Without a doubt, the biggest star on "The Simpsons Sing The Blues" was Michael Jackson.
The Simpsons is known for many things. First and foremost, The Simpsons is known for its iconic episodes, such as The Monorail episode. Each of these episodes was skillfully brought to life by the show's amazing writers and talented cast members. Then there are the outrageously accurate predictions they've made. But the pop culture phenomenon isn't exactly best-known for the album it put out.
That's right, the long-running animated satire/sitcom made a musical album called "The Simpsons Sing The Blues". While we may not remember that now, back when it was released in 1990, it was a MASSIVE success.
According to a fascinating article by Complex, the release of the album was ultimately due to the high-demand for merchandising. But it still feels like a strange choice. Here's the truth about "The Simpsons Sing The Blues"...
Early Simpsons Episodes Like "Moaning Lisa" Inspired The Blues Album... That And Money
The stars who appeared on "The Simpsons Sing The Blues" are pretty impressive. And this was one of the main reasons the 10-track album (which also featured the cast singing as their characters) came in at No. 3 on the Billboard charts and had a single in the UK, "Do The Bartman". Ultimately, the idea for an album came from both the early success of the show and the fact that the episode of the show already featured Blues and jazz songs. In fact, musical numbers eventually made a huge impact on The Simpsons. But specifically, the Jazz/Blues influence on The Simpsons was huge due to Lisa and Bleeding Gums Murphy.
Soon after the episode "Moaning Lisa" was released, Simpsons co-creators Sam Simon, Jim Brooks, and Matt Groening got an offer to do an album of Simpson's music with Geffen Records.
"I had known James Brooks for quite a while, since Terms of Endearment," the album's producer John Boylan said. "I was peripherally involved with that movie as a music consultant, not on record or anything. I had been friendly with Jim Brooks, and I think he’s a wonderful filmmaker. Probably what happened was, and I have no proof of this, but Geffen gave him a shortlist of record producers and I was the only one on the list that Brooks knew."
The show was a success and monetizing it even more by releasing an album just made sense. And because of that scene with Lisa singing the Blues in the first season of the show, making it a blues album just made sense.
"You gotta remember this was highly collaborative and it was under tremendous pressure," John said to Complex. "The Simpsons were at the top of the zeitgeist at the time. I think they were selling something like 250,000 Bart T-shirts a week. It was just ridiculous. And, of course, all the right-wing people were getting mad at The Simpsons. It was the talk of the country at that time. David wanted to get the album out ASAP. At one point, I was collaborating with Geffen Records and Fox and Gracie Films all were involved with it. A guy named Matt Walden was the guy at Fox. Of course, I dealt with Jim Brooks, Richard Sakai at Gracie Films, and The Simpsons characters. Geffen Records [was] mostly dealing with Eric Eisner, Al Coury, and Eddie Rosenblatt. We were trying to keep that all together."
A ton of money was poured into the creation of the album in order to get it out sooner rather than later. This didn't seem to bother any of the writers as they were all excited about the idea.
"Brooks and everybody thought it would be great to be a blues album," John continued. "The writers got involved to come up with title ideas. I wrote a couple things. Brooks wanted to come in and write something about the sibling rivalry between Lisa and Bart, so I came up with the idea of Homer singing “Born Under a Bad Sign,” and we just started to have blues ideas. Even Mr. Burns has things to complain about, and it fit."
Of course, all of the voice actors had to find a way to sing (well) while keeping their character voices. This proved to be very challenging but helped them all out in the future as their characters have basically all sung throughout the show's 30-plus year run.
The Album's Star Power Centred Around Michael Jackson
Without a doubt, the biggest star on "The Simpsons Sing The Blues" was Michael Jackson. The King of Pop has had a long history with The Simpsons, mostly because he was a big fan!
"[Michael Jackson] called and volunteered [to do the album]," John said. "I knew Michael because he was an Epic artist. He was our top-selling artist while I was there. Being an A&R person at Epic, I knew him enough so that he recognized me. He brought in a co-producer name Bryan Loren. He and Loren were going to write a song based on a dance that Michael made up called 'The Bartman.'"
Of course, the album also featured a number of other artists who helped the piece gain massive success. One of those artists was DJ Jazzy Jeff.
"[The album] came out and just blew up. It was great," DJ Jazzy Jeff stated. "It was really funny because, I remember after the success of the record,
didn’t just go around telling people I produced "Deep Deep Trouble" on The Simpsons Sing the Blues. But when I’d tell people, "I did a song on The Simpsons album," it was amazing. almost got more props from doing that than some of the other records that I did. You knew people were really big fans of The Simpsons but not to the point that people bought the record and actually knew the name of the record."
[video=youtube;wdntmGp7lO4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdntmGp7lO4&feature=emb_title[/video]
https://www.thethings.com/the-true-origin-of-the-simpsons-music-album/
