Michael Jackson’s “This Is It” : An Old Song by Paul Anka

Uncategorized, Hollywood, Entertainment |

By MAJOR TOM | October 13, 2009

This has already been blogged about overnight - first by TMZ, then What Would Tyler Durden Do and Idolator - but it’s worth mentioning as a postscript to yesterday’s review of Michael Jackson’s ‘This Is It’, supposedly a ‘new song’ but actually nothing of the sort.

Turns out Jackson co-wrote it back in 1983 with former teen heartthrob Paul Anka. And now Anka’s peeved because he’s not been credited, and is threatening to sue.

“This Is It” was originally recorded by Jackson in a spartan piano-and-vocal version, fleshed out here with strings and swooping backup vocals courtesy of Jackson’s brothers. It’s a sweet, swaying, rather pedestrian number. It is also, to Jackson aficionados, eerily familiar, bearing an uncanny resemblance to “I Never Heard,” a song co-written by Jackson and Paul Anka that appeared on a 1991 album by the R & B singer Sa-Fire. In fact, the two songs are identical.

A lot of questions got resolved yesterday about the new Michael Jackson single “This Is It” — in particular, exactly who wrote the tune. (The answer apparently being Jackson and veteran singer-songwriter Paul Anka.) But you may still be wondering just who is Safire, the singer who originally recorded the track when it was called “I Never Heard.”

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Safire was born Wilma Cosme on the island of San Juan, Puerto Rico, and subsequently moved to New York’s Spanish Harlem. In the late ‘80s, she recorded a clutch of singles for Cutting Records and became a leading light of the on-the-rise Latin hip-hop/freestyle scene (a largely regional phenomenon whose ranks yielded stars like Stevie B, Exposé, and Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam).

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