Janet Jackson and Luther Vandross, ‘The Best Things In Life Are Free’: The long road to success

Janet Jackson & Luther Vandross
‘The Best Things In Life Are Free’

Highest UK Top 40 position:
Number 2 on August 23, 1992

1.

If you’re successful at something you don’t want to do, are you really a success?

For example, imagine a guy who always wanted to be a painter, but ended up an accountant. He’s a great accountant, making loads of money and helping his clients. But he never got to live his dream.

Some might call him a failure on some level. Maybe he sees a failure when he looks in the mirror each morning.

Okay, now what about someone who is successful in a job adjacent to their dream? The painter who runs a gallery owner. The writer who becomes a literary agent. The footballer who ends up a sports journalist.

Are these people successful? Or is it somehow worse to miss out on your dream by a whisker?

The documentary 20 Feet From Stardom does a great job of exploring this dilemma. If you haven’t seen it (you should, it’s great), it’s about the world’s greatest backing singers, people like Darlene Love and Merry Clayton. They all wanted to be famous singers in their own right, but they spent their careers standing behind the real stars.

The people featured in 20 Feet From Stardom all had incredible careers. They talk nostalgically about the times they had and the things they did, and how it was almost enough.

2.

Okay, time travellers, today we need to go back beyond the 90s.

Back to 1981. We’re in Minneapolis. Everyone is shivering their asses off in another Minnesota winter, but there’s an excitement on the local music scene. Something incredible is happening. Prince is putting a new band together.

Prince is only 22, but he’s already working on his fifth album, the mighty Controversy. Songs are pouring out of him. One album per year is too slow a pace for his creative output

But his record contract allows him to sign and produce new artists for the record label. So, Prince puts on his Simon Cowell trousers and decides he’s going to manufacture a band.

First, he gets renowned local singer Maurice Day. Then he poaches some members of a local group called Flyte Time, which was a proper band that had previously included Cynthia Johnson (who sang ‘Funkytown’) and Alexander O’Neal.

All of which is to say: these guys are no slouches. This new band, called The Time, contains some of Minneapolis’s finest talent.

But if you listen to The Time’s debut album, you won’t hear them play a single note.

Prince was using The Time as a front to release more of his own music. He played every note on every instrument on their record. Maurice Day did sing the vocals, but he had to accord with Prince’s very detailed notes.

It was a Milli Vanilli situation, but if the Milli Vanilli guys had been talented musicians.

3.

The Time did play as a live band. They supported the Controversy tour and focused all of their energy on blowing him Prince & The Revolution off the stage.

At one point, the tense atmosphere descended into a food fight, which began when Prince threw eggs at them while they were onstage. (Prince would later cast Maurice Day and The Time as the bad guys in Purple Rain.)

Two members of The Time were fed up with the situation. Keyboardist James “Jimmy Jam” Harris and bass player Terry Lewis had both been in Flyte Time days, and now they wanted to start their own band.

The pair started writing songs together while doing a little production work on the side. During a Prince tour, they got a call to come to help the S.O.S. band mix some new tracks.

Jam & Lewis planned to do the studio work and then immediately jump on a plane to join The Time in San Antonio, but a sudden blizzard left them stranded in Atlanta. Prince, furious at their insubordination, sacked them.

Jimmy Jam recently told Rolling Stone:

Prince basically fired us the night we mixed that record. When he called and wanted Terry back — he didn’t want me back — that record came out and was a smash. At that point we were producers.

The record in question was ‘Just Be Good To Me’, which was a big hit (and an even bigger hit when Beats International reimagined it as ‘Dub Be Good To Me’.)

Jam & Lewis were suddenly in demand for their production skills, but the ultimate goal was unchanged: a Jam & Lewis solo album.

4.

In 1985, Janet Jackson’s musical career was a disaster.

Her first two albums sank without a trace. Even her duet with Cliff Richard failed to chart.

Jam & Lewis were parachuted in to help her develop a new sound.

“Our approach to the artist had always been, ‘What do you want to sing about?’ We knew that Janet had a lot of attitude and a lot of feistiness just from watching her as a kid on the different TV stuff she did. Let’s create music that has that kind of attitude and let her run with it

“For five or six days we just hung out. We went to the movies, hung out at the lake, went to some clubs. We would have conversations about different things. ‘Nasty’ was about some guys bothering her at a club and she was like, ‘I don’t like nasty boys.’ She was talking about ‘I’m moving out on my own. I’m getting a place.’ Great, we’re going to write ‘Control.’ That was the process.” — Jimmy Jam

The label loved the record that emerged from the Control sessions, but felt that she was still missing a knockout single.

One of the executives came to hang out with Jam & Lewis for a while, and the duo decided to seize the moment and talk about their plans for a solo record. They took the exec for a drive and played him some of their songs.

Jimmy Jam told the story to NPR last year:

“We hop in the car; Terry puts a cassette in and he says, ‘Listen to this. These are some things we’re working on for our album.’ And about the third song, [the executive] goes, ‘Oh, that’s the one I need for Janet right there!’ … That song became ‘What Have You Done for Me Lately.’

“It was the song that launched her career basically and ended ours – at least as artists”

5.

‘What Have You Done For Me Lately’ established Jam & Lewis as A-list producers. Their track record is mind-boggling: forty Top 10 hits; sixteen Number Ones; over 100 Gold and Platinum discs.

Here’s just a handful of the songs that they’ve produced:

• ‘Human’—Human League

• ‘Monkey’—George Michael

• ‘Criticize’—Alexander O’Neal

• ‘Optimistic’—Sounds of Blackness

• ‘On Bended Knee’—Boyz II Men

• ‘Against All Odds’—Mariah Carey

• ‘Scream’—Michael Jackson

• ‘No More Drama’—Mary J. Blige

• ‘U Remind Me’—Usher

Plus almost every Janet Jackson album since Control.

In 1992, they were asked to soundtrack the new Wayans Family movie, Mo’ Money. The Wayanses were the hottest property in entertainment, thanks to their very cool and funny sketch show In Living Color, so there were high hopes for the movie.

Sadly, the film turned out to be a bit of a mess, and failed to live up to its excellent soundtrack. The highlight was the smash-hit collab ‘The Best Things In Life Are Free’, which combines the Luther Vandross’s old-school soul with Janet’s more contemporary R’n’B sound, and smashes it all into a feelgood pop song with a guest rap by Bell Biv DeVoe:

Last year, in 2021, the dream finally came true. Jam & Lewis finally released their debut album.

Jam & Lewis, Volume One is an absolute murderer’s row of guest collaborators, including Mariah, Mary J Blige, Usher, Toni Braxton, and their old friend Maurice Day.

While they are very gracious about their success, you have to imagine that this means a lot to Jam & Lewis. They’re not miming to Prince. They’re not helping Janet find her voice. Their names are on the cover of a record, rather than the small print on the inlay.

It took 40 years and a lot of detours, but they finally found success.

---

Thanks for reading!

If you enjoyed this, here are two things you can do next.

---