Michael Jackson
This Is It
This is it, here I stand
I’m the light of the world, I feel grand
Got this love I can feel
And I know yes for sure it is real
And it feels as though I’ve seen your face a thousand times
And you said you really know me too yourself
And I know that you have got addicted with your eyes
But you say you gonna live it for yourself.
I never heard a single word about you
Falling in love wasn’t my plan
I never thought that I would be your lover
C’mon baby, just understand
This is it, I can say,
I’m the light of the world, run away
We can feel, this is real
Every time I’m in love that I feel
And I feel as though I’ve known you since 1,000 years
And you tell me that you’ve seen my face before.
And you said to me you don’t want me hanging round
Many times, wanna do it here before
I never heard a single word about you
Falling in love wasn’t my plan
I never thought that I would be your lover
C’mon baby, just understand
This is it, I can feel
I’m the light of the world, this is real
Feel my song, we can say
And I tell you I feel that way
And I feel as though I’ve known you for a thousand years
And you said you want some of this yourself
And you said won’t you go with me, on a while
And I know that it’s really cool myself
I never heard a single word about you
Falling in love wasn’t my plan
I never thought that I would be your lover
C’mon baby, just understand
I never heard a single word about you
Falling in love wasn’t my plan
I never thought that I would be your lover
C’mon baby, just understand
I’m the light of the world, I feel grand
Got this love I can feel
And I know yes for sure it is real
And it feels as though I’ve seen your face a thousand times
And you said you really know me too yourself
And I know that you have got addicted with your eyes
But you say you gonna live it for yourself.
I never heard a single word about you
Falling in love wasn’t my plan
I never thought that I would be your lover
C’mon baby, just understand
This is it, I can say,
I’m the light of the world, run away
We can feel, this is real
Every time I’m in love that I feel
And I feel as though I’ve known you since 1,000 years
And you tell me that you’ve seen my face before.
And you said to me you don’t want me hanging round
Many times, wanna do it here before
I never heard a single word about you
Falling in love wasn’t my plan
I never thought that I would be your lover
C’mon baby, just understand
This is it, I can feel
I’m the light of the world, this is real
Feel my song, we can say
And I tell you I feel that way
And I feel as though I’ve known you for a thousand years
And you said you want some of this yourself
And you said won’t you go with me, on a while
And I know that it’s really cool myself
I never heard a single word about you
Falling in love wasn’t my plan
I never thought that I would be your lover
C’mon baby, just understand
I never heard a single word about you
Falling in love wasn’t my plan
I never thought that I would be your lover
C’mon baby, just understand
Song Information
The song was released worldwide on October 12 at midnight on www.michaeljackson.com, 2009. The song, written in 1980, bears a strong resemblance a song by Sa-Fire, known as “I Never Heard,” which was written by Jackson and Paul Anka in 1991.
Released October 12, 2009
Recorded Unknown
Genre Pop, soul
Length TBA
Label Epic
Recorded Unknown
Genre Pop, soul
Length TBA
Label Epic
sursa: www.musicloversgroup.com
Duşul rece abia acum urmează. La adresa www.theglobeandmail.com este un articol semnat de Brad Wheeler, "Michael Jackson's new song: That was it?" care, trecând peste faptul că spune despre cântec că e dulceag (mă rog, acolo spune că e cu zaharină; chestie de gust sau de diabet), ne luminează neuronul:
Globe and Mail Update Published on Monday, Oct. 12, 2009 5:50AM EDT Last updated on Monday, Oct. 12, 2009 1:29PM EDT
That was it? What was trumpeted by Sony Music as a “brand new song” from the late pop singer Michael Jackson was officially unveiled when it began streaming Sunday at midnight on MichaelJackson.com .
The radio single This Is It, which arrives ahead of a feature documentary film and two-CD set of the same name, is a saccharine-sweet love song, handsomely orchestrated and featuring the downy backing vocals of his older brothers. Mid-tempo with a finger-snapping beat, the major-key ballad begins (after Jackson counts it in, “1-2-3-4”) with a stirring opening line, “This is it, here I stand/ I’m the light of the world, I feel grand.”
Fans of the King of Pop might be feeling less than thrilled, however. The song is not new. Rather, it is an undisguised version of I Never Heard, a 1991 track co-written by Jackson and Paul Anka that appears on the album I Wasn’t Born Yesterday from New York dance-pop singer Safire. Her version is more upbeat, but the smooth melody is retained. Lyrics, which concern an unexpected set of romantic feelings (“Falling in love wasn’t my plan”), are mostly identical.
No information was supplied by Sony as to the tune’s origin. “We just found the song,” Rob Stringer, chairman of the Columbia/Epic Label Group, a Sony division, told The New York Times. “It was titled This Is It. It was in a box, and we listened to it.”
Stringer added that Sony originally believed that the piano-and-vocal demo tape was made around the time of Jackson’s 1991 album Dangerous. A full arrangement, including backing vocals, waves of strings and, during one bridge, muted horns, was assembled posthumously.
If the song’s past is murky, its release is certainly marks the start of somethin’ – surely there are more boxes of Jackson material in vaults, and future releases are anticipated. One would imagine that This Is It was chosen as the first single released since Jackson’s death because of its tie-in with a behind-the-scenes documentary about the performer’s planned 50-concert series, that was to begin this summer at London’s O2 Arena. The film arrives in theatres Oct. 28, one day after the release of a double-disc album that packages greatest hits with demos and a spoken-word piece, entitled Planet Earth. The single, which will also appear as an orchestral version on the album, will not be released separately.
The documentary takes it name from Jackson’s comment after his final concert series was announced. The former Motown child star declared that the shows would be both his comeback and curtain call: “This is the moment,” he said. “This is it.” Those last three words co-incidentally begin each verse of the Jackson-Anka tune, and as easy as A-B-C, the old song was resurrected for the project.
The radio single This Is It, which arrives ahead of a feature documentary film and two-CD set of the same name, is a saccharine-sweet love song, handsomely orchestrated and featuring the downy backing vocals of his older brothers. Mid-tempo with a finger-snapping beat, the major-key ballad begins (after Jackson counts it in, “1-2-3-4”) with a stirring opening line, “This is it, here I stand/ I’m the light of the world, I feel grand.”
Fans of the King of Pop might be feeling less than thrilled, however. The song is not new. Rather, it is an undisguised version of I Never Heard, a 1991 track co-written by Jackson and Paul Anka that appears on the album I Wasn’t Born Yesterday from New York dance-pop singer Safire. Her version is more upbeat, but the smooth melody is retained. Lyrics, which concern an unexpected set of romantic feelings (“Falling in love wasn’t my plan”), are mostly identical.
No information was supplied by Sony as to the tune’s origin. “We just found the song,” Rob Stringer, chairman of the Columbia/Epic Label Group, a Sony division, told The New York Times. “It was titled This Is It. It was in a box, and we listened to it.”
Stringer added that Sony originally believed that the piano-and-vocal demo tape was made around the time of Jackson’s 1991 album Dangerous. A full arrangement, including backing vocals, waves of strings and, during one bridge, muted horns, was assembled posthumously.
If the song’s past is murky, its release is certainly marks the start of somethin’ – surely there are more boxes of Jackson material in vaults, and future releases are anticipated. One would imagine that This Is It was chosen as the first single released since Jackson’s death because of its tie-in with a behind-the-scenes documentary about the performer’s planned 50-concert series, that was to begin this summer at London’s O2 Arena. The film arrives in theatres Oct. 28, one day after the release of a double-disc album that packages greatest hits with demos and a spoken-word piece, entitled Planet Earth. The single, which will also appear as an orchestral version on the album, will not be released separately.
The documentary takes it name from Jackson’s comment after his final concert series was announced. The former Motown child star declared that the shows would be both his comeback and curtain call: “This is the moment,” he said. “This is it.” Those last three words co-incidentally begin each verse of the Jackson-Anka tune, and as easy as A-B-C, the old song was resurrected for the project.
Îmi fac procese de conştiinţă: iar am bătut câmpii - în postarea anterioară (da, dar mie tot îmi place cântecul, na). În plus, pentru ca lămurirea să nu fie unilaterală, iată ce scrie în ediţia sa de azi, la pagina de cultură (Arts Beat: The Culture at Large) şi The New York Times:
October 12, 2009, 12:33 pm
The New Michael Jackson Single: The Verdict
By Jon Pareles AND JON CARAMANICA
At midnight, the new Michael Jackson single, “This Is It,” became available as a free stream on michaeljackson.com. Jon Pareles, the chief pop critic of The New York Times, and Jon Caramanica, a regular contributor, discuss its merits, and the striking resemblance to a 1991 song recorded by the Puerto Rican singer Safire. (See Ben Sisario’s report on the backstory here.)
JON PARELES: Michael Jackson’s commercial afterlife starts today with “This Is It.” Maybe there should be a question mark at the end of the title–or, perhaps, a slight expansion paraphrasing Peggy Lee: “Is this all there is?”
Promoted as brand-new, it’s not. It has much in common — its melody and many lyrics — with “I Never Heard,” a song written by Jackson and Paul Anka before Jackson’s “Dangerous” album and shelved. “I Never Heard” surfaced in 1991 near the end of an album by the Puerto Rican singer Safire. She sang with what now sounds very much like Jackson’s phrasing, and with a lot more joy.
Safire’s “I Never Heard” exults in an unexpected romance. For “This Is It,” the lyrics got a telling rewrite. Safire sang, “In the light of the world, love is grand,” but Jackson’s version changes it to the considerably more messianic, “I’m the light of the world, I feel grand.” And later, “I’m the light of the world, this is real.”
Jackson still sings about being a lover in “This Is It,” but I don’t hear romance. Now, especially since the song is attached to the memorials of the rehearsal-footage movie, also called “This Is It,” and a blatantly greedy album — the big hits yet again, two versions of “This Is It” and a handful of demos — “This Is It” becomes one of the Jackson songs that conflates his own stardom with universal love and uplift. Love Michael Jackson and heal the world; it was the kind of promise he could make when he was pop’s global superstar. (And the song may well have been set aside because Jackson used the same hymnlike tempo and ascending harmonies in “Heal the World.”)
The vocal starts with the breathy jitters that added another level of tension and syncopation to Jackson’s dance tunes, but soon smooths itself out. Over Jackson’s piano-and-voice demo, the production waxes reverent: rising massed strings, genteel guitar tickles, his brothers in the Jacksons going “ooh.” The free stream on michaeljackson.com is the orchestra version; the “album version” Epic sent the media this morning takes off the strings, an improvement that unveils all the vocal harmonies and the fingers snaps.
No funk here: It’s the posthumous, all-sweetness-and-light Jackson that his family is determined to sell. But at least he sounds human, especially at the end, where he lets the vocal line take a few tentative leaps. The vulnerability — especially at the beginning, as he counts off the song — is the endearing thing about “This Is It.” But what was he thinking as he sang, “I’m the light of the world?”
JON CARAMANICA: Oh dear — it’s an unfortunate coincidence, I’m guessing (hoping?), that the pre-roll ad I’m seeing on michaeljackson.com is for “Gone Too Far,” the MTV reality-intervention series premiering on Monday and starring DJ AM, another 2009 victim of a drug overdose.
Or perhaps that’s reflective of the fumbling hands with which this song has been released. As mentioned here and elsewhere, these lyrics have been heard before. On the stream the recording of the vocals is fuzzy, the mix is far from perfect. And the song itself never fully resolves, working at one melodic and emotional pitch and then fading out.
“This Is It” does have that naïve quality that Jackson managed to hold on to through the early ’90s, only completely losing it in the face of media scrutiny and his own melting under it. (So glad you mentioned “Heal The World,” a far better and possibly smarter song built from largely the same Tiddlywinks.) But as a musical artifact, it’s better as suggestion than song: What I hear here is how Jackson might have sang these words in a proper studio setting, perhaps in a roomier arrangement with more motion in the rhythm.
And it’s an odd choice to signal Jackson’s re-emergence. The song itself is a trifle, a mildly ornery and defensive lyric over a sketch of lush harmonies to come. For “Michael Jackson: The Lost Tapes,” maybe, it would be a welcome curio, but ultimately “This Is It” sticks out as a song chosen more for its title than its meaning. My fear, JP, is that it’s not a question mark missing after those words, but a period.
JON PARELES: I’m with you –”This Is It” won’t be on anyone’s list of best Michael Jackson songs, even if it’s a long list. I’m holding out some small hope about later posthumous releases for exactly the reason you suggest: that the song was chosen for its title, those three little words that were so heavily promoted. “This Is It” was a fine bit of ambiguity from the moment the London shows were announced. This is what? A new beginning? A last stand? We didn’t know it would mean farewell before it started.
But the Jackson vaults have to hold something better. He released albums so slowly and painstakingly that there must be a lot of outtakes–more than the batch of unreleased songs that showed up in 2004 on “Ultimate Collection.”
I’m music geek enough to be entirely curious about the demos of the hits that they are doling out so stingily. Let’s hear them all, not just these three. I remember seeing Jackson in TV interviews, casually beatboxing the rhythms that would be the foundations for those unstoppable Quincy Jones productions, and I can’t be the only one who’d be fascinated by how the songs were built. I’d also like to hear the grooves that never made it into songs. Get a diligent A&R digger into the collection and then book a brilliant D.J. to do a Michael Jackson megamix CD, like the Beatles’ “Love,” from the outtakes.
The question is, who’s going through those vaults and what are they looking for? Right now, it seems as if they’re fixated on ballads, aiming for some soothing adult-contemporary hit. But look at the track list for the “This Is It” album, reflecting the set list planned for London. More than half is upbeat and laced with paranoia, songs like “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’,” “Smooth Criminal,” “They Don’t Care About Us,” “Beat It” and “Billie Jean.” Those songs weren’t just there for their dance moves; Jackson knew his fans wanted his choppy beats and weird thoughts, his Wacko Jacko side, as well as his comforting bromides. Sooner or later, the family and Sony ought to let a funk fiend into the vaults, to find something stranger and better than “This Is It.”
JON CARAMANICA: Who’s going through the vaults, indeed? It’s probably a reflection of the disarray bedeviling Jackson’s catalog, legacy and institutional memory that no one in his camp seemingly knew, or cared, that this material had already been released in some form. (Is a cease-and-desist from Paul Anka far off?) Does no one over there read Spin?
Worse, as powerhouse-guest-written Safire tracks go, it’s nowhere near as strong as Marc Anthony’s work from her first album, especially “Boy I’ve Been Told.”
Maybe Jackson knew that, and was happy to let it go. Curiously, the Jackson/Anka writing credit is absent from the Allmusic entry for Safire’s second album.
To wit, did you see the GQ cover story on Jackson a couple of months ago? One of the most moving bits was the brief anecdote about how he asked to sit in and watch Stevie Wonder work on “Songs in the Key of Life.” How he wants to get inside the music’s “anatomy.” We know him as a performer of stratospheric gifts, but he was also a tremendous technician–it’s so reassuring to hear him count out “1, 2, 3, 4 …” at the beginning of “This Is It,” so casually in control.
But so thoroughly encoded into contemporary pop are Jackson’s template and tricks — in everyone from Justin Timberlake to Rihanna to Ne-Yo and far beyond — that the odds of a new song bringing shock were never very good. The future was molded in his shadow.
His attempts to update his sound on his last albums, from asking the Notorious B.I.G. to tag along on 1995’s “HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I” to the stilted neo-soul on 2001’s “Invincible,” were never fully convincing. At the time of his death, it was reported that he’d been working on a dance music album with will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas, another Jackson acolyte.
Who knows how that might sound? Maybe it’s better, then, to have the letdown of the merely familiar.
Ştiam eu de ce mă tem: de toate sonysmele de acum referitoare la cel de care şi-au bătut joc cât a trăit. Singura bucurie este că nu e ţara noastră posesoarea tuturor tâmpiţilor din lume, răspândirea acestora ţinând cont de densitatea populaţiei pe kilometrul pătrat de sol terestru. Numitul "chairman" care a explicat cum şi de ce au ales cântecul este, probabil, un critic muzical de la noi ce şi-a luat un pseudonim comercial pentru a fi angajat de marea firmă de entertainment. De unde reiese că năravul rău se ia, dacă mai era nevoie de vreo demonstraţie.
October 12, 2009, 12:33 pm
The New Michael Jackson Single: The Verdict
By Jon Pareles AND JON CARAMANICA
At midnight, the new Michael Jackson single, “This Is It,” became available as a free stream on michaeljackson.com. Jon Pareles, the chief pop critic of The New York Times, and Jon Caramanica, a regular contributor, discuss its merits, and the striking resemblance to a 1991 song recorded by the Puerto Rican singer Safire. (See Ben Sisario’s report on the backstory here.)
JON PARELES: Michael Jackson’s commercial afterlife starts today with “This Is It.” Maybe there should be a question mark at the end of the title–or, perhaps, a slight expansion paraphrasing Peggy Lee: “Is this all there is?”
Promoted as brand-new, it’s not. It has much in common — its melody and many lyrics — with “I Never Heard,” a song written by Jackson and Paul Anka before Jackson’s “Dangerous” album and shelved. “I Never Heard” surfaced in 1991 near the end of an album by the Puerto Rican singer Safire. She sang with what now sounds very much like Jackson’s phrasing, and with a lot more joy.
Safire’s “I Never Heard” exults in an unexpected romance. For “This Is It,” the lyrics got a telling rewrite. Safire sang, “In the light of the world, love is grand,” but Jackson’s version changes it to the considerably more messianic, “I’m the light of the world, I feel grand.” And later, “I’m the light of the world, this is real.”
Jackson still sings about being a lover in “This Is It,” but I don’t hear romance. Now, especially since the song is attached to the memorials of the rehearsal-footage movie, also called “This Is It,” and a blatantly greedy album — the big hits yet again, two versions of “This Is It” and a handful of demos — “This Is It” becomes one of the Jackson songs that conflates his own stardom with universal love and uplift. Love Michael Jackson and heal the world; it was the kind of promise he could make when he was pop’s global superstar. (And the song may well have been set aside because Jackson used the same hymnlike tempo and ascending harmonies in “Heal the World.”)
The vocal starts with the breathy jitters that added another level of tension and syncopation to Jackson’s dance tunes, but soon smooths itself out. Over Jackson’s piano-and-voice demo, the production waxes reverent: rising massed strings, genteel guitar tickles, his brothers in the Jacksons going “ooh.” The free stream on michaeljackson.com is the orchestra version; the “album version” Epic sent the media this morning takes off the strings, an improvement that unveils all the vocal harmonies and the fingers snaps.
No funk here: It’s the posthumous, all-sweetness-and-light Jackson that his family is determined to sell. But at least he sounds human, especially at the end, where he lets the vocal line take a few tentative leaps. The vulnerability — especially at the beginning, as he counts off the song — is the endearing thing about “This Is It.” But what was he thinking as he sang, “I’m the light of the world?”
JON CARAMANICA: Oh dear — it’s an unfortunate coincidence, I’m guessing (hoping?), that the pre-roll ad I’m seeing on michaeljackson.com is for “Gone Too Far,” the MTV reality-intervention series premiering on Monday and starring DJ AM, another 2009 victim of a drug overdose.
Or perhaps that’s reflective of the fumbling hands with which this song has been released. As mentioned here and elsewhere, these lyrics have been heard before. On the stream the recording of the vocals is fuzzy, the mix is far from perfect. And the song itself never fully resolves, working at one melodic and emotional pitch and then fading out.
“This Is It” does have that naïve quality that Jackson managed to hold on to through the early ’90s, only completely losing it in the face of media scrutiny and his own melting under it. (So glad you mentioned “Heal The World,” a far better and possibly smarter song built from largely the same Tiddlywinks.) But as a musical artifact, it’s better as suggestion than song: What I hear here is how Jackson might have sang these words in a proper studio setting, perhaps in a roomier arrangement with more motion in the rhythm.
And it’s an odd choice to signal Jackson’s re-emergence. The song itself is a trifle, a mildly ornery and defensive lyric over a sketch of lush harmonies to come. For “Michael Jackson: The Lost Tapes,” maybe, it would be a welcome curio, but ultimately “This Is It” sticks out as a song chosen more for its title than its meaning. My fear, JP, is that it’s not a question mark missing after those words, but a period.
JON PARELES: I’m with you –”This Is It” won’t be on anyone’s list of best Michael Jackson songs, even if it’s a long list. I’m holding out some small hope about later posthumous releases for exactly the reason you suggest: that the song was chosen for its title, those three little words that were so heavily promoted. “This Is It” was a fine bit of ambiguity from the moment the London shows were announced. This is what? A new beginning? A last stand? We didn’t know it would mean farewell before it started.
But the Jackson vaults have to hold something better. He released albums so slowly and painstakingly that there must be a lot of outtakes–more than the batch of unreleased songs that showed up in 2004 on “Ultimate Collection.”
I’m music geek enough to be entirely curious about the demos of the hits that they are doling out so stingily. Let’s hear them all, not just these three. I remember seeing Jackson in TV interviews, casually beatboxing the rhythms that would be the foundations for those unstoppable Quincy Jones productions, and I can’t be the only one who’d be fascinated by how the songs were built. I’d also like to hear the grooves that never made it into songs. Get a diligent A&R digger into the collection and then book a brilliant D.J. to do a Michael Jackson megamix CD, like the Beatles’ “Love,” from the outtakes.
The question is, who’s going through those vaults and what are they looking for? Right now, it seems as if they’re fixated on ballads, aiming for some soothing adult-contemporary hit. But look at the track list for the “This Is It” album, reflecting the set list planned for London. More than half is upbeat and laced with paranoia, songs like “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’,” “Smooth Criminal,” “They Don’t Care About Us,” “Beat It” and “Billie Jean.” Those songs weren’t just there for their dance moves; Jackson knew his fans wanted his choppy beats and weird thoughts, his Wacko Jacko side, as well as his comforting bromides. Sooner or later, the family and Sony ought to let a funk fiend into the vaults, to find something stranger and better than “This Is It.”
JON CARAMANICA: Who’s going through the vaults, indeed? It’s probably a reflection of the disarray bedeviling Jackson’s catalog, legacy and institutional memory that no one in his camp seemingly knew, or cared, that this material had already been released in some form. (Is a cease-and-desist from Paul Anka far off?) Does no one over there read Spin?
Worse, as powerhouse-guest-written Safire tracks go, it’s nowhere near as strong as Marc Anthony’s work from her first album, especially “Boy I’ve Been Told.”
Maybe Jackson knew that, and was happy to let it go. Curiously, the Jackson/Anka writing credit is absent from the Allmusic entry for Safire’s second album.
To wit, did you see the GQ cover story on Jackson a couple of months ago? One of the most moving bits was the brief anecdote about how he asked to sit in and watch Stevie Wonder work on “Songs in the Key of Life.” How he wants to get inside the music’s “anatomy.” We know him as a performer of stratospheric gifts, but he was also a tremendous technician–it’s so reassuring to hear him count out “1, 2, 3, 4 …” at the beginning of “This Is It,” so casually in control.
But so thoroughly encoded into contemporary pop are Jackson’s template and tricks — in everyone from Justin Timberlake to Rihanna to Ne-Yo and far beyond — that the odds of a new song bringing shock were never very good. The future was molded in his shadow.
His attempts to update his sound on his last albums, from asking the Notorious B.I.G. to tag along on 1995’s “HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I” to the stilted neo-soul on 2001’s “Invincible,” were never fully convincing. At the time of his death, it was reported that he’d been working on a dance music album with will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas, another Jackson acolyte.
Who knows how that might sound? Maybe it’s better, then, to have the letdown of the merely familiar.
Ştiam eu de ce mă tem: de toate sonysmele de acum referitoare la cel de care şi-au bătut joc cât a trăit. Singura bucurie este că nu e ţara noastră posesoarea tuturor tâmpiţilor din lume, răspândirea acestora ţinând cont de densitatea populaţiei pe kilometrul pătrat de sol terestru. Numitul "chairman" care a explicat cum şi de ce au ales cântecul este, probabil, un critic muzical de la noi ce şi-a luat un pseudonim comercial pentru a fi angajat de marea firmă de entertainment. De unde reiese că năravul rău se ia, dacă mai era nevoie de vreo demonstraţie.
