My favorite Michael Jackson song is “Wanna Be Startin’ Something.” This post is part of what’s turning into a series on it. The previous post is about the song as fan art, and some of the fan art that it’s inspired, from bootleg Youtube videos to licensed remixes. This one is about who owns the song, specifically the famous chant at the end. Here’s a list of everybody who I think could reasonably make a claim.
He wrote “Soul Makossa,” the inspiration for MJ’s chant.
“Soul Makossa” isn’t exactly the same as MJ’s version. Manu Dibango speak/sings “ma ma ko, ma ko sa, ma ko ma ko sa” on one note. MJ sings “ma ma se, ma ma sa, ma ma coo sa” as a sus chord resolving to a major chord.
Wrote “Wanna Be Startin’ Something.” On the recording he sings lead and backing vocals, and he did some of the production and arrangement.
Produced the track, which in this context means he supervised the recording sessions, probably wrote the horn chart and did some other musical shaping. I have no idea what legal rights Quincy Jones has over the recording or composition, if any.
The other musicians
Along with MJ, the track features three synth and keyboard players, a guitarist, a bassist, a percussionist, a horn section and bunch of backing vocalists. Plus somebody programmed the drum machine. Legally, these folks aren’t entitled to anything beyond the union scale they got paid for the recording sessions, but my musician friends would say there’s an element of spiritual ownership.
He was the lead recording engineer. He probably had some other engineers and assistants working with him as well, the internet doesn’t say. As with the backing musicians, he has zero ownership beyond what he got paid for the original sessions. His fellow recording engineers would stick up passionately for his spiritual ownership over the track, since it wouldn’t exist without him, and it wouldn’t have its arrestingly distinctive sound.
Sony Music Distribution
The label that presently puts out Thriller and, presumably, owns the master recording rights. There may be other co-owners, including MJ and his various financial partners and creditors.
The rights-management company that handles Sony’s publishing. Again, I’m sure there are other complex co-owners, from MJ on out.
Me
I paid ninety-nine cents for the mp4 on the iTunes store. I co-owned a cassette copy with my sister and stepbrother as a kid. I have a decades-long emotional relationship with the song.
Apple
They sold me the mp4 and the hardware I mostly use to listen to it.
My dad or stepmother
Or my stepbrother’s dad or whoever bought us the cassette of Thriller back in the eighties. Plus whoever they bought the cassette from (I’m guessing Sam Goody on 59th and Third), plus whoever was distributing Thriller on cassettes back then.
The situation only gets more complicated as I follow the chant’s path through my life. A few months ago I went with Anna and our neighbor to hear Zap Mama at Joe’s Pub. During one of her songs, she quoted MJ’s chant. Who owned that instance of the chant? Zap Mama? Joe’s Pub? Us, for buying tickets? Who owned the experience of me hearing the chant at Papaya King, or in Prospect Park, or on the computer network in my office? What about when the guy with the motorcycle was riding around Park Slope blasting “Soul Makossa” from his speakers and I mistook it for a remix of MJ?
What about the copy of “Don’t Stop The Music” by Rihanna that I bought from Apple? I assume that Rihanna’s producers and management paid some sort of licensing fee to Michael Jackson and/or his copyright holders to use the sample, or maybe they got a cut of my ninety-nine cents. They didn’t pay Manu Dibango anything.
Sampling makes people anxious because it raises so many questions about ownership. These questions are only going to get more complicated as technology evolves. The emotional questions are every bit as complex as the legal ones, if not more so. My feeling is, everybody who’s ever heard the chant owns it. Which means that no one does.
Here’s a mashup of “Wanna Be Startin’ Something” and “Soul Makossa” with many related and derivative works.
Wanna Be Startin’ Something megamix by ethanhein
Update: within an hour of posting this, Otis Taylor tweeted me from a concert where Jamie Foxx was leading the crowd in the chant.
Michael Jackson – American superstar. I love you is Michael Jackson!!!!!!