Working on a Michael Jackson album sounds like a dream job. For Teddy Riley, it also meant a very long stretch away from home.
If his name is new to you, his sound probably isn’t. Teddy is the producer who created the “new jack swing” sound of the late 1980s. In the early ’90s he was in the studio with Michael, making the “Dangerous” album.
Before we get to the homesick part, here’s Teddy himself explaining the sound he’s famous for.
Teddy Riley talks about creating new jack swing
Teddy told the story of what happened next on stage at the Red Bull Music Academy Festival in New York in 2017, in a talk hosted by Jeff “Chairman” Mao.
Michael’s people took good care of him at the studio. If he was hungry, someone was there asking, “You need food?” Michael himself was away in Switzerland at the time. At SXSW in 2018, Teddy added that Michael had even had a small apartment built onto the studio so he “wouldn’t have to leave, for anything.”
That sounds great until you’ve been gone for a while.
Teddy was homesick. And one day he finally said it out loud. Here’s how he told it on that stage.
So I said, “Michael, I miss my family.” He’s like, “Bring them.”
That was it. Two words.
Michael meant it, too. He said “Call Norma, bring them. They can come.” Norma was one of Michael’s assistants, and she’d make it happen.
Teddy pushed his luck a little. “I miss my friends too,” he told him.
Michael didn’t even blink. “Bring them!” he said. “Don’t worry.”
There was one more problem, and Teddy brought it up himself. In his words: I said, “Well how are we all going to get around?”
Michael had that covered. “Rent them all cars.”
And it happened. Michael’s assistants flew Teddy’s whole family out to California and put them up in a hotel for weeks.
But the line Teddy never forgot came when he thought about leaving. Michael wouldn’t hear of it. Teddy remembered his words this way.
“No! No, no, no, no, no. Please, stay. Everybody left me. I need you to stay. This is you and I. This is our album. It’s not just Michael. Your name is all over this.”
“Everybody left me.” Coming from one of the biggest stars in the world, that line stops you cold.
Teddy has talked about his years with Michael in other interviews, too. In this one, he sat down with Claudia Jordan on FOX Soul to talk about how he got his start and what working with Michael was like.
Teddy Riley on his start and working with Michael
Michael backed it up. He gave Teddy a brick phone so the two could stay in touch, and Teddy said Michael “wanted to just be in touch with me every step of the way.”
“And when he came back, there wasn’t a marketing meeting or anything without me being there,” he remembered.
The biggest song they made together was “Remember the Time.” Teddy co-wrote it with Michael and Bernard Belle, and he co-produced it with Michael. It came out on Jan. 14, 1992, and climbed to No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100. Here’s Teddy talking about working with Michael on that song and on the “Dangerous” album.
Teddy Riley on making “Remember the Time” and “Dangerous”
Then watch the finished song. Listen for that new jack swing bounce in the beat, because that’s Teddy all over it.
Michael’s official video for “Remember the Time”
When you watch it now, think of the producer behind it, the one with his whole family in a California hotel, who almost went home. Michael asked him to stay, and the song is part of what came from that.