The next day, Michael walks up to her grinning. He goes, “Guess what?”
“What?”
“My socks match.”
Siedah said she looked down at his socks, and they were sky blue. She told him, “Yeah, they match each other, but not what you have on.” LMAO. Another story that had the place dying with laughter. She said Michael just cracked up laughing himself and was like “Seid, you so crazy.”
Quote:
I have to get on to Miss Siedah Garrett. Ok, I have never seen this woman outside of her performing “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You” onstage with MJ. This woman is crazy! LMAO! She was hilarious. Extremely animated. I wasn’t expecting her to be like this at all. But she had the crowd cracking up with her MJ stories.Siedah told us exactly how “Man in the Mirror” came to be. Siedah said getting into the industry was not at all easy for her. She auditioned for every single thing she could. So after audition and audition, she lucked up ended up working with Quincy Jones. She initially had pretty much no experience as a song-writer, having only written poetry. Again, I apologize for not remembering names, but she was working on her song-writing skills with somebody. She said during a session, he got a phone call, answered it, and pretty much forgot she was there. She said she was fuming mad because it wasn’t even an important phone call. He was just chatting. So she said she sat there, annoyed, flipping through her notebook of song ideas. And then at some point in the conversation the guy was having on the phone, he said, “What man? Oh, the man in the mirror.” She said for some reason, she just wrote down the phrase, “man in the mirror” as she listened to him chatting on the phone.
So later, another day, she’s still working on writing songs (because she knew Quincy Jones was working with Michael Jackson and they wanted another song for the Bad album), and someone (Greg?…I know, my memory is horrible, I should have been taking notes!) was playing around on the piano as she was flipping through her notebook. He was playing this melody that ended up being the opening notes to “Man in the Mirror.” Right as he began playing, she said she just happened to flip to the page where she had written the line “man in the mirror.” And then something just happened, she said the lyrics of the song just started coming to her and she could hardly write fast enough to get them on paper. (She said just recalling this still gave her goosebumps). Shortly afterward, she had the song that would become the hit, “Man in the Mirror” written and she was so excited. She called Quincy to tell him that she had a song for Michael. Quincy wasn’t too enthused, lol. She said she was begging him over the phone to listen to the song. She continued to beg and plead until Quincy got ****ed off and said, “Ok, sh*t. Bring it over.”
Then, she tells us about her incredible timing, lol. She went to bring Quincy the song right when he was in an important meeting. So everyone was ****ed at her for interrupting. She gave the song to Quincy, begged him to listen, he said, “Ok, sh*t,” and slammed the door.
Later, she gets a phone call from Mr. Jones, telling her he listened to the song, thought it was great. So of course, Siedah is on cloud nine. Then she hears a “but”…and her spirits drop. It was Quincy saying, “I love the song, but Mike doesn’t really use other people’s songs. He likes being involved in creating the songs, likes to write his own stuff, blah, blah, blah.” She said at this point, she was pretty much blocking out what Quincy was saying because she didn’t want to hear it. Quincy ends up telling her not to worry, because if MJ didn’t want the song, he’d give it to James Ingram.
Siedah said in response to this, she was thinking: MICHAEL JACKSON, James Ingram.
Needless to say she who she was hoping the song would go to, lol.
Then of course, later, she gets another call.
Quincy: Well, we’re recording your song.
Siedah:
Quincy: But…
Siedah:
Quincy: Michael says the bridge isn’t strong enough. (Pause…someone talking in the back-ground). And the first verse needs to be longer. (Pause). And…(Pause) And…. You know what. Hold on.
Michael: Hello…
Siedah: (inside her mind = OMG, UNF, My Husband!)
LOL! Siedah, being like so many millions of women in the world, said she loved MJ and thought that was her husband, lol. But she had to be cool while talking to him. So while she said she was hysterical on the inside, she put her on “AT&T” voice and said:
“Hello. How can I help you?”
(The audience was laughing so hard at this point).
So she said Michael told her he loved the song, but thought it needed some work. So he told her how he wanted her to fix it up. And of course, if she wanted him to use her song, she had to go with it. She said she ended up writing six different bridges to the song for him. The one he choose:
If you want to make the world a better place
Take a look at yourself and make a change
You gotta get it right while you’ve got the time
‘Cause when you close your heart, you close your mind
So then it came time to do background vocals, so Siedah had to go into the studio to sing with MJ. She was going to meet him, and of course, was nearly hysterical. She said that she forced herself to be calm; she didn’t want to behave like the screaming fanatic that she was on the inside, lol. So she said she was calm and cool when she met him. Apparently, she was checking him out because she remembered every detail about what he was wearing, lol. Black fedora, white shirt, red jacket, black pants, loafers…She said the only thing missing was his white socks. She looked down at his feet and saw that he had on one brown sock, and one blue sock. So after hanging out with him and getting to know him a bit better throughout the day, she finally said, “Michael, what’s up with the socks?” She said Michael looked at her and said, “It was dark when I got dressed.”
The next day, Michael walks up to her grinning. He goes, “Guess what?”
“What?”
“My socks match.”
Siedah said she looked down at his socks, and they were sky blue. She told him, “Yeah, they match each other, but not what you have on.” LMAO. Another story that had the place dying with laughter. She said Michael just cracked up laughing himself and was like “Seid, you so crazy.”
She also told us the story behind, “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You.” So, I think fans know the song was supposed to be MJ and Barbara Streisand (an idea Quincy rejected because he felt Barbara was too old). So then it was supposed to be MJ and Whitney Houston. Whitney was busy. Who was there? Siedah. They handed her the lyrics. She saw Michael’s name, his line, then her name, her line. She was thrilled to be doing a duet with “her husband.”
What she did not know at the time was that MJ was such a huge prankster. There was always so much laughter and joking around going on in the studio that it would annoy Quincy. So whenever Quincy got annoyed with the joking, Michael would make it his business to make other people mess up in the studio. So when they were about to record IJCSTY, Quincy was in “serious mode” and was telling Siedah to go one and sing her part. So she goes behind the mic, starts singing, and all of sudden had popcorn and peanuts being thrown at her (she gives us a hilarious re-enactment of her trying to sing while dodging flying peanuts aimed at her head). Quincy was not amused, kept yelling at her to quit playing around and sing the song. And she said she was just thinking to herself, “Oh, it’s my fault that Michael keeps throwing stuff at me?” And Michael of course, was in the corner, laughing his butt off.
There was this touching moment where she talked about how Michael liked to observe things and would sometimes stand on the balcony and look over everyone. And then she looked up at the ceiling and said, “Like he is now.”
*sigh*
As to why she was replaced with Sheryl Crow…Siedah missed 5 rehearsals, in attempts to start working on her own album. Sherly Crow was hired. And that was that.
-‘Dianater‘ at MJFC
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