Pharrell Williams was in the studio with Justin Timberlake when someone told him he had a phone call on line one. It was Michael Jackson, they said.
“Man, get out of here,” Pharrell answered. He figured it was a friend from Virginia “trying to be funny.” He told the story on Apple Music’s “OTHERtone” in August 2015, and UPI and TheGrio both wrote it up that week.
To see why the call felt so unlikely, you have to go back to a CD. Producer Rodney Jerkins was working with Michael on “Invincible” when Pharrell rang him. “Yo, yo, please. Can I give you a CD?” Jerkins remembers Pharrell asking, in an interview with Okayplayer’s “The Almanac of Rap” that MusicRadar wrote up in 2024. Jerkins took it. “I’m the one that gave it to Michael to listen to,” he said.
Michael passed on the songs. “He felt it was too generic at the time,” Jerkins said. Michael wanted “ear candy that’s really different,” he explained, and without it “he not going to really rock with it.”
Pharrell then sat down with Michael to talk about the songs he’d turned down, UPI reported. Pharrell doesn’t think Michael saw what was coming. “I don’t think he realized that I was going to give those songs to Justin,” he says in the Okayplayer clip further down.
Justin’s first solo album, “Justified,” came out on Nov. 5, 2002, 24 years ago this week. The Howard Stern Show’s rundown of Pharrell’s April 2014 visit says “Rock Your Body” was “originally written for Michael Jackson.” It goes on: “It was an enormous hit for Justin, and Michael noticed.” According to the same rundown, Michael sang the songs back to Pharrell word for word. In the first clip, listen for Pharrell explaining how songs he first wrote with Michael in mind ended up with Justin.
Pharrell tells Howard Stern about the songs he wrote for Michael and Justin
This official clip from The Howard Stern Show runs under two minutes. It covers the songs, not the phone call.
Back in the studio, Pharrell took the call on line one. In the next clip, listen for the moment he stops doubting who’s on the other end.
Pharrell tells the story of Michael’s call to the studio
Okayplayer’s clip opens with Rodney Jerkins on how the demo reached Michael. Pharrell’s part starts at about 0:46, and the call comes up at about 0:56.
So how did he know it was really Michael?
“I heard someone eating popcorn in my ear, and that’s how I knew it was him,” Pharrell says at about 1:05. He has a name for that kind of move. “He’s just the king of trolling,” Pharrell says. “I think he invented it.”
Then Michael made small talk. “How are you, what are you doing,” he asked, as Pharrell tells it at about 1:21. Then came, “You’re working with Justin, oh that’s really nice.” He wished them a great session, added “tell Justin I said hello” and hung up. Justin had one question for Pharrell: “Who is that? Michael?”
Pharrell told “OTHERtone” that he and Michael only met twice, UPI reported. One of those meetings was about songs Michael didn’t want, and some of them ended up on another man’s first solo album. Michael still called the studio to say hello, popcorn and all.