New Jack Swing

YEAR: 1989

TRACK: Straight Up by Paula Abdul (YouTube, Spotify)

PLACE: Przemysl, Poland

MEMORY: I was sitting in my living room on our brownish, very 80s-Poland rug. I just got my first, brand spanking new, blank cassette tape. I unwrapped it and put it into our family’s Kasprzak magnetophon. The radio DJ was playing the hit songs and I remember waiting for that next announcement – it would be my test recording. I wanted to press the red button at the precise time, so I didn’t miss any seconds. When the song started playing, the DJ was still talking, but in a split moment, I went for it anyway and managed to get most of Paula Abdul’s hit intro! I was lost in a dream. I ended up getting the cleanest recording possible; which pretty much meant that there was almost no talking over the intro, the song wasn’t brutally interrupted by any jingles, and the radio didn’t lose reception. I was 9 and this is when I started my straight-up affair with cassettes and my love for the 80s and 90s new jack swing.

FOOTNOTES:

• It’s sometimes unbelievable when we read about how some songs came about. Some are written in 10 minutes and recorded overnight, some are created over the course of agonizing months or years, and some don’t even sound like anything usable at first but with the right vocals, arrangement, and production, they become hits. Paula’s hit song backstory is one of the most interesting out there. According to Paula Abdul, her mother got the demo of Straight Up from her assistant. The demo version was very bad but Paula heard something she liked in it. The whole turn of events is very interesting to follow and there are videos on YouTube of Paula talking about it.
• I’ve always been particularly fond of the New Jack Swing genre. It was very prevalent in the 80s and 90s popular music that I grew up with. I often go back to many hit songs with that syncopated swingbeat because they are all timeless and still make me wanna move. These are some of my many more hits with the beat that are in my playlists: Back to Life (However Do You Want Me) by Soul II Soul (Boy, was I fangirling over the lead vocalist, Carolyn Wheeler.), Who is It by Michael Jackson (My Jackson’s all-time favorite!), Don’t Walk Away by Jade (Those harmonies on the answering machine recording set the quality standard for everything I do!), Free Your Mind by En Vogue, (I always appreciated that En Vogue would highlight all of their singers in their songs, and not just one.), or Just a Step from Heaven by Eternal (They say it was the British answer to En Vogue, but to me, they were a very unique stand-alone act with their own vibe and set of hits.)