Paul Anka Wrote ‘This is It’ Song
October 27, 2009 by admin
Filed under Paul Anka Wrote New Song
It has now been reported that the new This is It song being released for Michael Jackson is not new but rather old and written by Canadian Paul Anka. The discovery was a bit of a shock to the estate.
According to many reports circulating on the Internet, the pair had been working together at Mr. Anka’s studio in Carmel, Calif., in 1983, Mr. Jackson bunking in the guesthouse. But before the tracks were finished, an assistant of Mr. Jackson’s absconded with the master tapes.
“He sent one of his secretaries over to one of the studios on Sunset Boulevard,” Mr. Anka said. “She went in and just took them, and when I got there I was told what happened. That’s when I knew we had trouble.”
Mr. Anka spoke to The Globe and Mail in Toronto in reaction to the furor over the release by Sony Music and the Jackson estate of the single This Is It.
According to the Globe and Mail story the following was reported:
Although the track was originally heralded by Sony as “brand new,” it became strikingly clear after its release that the song was an undisguised version of I Never Heard , co-written by Mr. Jackson and Mr. Anka for the Canadian’s 1983 album Walk a Fine Line . The Jackson camp has since rectified the situation by acknowledging co-authorship and promising Mr. Anka 50 per cent of the publishing rights.
When Mr. Jackson and the Having My Baby singer collaborated for four weeks in California, the rising star’s galactic Thriller album hadn’t taken off yet. “He wasn’t totally isolated at that point,” Mr. Anka explained from Los Angeles. “We were two writers and two artists getting together. He was curious and I was curious, and once we started writing we saw there was something there.”
Once the tapes went missing, Mr. Anka, needing them to bolster his comeback album, was told by lawyers that they had lost the file containing the Anka-Jackson contract. “That’s when I hit them with a verb and a pronoun, and left the office,” said the former teen idol.
I Never Heard was to be a duet, like Mr. Jackson and Paul McCartney’s The Girl is Mine , a hit from Thriller .
Eventually, under the threat of legal action, the tapes were returned. Later, in 1991, I Never Heard appeared on an album by the Latino-American singer Safire. But it never made it onto Mr. Anka’s album, and his return to pop prominence was aborted. “I was smarting from the situation,” he admitted. “I was not happy with it.”
Years later, the begloved one and the Ottawa native happened across each other at an L.A. office building. Mr. Anka initially rebuffed Mr. Jackson’s request to talk, but eventually walked down the hall to meet an artist who by then had become significantly unconventional in his manner. “He was seated at the edge of a table,” Mr. Anka recalled. “He had the bandage on the nose and the hat, et cetera.” After Mr. Jackson apologized for seizing the tapes, Mr. Anka let the matter rest. “I said, ‘Okay, Michael, it’s behind us, don’t worry about it,’ and that was it.”
That was it – until This Is It . Before returning Mr. Anka’s master tapes in 1983, Mr. Jackson copied the piano part and his own feathery vocals onto a DAT recorder. That tape and others were found after he died on June 25, 2009, with the barebones I Never Heard track built up in the studio and retitled This Is It to coincide with the forthcoming concert film of the same name.
“I’m happy that it worked out for everyone,” Mr. Anka said, referring to his re-established publishing rights. He believes the song will net him “several million dollars.”
When record executive and estate executer John McClain called Mr. Anka this week to apologize over the This Is It situation, he mentioned he’d found another “great song” from Mr. Jackson’s stash. “Let me play it to you,” the My Way writer was told by Mr. McClain, who let him hear Love Never Felt So Good .
Mr. Anka agreed the song was good. But, of course, he would – he owns and is the co-writer with Mr. Jackson of that track as well. “I said, ‘Excuse me, sir, but that’s mine also,’” he related with a chuckle.
If he’s laughing all the way to the bank, it is because that song is scheduled to anchor the next posthumous Jackson album. And when that happens, all will be clear in advance – the song is his, the doggone song is his.
