Too many. Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis have too many hits to pack into this introduction. Almost from the day Prince dismissed them from the Morris Day-led party funk band The Time, Jam and Lewis began co-writing and producing an unprecedented streak of Billboard Top 20 hits for dozens of artists, including Boyz II Men, Mariah Carey, Mary J. Blige, the Human League, Michael Jackson, George Michael, New Edition, Usher and Karyn White. Their best-known collaboration, a decades-long working relationship with Janet Jackson, has yielded nine No. 1 singles, from “When I Think of You” to “Escapade.”
Nothing But Hits, Jam and Lewis’ upcoming residency at Voltaire at the Venetian, will see the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees playing beloved favorites from that storied Billboard chart run, joined on stage by powerhouse vocalists Ruben Studdard and Shanice Wilson.
Sitting at the end of Voltaire’s runway in their signature suits, hats and sunglasses, they gave the Weekly a brief look at what’s sure to be a packed playlist.
I know you want to surprise us, but can you reveal maybe one hit from the show?
Jimmy Jam: The great thing about this show is that you will not hear Terry and I sing. Well, a little bit, maybe some background and stuff, or else it’ll be a comedy show. Because that could definitely happen.
I guarantee you, if you think about your 10 favorite hit songs from the Jam and Lewis catalog, you’ll probably hear all 10 of them. … I won’t say each song will be a full meal, but it’ll be like a tasting. You will hear a little bit of a lot of songs. I mean, we’ve had over 40 top 10 records at this point, so we have a lot to choose from, and we’re open to suggestions.
I’d like to ask what you remember of those hits, beginning with Janet Jackson’s “Rhythm Nation.”
JJ: “Rhythm Nation” was just an idea. Lyrically, we knew what we wanted it to be, but we couldn’t figure out what kind of track to do, although we knew it needed to be up-tempo, it needed to be powerful. We were at dinner and Sly and the Family Stone’s “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)” came on … It kind of became background noise, until the little break in the song came in. And I was like, “Check, please.” I knew immediately that was the foundation of the song. We put it in a little AMS sampler that only had maybe six seconds of sampling time, but it was enough to get the [Jam sings the jagged guitar riff], and we just looped it. And I remember, as we were doing the track, Janet walked in, and she just said, “Is that ‘Rhythm Nation?’” And we said, “We think so.”
That record hasn’t aged a second.
JJ: Our favorite album of all time is Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On. You think about the fact that its words and lyrics are so relevant today, and that was over 50 years ago … So that’s not good. We’re very proud that the Rhythm Nation album has stayed in people’s minds … It was kind of a solution-based album where we were trying to get people to realize we have more in common than we do apart from each other. Hopefully, those messages continue to resonate, and make some change in a positive way.
George Michael, “Monkey.”
JJ: George Michael was so succinct in what he wanted. I say that because a lot of times, artists would ask us to do a song and then we’d say, “Well, what kind of song are you looking for?” And they’d say, “Oh, I love everything you do.” And it’d be like, “We don’t even love everything we do. Give us a clue.”
So, George called us and he was very succinct in what he wanted. He said, “You guys did two remixes that I really liked. You did the ‘Nasty (Cool Summer Mix)’, and you did the ‘Diamonds (Cool Summer Mix)’. And what I liked about those mixes was you put chords over the groove, but it didn’t lose the funk. Every time I try to put chords over ‘Monkey’ it loses all the funk.” So that gave us our assignment: “Okay, we know exactly what to do.”
It was just going to be a remix initially, and when he heard it, he said, “I’ve got to re-sing this.” So, we ended up going to LA for four days because he was coming from the Bahamas or somewhere warm and he didn’t want to come to cold Minneapolis. He got in, did what he wanted to do, and we ended up having a huge record. … It was wonderful to work with him. I’m sorry we didn’t get a chance to work with him again. He was immensely, immensely talented. And it’s actually the reason that I met my wife, too, because she came to the session and we’ve now been married for 32 years.
Sounds of Blackness, “Optimistic.”
JJ: Ah. Our favorite song. Actually, we have two favorites. “Favorite” is always tough, because there can be a lot of reason for “favorite.” Sometimes it’s the experience of doing it; sometimes it’s how much it sells or how high it goes on the charts. But “Optimistic” … I always say, if there’s ever a time capsule that says “Jam and Lewis,” and 100 years from now the aliens came down and open it up, what would be the song it would play? It would be “Optimistic,” because I think it explains everything about Terry and myself that you would want to know—our rhythm, our melody, our lyric.
The other song in the time capsule would be…
Terry Lewis: “Open My Heart” by Yolanda Adams, just because it’s one of those songs that gives you a spiritual reaction. People call me and say, “I heard this song and I had to pull over to the side of the road, and I just cried. It just allowed me to just refresh myself and connect with myself again.” So that kind of visceral reaction is important in any kind of art, I think.
The Human League, “Human.”
JJ: “Human” was a series of missteps. The beat for “Human” was actually a LinnDrum [in which] you could change the sounds. The little chips that were in there … the beat was supposed to be 808 chips. The beat was supposed to be more like a [makes soft booping sounds], that kind of beat. But at one point in time, the chips got swapped out for some big, heavy drums. So, I just happened to turn the drum machine on, and it [he makes heavy, distorted drum sounds] went like that. And I was like, “Oh no, no, that’s the wrong sound.” And Terry said, “No, that’s good! That’s good. Do something with that.”
And he was right.
JJ: [Chuckles.] Of course he was right! He’s always right. Anyway, that’s kind of how “Human” started. Lyric-wise, we thought it would be cool for a group called the Human League to do a song called “Human,” particularly because their music was so robotic: [sings like a robot] “Don’t you want me, baby.” … And Phil Oakey, the singer in Human League, did a wonderful job. Terry produced that vocal.
Oakey has said it’s his favorite vocal ever.
JJ: Yeah, it’s a beautiful vocal. And then we put background vocals on; it was basically Terry doing the backgrounds, along with a girl named Lisa Keith. She was kind of our secret weapon, secret sauce background singer. And when the other girls in the Human League [Susan Ann Sulley and Joanne Catherall] heard that, they said, “Who’s that other girl on the side?” We said, “Oh, that’s Lisa Keith.” “Well, I don’t think we like that other girl on the song.” Oh, okay. It started a whole conversation.
We called the record company, said “We’re going to pull the song off.” And they said, “What are you talking about? That’s going to be the single.” We were like, “Well, we got to finish it the way we feel like it should be finished.” Then Terry came up with a genius idea. Since the girls weren’t singing on the song, he said, “I got a part for them to do.” And he came up with the spoken part, where [Catherall] says, “While we were apart, I was human, too.”
That, to me, was the final ingredient that the song needed. Because a lot of those songs, if it’s an apology song or a regret song, it’s always one side of it. But in a relationship, there’s two sides. And it happened that Phil Oakey was actually seeing the girl [speaking] that part. It made it really good. The adversity of making the song … is part of the reason that it came out so beautifully. Problem solving is a big part of music production.
In revisiting your career, have there been songs you’ve been tempted to go back and tweak? Add to, subtract from?
TL: I don’t think I would want to add anything to anything that’s already done, because I tend to think more forward. Once it’s done, I don’t even really listen to things I did. I’m just now listening to things that we did years ago.
JJ: [Chuckles] Remind ourselves, yeah, that was good.
TL: That was good! You can’t get caught up. They say yesterday’s score doesn’t count in today’s game, right? We got to stay current and look towards the future. But it is fun to listen back, just to hear where we were, where our thoughts were, where the performances were, just knowing where the inspiration came from. And that was the artists that we worked with. We worked with so many brilliant artists over the years, and that part of it is special. I love the journey, and the journey for me is more important than the destination. I hope I never arrive. I just want to keep having fun.
Are there tracks of yours that you wish had gotten more attention than they did?
JJ: The first one that always pops into my head was a song we did with Gladys Knight called “Home Alone.” I love the arrangement of it. Gladys’ voice … to work with her was just amazing. It was never a single, [but] I think it’s a beautiful arrangement with beautiful words.
TL: I have two. Deborah Cox, “Did You Ever Love Me?” and Patti Austin, “Summer is the Coldest Time of Year,” which is just a brilliant song.
JJ: That was our Quincy Jones homage. After he said, “Hey, work with Patty Austin,” we were like “Okay!” We tried to make as many Quincys as we could.
TL: There’s a bunch of Usher [tracks]. There’s a bunch of Janets, even.
Come back and do “You Should’ve Made This a Hit.”
TL: [Laughs.] For me, there’s three kinds of songs. There are good songs, bad songs and hit songs. We can dispute good and bad. Can’t dispute hits, but what makes things hit for me is how it makes me feel. It doesn’t necessarily have to be on top of a chart or anything like that, because everybody makes it a hit. It’s not just us. We just make music, and then you need people to take it and market it and play it and listen to it and to buy it and consume it, and that’s what makes it a hit. All we can do is make music. It’s got to be fun for us. We just love to play the music.
One last question. It’s the inevitable AI question. How does it feel, being stewards of this handmade medium, when someone can just enter a prompt saying, “Make me a Jam and Lewis banger?”
JJ: I just think that humanity is what makes the music great. AI can kind of scrub away all our mistakes that we made over the years, but the mistakes are part of what makes the music great. When you make it too perfect, I think it doesn’t sound right.
Good example: You just asked your question about songs that were not as big of hits as we thought they should have been or were under looked. But there’s been songs that have gone the other way. “Saturday Love” [a top 40 hit from 1985, by Cherelle and Alexander O’Neal] … we only wrote one verse [for that track], because we ran out of time. And it was just like, “Oh, just have Alex sing the same verse as Cherelle.” People look at that and they go, “Wow, that’s genius.” And it’s like, no, it’s just laziness, but that’s fine if you think that. [Terry laughs.]I think AI is basically taking every successful record that we’ve had and trying to scrub that. But there’s a lot of humanness in making mistakes, and the learning process of that. I think that’s the thing that AI can’t do.
I also think that AI needs some guardrails. My analogy is when cars were invented, we were horse and buggy, so we had dirt roads... When cars got invented, they said, oh, let’s pave the roads. Yeah, it might be a good idea to put some lanes on the road. That’s a really tight curve; we should put a guardrail there. Should probably put a speed limit on it. Doesn’t mean that people don’t drive it, just means they do it safely. And I think that’s the thing with AI. I think that you have to have the compensation for the people who are basically getting their stuff scrubbed, and you must have their permission to use it. If someone says, oh, here’s a Jam and Lewis prompt and I’m going to make a song, that’s fine, but maybe we should participate in that. We should be asked, is it okay to do this?
TL: Yeah. In a world where music sells everything but music itself, it’s important to protect the creators of said music. … Do we get a piece of that? If not, just leave it there.
JIMMY JAM & TERRY LEWIS April 17-18, 22, 24-26, 9 p.m., $100-$205. Voltaire, voltairelv.com.
