is conscious in Michael’s case is unknowable. He probably evolves it in order to keep singing Jackson 5 songs every night through puberty. The startling effect is of his having imaginatively not so much castrated himself as of womanized himself. He essentially evolves a drag voice. On the early demo for “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough,” recorded at home with Randy and Janet helping, you can actually hear him work his way into this voice. It is a character, really. “We’re gonna be startin’ now, baby,” he says in a relaxed, moderately high-pitched man’s voice. Then he intones the title, “Don’t stop ’til you get enough,” in a softer, quieter version of basically the same voice. He repeats the line in a still higher register, almost purring. Finally—in a full-on girlish peal—he sings.

Too bad Janet and Michael didn’t do some albums. It’s hard for me to guess what their relationship might have looked like.

My sister and I had a much easier time growing up than the Jacksons. But thinking about them makes me think about musicality among my siblings. My sister, stepbrothers and stepsister are all musical. Growing up in the same house you get exposed to the same music, TV, movies, and all the weird folk memes of childhood. You’re bound to have some similar tastes and influences.

My sister Molly was my first and in some ways best guitar teacher. She herself started with the folk music standard fifteen chords and took it into a super adventurous style: lots of drones, odd time signatures, and unresolved tritones. Her band, the Vest Pocket Psalm, was Molly on guitar and vocals, Liz Werner singing/shouting, and Leo Ferguson on drums. Leo is a jazz virtuoso type who likes hip-hop. The songs were chant-based. I’m not a punk, but this was a sound I could get into. There was mostly no bass player, long before the White Stripes.

I didn’t just learn guitar from Molly. I learned proper hip-hop appreciation too. Molly was on board with hip-hop from day one. I always liked it too, but I got scared away during the Public Enemy to Snoop Dogg transition and didn’t find my way back in until Missy Elliot. Molly’s commitment has never wavered. We’re both on the same page about Auto-tune and sampling. I’m looking forward to busting some tracks when she moves to town next month.