A new Michael Jackson song leaked: I Am A Loser

On Sunday, a full, previously unreleased Michael Jackson track titled “I Am A Loser” leaked onto the internet.

Michael wrote this song in January 2003 and, until 2009—up to the time of his death—he worked on it for a total of seven years.

Brad Buxer wrote the following in an article about the song:

In 2003, Michael and Brad Buxer, while working on music pieces, stayed in adjacent rooms at a hotel in Las Vegas.

Brad had recently separated from his wife and was trying to cope with this heavy grief. One night, he stayed awake late, pacing around inside his room while murmuring under his breath, “I Am A Loser! I really am a loser!” Michael, who was staying in the room next door, heard Brad and decided to check on him. He knocked on the door, went inside, and asked, “What’s wrong?” Before Brad could explain what was going on, he said again, “I Am A Loser.” And Michael suggested, “Let’s write a song about it.”

And so, the song “I Am A Loser” was born from the collaboration of the two. Interestingly, the music and lyrics of the track were completed that same night, all the way into the early hours of the morning.

To record the song, engineer and producer Michael Prince joined them. He says:

“We had the usual recording setup at our disposal. Pro Tools, a keyboard, a microphone, and headphones. We set up a small recording studio. Brad played the keyboard and Michael practiced the vocals. Everything happened very quickly.”

After Michael finished the test vocals for the song, Prince began his work.

Prince: “To get a good demo, Michael sang the song a few times. We worked on it more in Neverland and at other times and places. Michael liked to polish and work on his songs regularly.”

Michael has spoken about his own life in many of his songs, but this time he is the narrator of Brad Buxer’s real—and lost—love story. He sings: “I say hello / you say goodbye. I’m coming to you / but you don’t even try. I am a loser. I am a loser.”

Michael Prince has said that the leaked version of the song is not the final version that was worked on. The vocals are complete, but this is only a demo. In the middle of the song, we hear Michael say “aaah,” and Prince explains why:

“At that time, Michael was preparing to sing a part and then stopped. This version hasn’t been edited. Michael didn’t want that ‘aaah’ to remain in the song. What you hear is Michael’s vocals and Brad’s keyboard. This is really a demo. The vocals are untouched, unarranged, and unedited.”

Prince says the leaked version is a completed demo that was recorded before the song’s lyrics were changed. The final version of the song isn’t I Am A Loser, but I Was The Loser.

How did this happen?

“Michael was satisfied with the original version of ‘I Am A Loser.’ But before we shared it with someone else, we had a long conversation with Michael and he said: ‘I don’t want to be a loser. It doesn’t matter if I was a loser in the past, but I don’t want to say that I’m still a loser.’ So we changed it.”

When the lyrics were changed, Michael didn’t sing the entire song again—he only recorded the line “I was the loser.” This recording was done in late 2008 in a temporary studio that Prince had put together in Michael’s room at the Bel-Air Hotel.

Right around that time, Michael also sang additional parts of previously recorded songs, Best of Joy and Hollywood Tonight.

Michael had written the names of all these songs, plus some others, in a list of things he needed to do. That note—listing the names of 28 songs—was found in his room, next to the bed where Michael died.

Prince says there were songs that kept Michael’s mind engaged—sometimes he wrote new songs, and sometimes he pulled songs from the past and polished them.

Prince: “During the Invincible album period, we worked a bit on Scared Of The Moon, and Steve Porcaro was joking, ‘Wow, that song again?’ It was funny because I personally hadn’t heard the song before. But that was Michael’s way. He would say, ‘Why didn’t we put this on the album? Let’s listen to it again. Can we make it better?’ Sometimes the songs made it onto the album, and sometimes they didn’t.”

Michael Prince and Brad Buxer have asked that this leaked version of I Am A Loser not be released anywhere and that all links to this song be removed from the internet. We are obligated to respect the wishes of these two, and we will not publish the song’s link. But this song is still easily available to everyone on YouTube.

Source: eMJey.com