released under Epic Records on July 28, 1979, Don't Stop Till You Get Enough was
the first track on Jackson's fifth studio album Off the Wall, and was the first solo
recording in which Jackson was allowed full creative control.
But here's the real magic of Don't Stop Till You Get Enough.
Before the extreme fame, before the insanity,
before the King of Pop business and subsequent controversies,
Michael Jackson's first serious solo venture gives a unique insight
into the man he would become sensual, androgynous and carefree.
Michael brought love to the dance floor, your bedroom and all spaces in between.
A rare moment in Michael Jackson's pop
history when vitality and optimism overrode hype and expectation and his work
displayed his naive talent in its purest form.
This is the story behind the inspiration, production and commercial reaction,
the inspiration.
Jones suggested himself and they began work on Off the Wall at the time.
Michael was very much still a member of the Jacksons, and his father, Joseph,
only approved of the project and allowed him to record a solo on the condition
that it didn't interfere with his commitment to the group.
When Jackson began the Off the Wall
project, he was not sure what he wanted as the final result.
However, he did not want another record that sounded like the Jacksons,
but rather he wanted more creative freedom, something he had not been allowed
on prior albums despite his brother's desire to work with him.
Jackson wanted to make the album independently of his family.
After listening to hundreds of demos,
Quincy Jones encouraged Jackson to write his own songs, and the younger singer
quickly developed a talent for composition.
Jackson claimed that when the melody came to him, he couldn't shake it off.
He found himself humming and singing it
while walking through the Jackson's Encino home.
As Michael was not a keyboardist,
although certainly capable of playing piano, he had his brother Randy perform
the melody on a piano in the family's recording studio.
The chorus contains one of the most misheard vocals ever.
The line is Keep up with the force. Don't stop.
Don't stop till you get enough.
Jackson is said to have been inspired
by the movie Star Wars, which popularized the concept of the forest.
When Jackson's mother, Katherine Jackson,
a devout Jehovah's Witness, heard the song,
she was shocked by the lyrical content and felt that the title could be
misconstrued as pertaining to sexual activity.
Jackson reassured her that the song was
not a reference to sex, but could mean whatever people wanted it to.
Upon playing the recording to Jones,
it was agreed that the song should be featured on Off the Wall
the production.
Not only was it the first solo song Michael Jackson wrote by himself
previously writing Blues Away by the Jacksons in 1976.
But it was also the song that introduced
Jackson's falsetto voice and famous vocal hiccups, which would become one of his
signatures, along with Jackson's vocal hiccups.
The song begins with a spoken word section by Jackson before he bursts into singing.
Jackson wrote this song for an extremely
high vocal range, since his voice could not carry this alone.
He was overdubbed a few times to create a harmony and fill out the vocals.
Instruments used are a six piece horn, section, two trumpets, alto sax,
tenor sax, trombone and baritone sax string section arranged by band right
into guitars, keyboard bass, drums and percussion.
The rhythm mix is all about syncopation
with bass shakers, strings, horns and even a Coke bottle played
by Jackson himself filling in the spaces between the beat.
According to Bruce Swedien,
who was the engineer of the session, Jackson, his brother Randy and sister
Janet tapped soda bottles with drumsticks to form some of the percussion.
At the beginning of the song, Janet Jackson told Ryan Seacrest years
later, Michael had all these ideas and he needed someone to help him out.
We were just kids. We were just babies.
And so we're up there playing all kinds of percussion to help him create something
to give to Quincy so they could put the real thing down.
The music video at the time, before MTV music videos were not
commonplace for artists with Queen popularizing the art form only four years
earlier with the release of 1975 Bohemian Rhapsody.
However, Michael Jackson had a passion
for the visual medium and was keen to utilize its potential.
The music video
for Don't Stop Till You Get Enough was directed and produced by Nick Saxton,
who was a production assistant on George Lucas's Star Wars film TotEx
1038, and made its world premiere in October 1979.
It was Jackson's first music video as a solo artist.
The music video shows a smiling Jackson in a black and white tuxedo with a bow tie
resembling the Off the Wall album cover, photo dancing and singing the song while
appearing Croma Kid over a background of abstract geometric figures.
At one stage, Jackson is seen dancing
in triplicate, which was considered innovative at the time.
The commercial release
Don't Stop Till You Get Enough, was released on August 10, 1979,
under Epic Records, Jackson's first solo single, Away from Motown Records.
The song immediately became a worldwide smash, topping the Billboard Hot 100
on October 13th and eventually earned a platinum certification for sales
in excess of one million physical U.S. copies.
It also reached the top of the charts
in Australia, New Zealand, Norway and South Africa and was Jackson's
first solo number one single since then, seven years prior.
It was well-received by contemporary critics.
Stephen Holden of Rolling Stone described the song as one of a handful of recent
disco releases that works both as a dance track and as an oral extravaganza
comparable to Earth, Wind and Fire Boogie Wonderland.
Don't stop till you get enough earned Jackson his first solo Grammy Award
winning best male RB vocal performance at the 1980 Grammy Awards.
It was also nominated for Best Disco Recording,
the only year that category was offered but lost to I Will Survive.
The song also received favourite Soul R&D single at the 1980 American Music Awards.
Michael Jackson's solo musical release
also gave a boost to the Jacksons as the song became a hit during a four month
break between the first and second leg of the Jacksons Destinee tour.
The first leg of the tour saw the Jacksons
playing moderate sized arenas and theaters such as the Valley Forge Music Fair
in Philadelphia, which seated a crowd of 3000.
But after the release of Michael's solo project, the brothers revamped their show
for a much larger arena performances for the second leg.
Additional songs were added
to the setlist, most notably songs from Michael's new album.
That being said, don't stop till You Get Enough proved.
Michael Jackson was not just a child star and helped him break out from the Jacksons
as a hugely successful solo artist in his own right.
Jackson's biographer, J.
Randy Taraborrelli,
described Jackson's vocal styling as a sexy, playful falsetto that no one had
ever heard from him before, signifying a clear departure of Jackson
from his child stardom into a fully fledged musical powerhouse.
Nelson George stated the argument for Jackson's greatness began
with the arrangements of Don't stop till you get enough, he noted.
It's one thing to make a dance record.
It's another to instill that track
with an epic celebratory quality, as Michael does here.
Critic and Nicholson once proclaimed,
the song is heavily indebted to disco, yet it is not a disco song.
The rhythm structure is closer to funk
than disco, and the verse chorus structure is akin to rock music.
In summary, the result is so complex and skillfully developed.
It is pure dance music magic.