Michael Jackson fan art

Today the Michael Jackson fan art I have on my mind (and on the iPod) is “Please Don’t Stop The Music,” sung by Rihanna and produced by a couple of Norwegian guys. It includes a sample of MJ singing “Wanna Be Startin’ Something.” The sample includes both his quasi-Swahili chant and his unearthly woo-hoo. It runs under almost the entire song after the first minute, with dramatic filter sweeping and what sounds like some vocoder.

MJ never made a video for “Wanna Be Startin’ Something,” leaving a vacuum that the fans are only too happy to fill. This video even includes footage of MJ’s video game.

This MJ song has inspired a lot of fan art, maybe because it is itself fan art. The music industry likes to send lawyers after people who make fan art, which is dumb and self-destructive on their part. No fan art, no art.

“Wanna Be Startin’ Something” is my favorite Michael Jackson song, against much stiff competition. Several of MJ’s most famous songs were written by Quincy Jones or Rod Temperton, but MJ wrote this one himself. It’s serious and personal. John Jeremiah Sullivan’s long, respectful article in GQ talks about MJ’s process:

By 1978, the year of “Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground)” — co-written by Michael and little Randy — ”Michael’s methods have gelled. He starts with tape recorders. He sings and beatboxes the little things he hears, the parts.

No wonder hip-hop musicians love MJ. Improvising into recording devices is where hip-hop comes from. MJ’s music is very electronic. There are places in “Wanna Be Startin’ Something” where different pieces of the lead vocal overlap, making it impossible for one person to really sing it live. All the backing vocals on the final version are overdubbed MJ.

Some of the things Michael hears in his head he exports to another instrument, to the piano (which he plays not well but passably) or to the bass. The melody and a few percussive elements remain with his vocal. The rest he assembles around it. He has his brothers and sisters with him. He conducts.

If he were a young guy now he’d probably be recording his siblings on his laptop using Pro Tools.

His art will later depend on his ability to stay in touch with that childlike inner instrument, keeping near enough to himself to hear his own melodic promptings. If you’ve listened to toddlers making up songs, the things they invent are often bafflingly catchy and ingenious. They compose to biorhythms somehow. The vocal from Michael’s earlier, Off the Wall-era demo of the eventual Thriller hit “Wanna Be Startin’ Something” sounds like nothing so much as playful schoolyard taunting.

The final version is produced by Quincy Jones, though MJ probably did most of the arrangement. The groove is based on a drum machine loop, with some Brazilian percussion on top. Three different guys are playing synths. The top-notch horn section plays with a perfection that makes them sound sequenced, but with full analog fidelity.

“Wanna Be Startin’ Something” is a close musical cousin to “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough.” They were written around the same time. DJs like to run them together at the peak of the night. Harmonically they’re extremely minimalist, using static mixolydian mode for the entire length of the song. That minimalism makes both songs sound fresher and more contemporary than MJ’s other disco material.

“Don’t Stop” has upbeat party lyrics that match its sound. “Wanna Be Startin’ Something” is musically exuberant too, but the lyrics are mostly very dark and intense.

I said you wanna be startin’ somethin’
You got to be startin’ somethin’
I said you wanna be startin’ somethin’
You got to be startin’ somethin’

The tone goes from confrontational to helpless.

It’s too high to get over (yeah, yeah)
Too low to get under (yeah, yeah)
You’re stuck in the middle (yeah, yeah)
And the pain is thunder (yeah, yeah)

I took my baby to the doctor
With a fever, but nothing he found
By the time this hit the street
They said she had a breakdown

Someone’s always tryin’
to start my baby cryin’
Talkin’, squealin’, lyin’
Sayin’ you just wanna be startin’ somethin’

Normal pop songs were mostly not this serious in the early eighties.

You love to pretend that you’re good
When you’re always up to no good
You really can’t make him hate her
So your tongue became a razor

Someone’s always tryin’
to keep my baby cryin’
Treacherous, cunnin’, declinin’
You got my baby cryin’

This is the verse that gives me the most pause.

You’re a vegetable, you’re a vegetable
Still they hate you, you’re a vegetable
You’re just a buffet, you’re a vegetable
They eat off of you, you’re a vegetable

There’s the mysterious guest appearance by Billie Jean.

Billie Jean is always talkin’
When nobody else is talkin’
Tellin’ lies and rubbin’ shoulders
So they called her mouth a motor

This verse is probably directed at MJ’s father, who told the family around the time of this song’s writing that he had been having an affair and had fathered a child with his lover.

If you can’t feed your baby (yeah, yeah)
Then don’t have a baby (yeah, yeah)
And don’t think maybe (yeah, yeah)
If you can’t feed your baby (yeah, yeah)

You’ll be always tryin’
To stop that child from cryin’
Hustlin’, stealin’, lyin’
Now baby’s slowly dyin’

After all this anguish, MJ is still determined to keep a brave face, and for you to enjoy yourself. So he ends with uplift.

Lift your head up high
And scream out to the world
I know I am someone
And let the truth unfurl

No one can hurt you now
Because you know what’s true
Yes, I believe in me
So you believe in you, help me sing it

And finally, the famous chant.

Ma ma se, ma ma sa, ma ma coo sa
Ma ma se, ma ma sa, ma ma coo sa
Ma ma se, ma ma sa, ma ma coo sa
Ma ma se, ma ma sa, ma ma coo sa

The chant is an approximate quote from a song by Manu Dibango called “Soul Makossa.” Manu Dibango’s song is mostly playfully riffs around the word makossa, a Cameroonian dance style. MJ was sued for the quote, but he probably didn’t mean any harm. The chant is a work of Manu Dibango fan art. Rihanna’s “Please Don’t Stop The Music” is fan art based on fan art. You could add another layer of recursion by doing a fan remix of the Rihanna song.

Plenty of people have sampled and quoted both Manu Dibango’s song and MJ’s.
The Rihanna song is especially interesting to me because it doesn’t just quote the chant, it reharmonizes it. MJ’s song is in E major. Rihanna’s song is in F# minor. This technique of taking a well-known melody line and writing a radically different harmony for it is widely used in jazz. The B minor and F# natural minor chords from Rihanna’s song are from the same E mixolydian scale as the E7 and D major chords in MJ’s, but they have a totally different emotional effect. (If you strum B minor and F# minor on guitar along with the end of MJ’s song, it sounds amazing.) Rihanna’s song is tragic and anxious. It picks up on the underlying tragedy and anxiety of MJ’s song. That’s quality fan art.

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

This is a continuation of a post about Rhymefest’s MJ mixtape. The thought continues in a post about who owns the chant.