M People, ‘Don’t Look Any Further’: The wonderful world of Siedah Garrett

M People
‘Don’t Look Any Further’

Highest UK Top 40 position:
#9 on November 28, 1993

1.

The Mercury Music Prize was established in 1993 to recognise a new wave of British musical talent. The award goes to the best British album of the year, and it got off to a roaring start, with the first two prizes going to Primal Scream’s Screamadelica and Suede’s debut LP.

The third Mercury Prize in 1994 saw the most stacked shortlist yet. Britpop dominated with Blur’s Parklife and Pulp’s His’n’Hers, while The Prodigy represented rave culture with their groundbreaking Music For The Jilted Generation. Take That, Paul Weller, Shara Nelson and Therapy? also appeared on a diverse and exciting list.

And the award went to…

M People and the gentle dance-pop of Elegant Slumming.

This is one of the big moments in 90s music history, and we’ll talk about it in depth in a future newsletter. For now though, I want to focus on someone who was tangentially involved in this moment, and lots of other pivotal 90s events. This person who played a key role in both hip-hop and house music; she’s entangled in the Tupac and Biggie feud; she was close to Michael Jackson right until his downfall. And she’s part of the reason that M People won the 1994 Mercury Music Award.

Her name is Siedah Garrett. And she’s awesome.

2. Strange when you think of the chances

You may not have heard Siedah Garrett’s name before, but you are definitely familiar with her work.

Siedah spent a lot of the late 70s and early 80s trying to make it as a solo artist but with little success. In 1983, she attended a big X Factor-style audition for a manufactured pop band, although that turned out to be yet another dead end.

However, she caught the eye of the producer behind this project: Quincy Jones himself, who was riding high on the success of Thriller. Jones took her under his wing, and his patronage helped grow her reputation as a talented session singer.

One of her jobs took her to Motown Records, where they were trying to work out the vocals for a new duet between Chaka Khan and Dennis Edwards, who had just been fired from The Temptations due to his out-of-control drug habit.

(Edwards is probably best-known these days as the vocalist on ‘Papa Was A Rolling Stone’, which George Michael took to Number One in 1993.)

However, the record hit a snag—Chaka Khan was too busy to record her part. Motown started demanding a finished record, and Edwards eventually said, “screw it, let’s just use the demo vocal”. Garrett offered to re-record her vocals, but there literally wasn’t enough time. They just had to release it as-is.

They did ask Siedah to shoot a video, which was essentially just her and Edwards standing in front of a green screen. She later said, “the whole thing cost $11.57… including the electricity!”

The result is… honestly, one of the greatest videos of all time.

The video is iconic, partly because of the pair’s outrageous chemistry but mainly because Edwards is quite blatantly off his face. Garrett said this about the experience:

“Dennis was not in his best form [during the shoot]. In fact, Dennis was so amped up, the video director between shots, she would come over [with a piece of paper] and she said, “Can you put your gum in…” And Dennis said, “I ain’t got no gum?! I ain’t got no gum! Ain’t no gum in my mouth!” He was just chewing the shit out of his own tongue.

“And then, I didn’t know it at the time, but you know, when I turned around with my back to Dennis… I didn’t know that he was humping me behind me?! I had no idea. And when I saw it, I said, ‘That nasty bastard!’”

After ‘Don’t Look Any Further’, Quincy Jones connected Garrett with another Black icon, Sidney Poitier, who was shooting a dance movie called Fast Forward. Garrett performed the movie’s flagship song, ‘Do You Want It Right Now’, which failed to make the mainstream charts.

Siedah Garrett’s solo career was, at this stage, effectively over. But something big was about to happen for her.

3. Someone to count on in a world ever changing

Siedah sang backing vocals on Madonna’s True Blue LP, lending her pipes to ‘La Isla Bonita’, ‘Papa Don’t Preach’ and the title track. And then, in 1987, she got a life-changing call. Quincy Jones was helping Michael Jackson on his third album, Bad, and he was looking for songwriters to pitch ideas.

Songwriting wasn’t Garrett’s forte, but she did have a knack for lyrics. She knew that if she wanted to catch Michael Jackson’s attention, she would have to write something smarter than your typical boy-meets-girl love song. And so, Garrett approached Glen Ballard (best known these days for co-writing most of Jagged Little Pill) to see if could help her build up some ideas.

Ballard had been toying around with a piano motif, something sad but also kind of stirring. Garrett flipped through her notebooks, which were filled with scraps of poetry and overheard phrases jotted down over the years. One thought jumped out at her: the words, “Man in the mirror.”

She told Rolling Stone:

“I started singing the first verse to ‘Man in the Mirror.’ I couldn’t write fast enough. I was like, “‘Hold up, Glen. Hold up.’ I was trying to get it all out. My hands were just moving. In like 10 or 12 minutes, we had the first verse and the first chorus of ‘Man in the Mirror.’

“It was a Wednesday evening. Glen said, ‘You go home. You finish the second verse. I’ll finish the track. We’ll demo the song on Friday.’ I said, ‘Great.’ We got back on Friday afternoon. Finished the song on Friday evening.”

Quincy loved it, said it was the best song he’d heard in ten years…but it wasn’t right for Jackson. Maybe it would be a better fit for James Ingram?

Garrett was heartbroken, and not just because Michael Jackson was the world’s biggest pop star. As a kid, she and her cousins had been obsessed with The Jackson 5, and they’d all planned to marry them. Her cousins imagined a future life with Tito and Jermaine, but Siedah’s future husband had always been Michael.

Then, a few days after she’d spoken to Quincy, Michael called her personally.

“I had to just rein it in… I didn’t want to let him hear, “Oh, my God, Michael. I love you so much. You have no idea. You’re my husband!” I didn’t want any of that to be heard in my voice. He said, “Hello,” and I went straight-up hotel operator. “How can I help you?”

“The first thing he said to me was, “I love this song.” I said, “Thanks man.” The second thing Michael Jackson said to me was, “And I love your voice.” Oh, my God! Ooohh!! I was floating. I was on air.”

He requested some changes and asked her to record a new demo in Neverland. While there, he personally videotaped her performance, saying that he was studying her performance, “Because I want to sing it like you”.

Siedah Garrett is probably best known for another track on Bad, ‘I Just Can’t Stop Loving You’, where she duets with Michael. However, if you read the recent newsletter about Lorraine Crosby and ‘I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)’, you’ll know that it’s possible to duet on a hit record and still walk away empty-handed.

‘Man In The Mirror’ earned her a songwriting credit on Bad, which means she’s earned royalties from a record that sold 40 million. That gives her story a much happier ending than Lorraine’s—although Siedah Garrett’s story doesn’t quite end there.

4. And we’ll go on and on and on

Siedah’s music career peaked in the 80s, although she’ll show up again in the 90s as the lead singer of Brand New Heavies (she replaced N’Dea Davenport in 1997). However, the shockwaves of her career rippled throughout the decade, and her influence shows up in the strangest places.

For example, remember her solo hit, ‘Do You Want It Right Now’? That became a foundational text for house DJs, with Degrees of Motion taking it Top 40 hit in 1992. Gat Decor remixed it to even greater success in 1994; Armand Van Helden used it in one of his big hits in 2007.

Garrett kept working with Michael Jackson, singing backing vocals on his legendary Super Bowl performance which basically invented the modern idea of the Super Bowl performance.

Jackson himself kept trying to write socially conscious songs along the lines of ‘Man In The Mirror’, but things like ‘Heal The World’ and the ghastly ‘Earth Song’ fell short of Garrettt’s work. In the end, ‘Man In The Mirror’ haunted him a little, especially as the theme of self-reflection took on new meaning in light of the allegations. When Michael died in 2009, ‘Man In The Mirror’ was re-released in his honour, reaching Number 2 in the UK charts.

(Cascada kept it off Number One. The singles chart used to be merciless.)

But Siedah’s biggest legacy might be ‘Don’t Look Any Further’, a song that’s been sampled dozens of times, most notably on Eric B & Rakim’s game-changing single ‘Paid In Full’. People like Lil Wayne, Snoop Dogg, Junior M.A.F.I.A., Fat Joe, and TLC have used that bassline over the years. Most tragically, it was sampled on Tupac’s ‘Hit ‘em Up’, a savage diss track that escalated his feud with Notorious B.I.G. and Bad Boy records.

Three months after ‘Hit ‘em Up’, Tupac was dead.

And then there’s that Mercury Music Prize.

Would M People have won in 1994 if they hadn’t covered ‘Don’t Look Any Further’. Possibly. Elegant Slumming was a massive success and singles like ‘Moving On Up’ were absolutely dominant in 93/94.

But ‘Don’t Look Any Further’ definitely gives Elegant Slumming another dimension, a shimmering, late-night sexiness that stands out from the FM radio/office party vibes of the other tracks. That irresistible bassline might just have tipped the vote in M People’s favour.

Funny to think that this pivotal moment—and so much of 90s music history— hinged on a track that started with Siedah Garrett laying down a demo vocal. As the woman herself says:

“That’s why I tell singers to this day, ‘If you ever say to anyone, ‘Oh, that’s alright. It’s just a demo,’ I will choke you out. You never know where that ‘demo’ is going to go.”

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