Whenever we listen to a hit song on a streaming service, vinyl, or radio, we do not often think about its backstory. Behind a catchy tune are hours of recording, writing, and performing in the booth to deliver a final song that follows us long after its production. Besides the musical processes, there are plenty of executive directions on whether a release is viable. One of the cases that may not be familiar to the public is about Jamaican-American dancehall and pop artist Shaggy and his biggest hit, 2000’s song It Wasn’t Me. In the 2020 VICE documentary short, The Story of ‘It Wasn’t Me’ by Shaggy, the journalistic crew searches for how a scrapped record became one of the most prominent successes of the century.
In only twenty-five minutes, the short navigates through Shaggy’s beginning until the unexpected rise of his declining career with an adult song about adultery. The fast-paced and well-written interview leads the viewer to a thrilling story of an improbable hero in Hawaii. Firstly, it situates three crucial characters in the story: Shaggy, RikRok, and Sting International. Shaggy is from Kingston, Jamaica, but immigrated to Brooklyn to live with his mother. He would spend his time around his neighborhood, which lived throughout a crime epidemic. He decides to join the Marines to avoid the rising criminality in Brooklyn. Throughout his training in Parris Island, the Marines Corps Recruit Depot, Shaggy would sing melodies in military cadences. When he got out of the Marines, he returned to New York, and he got a hit song with Oh Carolina in 1993, a new version from the 1960 ska hit by the Folkes Brothers. When he got dropped by Virgin Records, he would sign with MCA Records, which gave him a deal to release an album.
Producing the new album, he had sessions with Sting International to arrange the sounding of the new record, and they made the demo for what would become the final version. Structurally, it is an interesting anecdote for the documentary how Sting proceeds to find the original tapes and demonstrates the differences between the demo and the finished version. The song has horns and a bass line, which makes it a catchy tune to replay multiple and multiple times. Indeed, the trio states how they carefully thought about every line and melody of the song during composition to increase its airplay value. It worked; the record sold ten million copies and is one of the most successful singles of the twenty-first century.
However, throughout the short, it is clear that the most fascinating aspect of its immense commercial success is how it became the hit that it was not supposed to be. The tension building of the directing is responsible for making it clear that it is a hit that happened by accident. An Artists and Repertoire representative heard the song when Sting and Shaggy went to grab lunch, and he saw potential there. The trio finished the track, and when MCA’s executives listened, they thought the album was a massive pile of trash. The description by the AR showcases how many unreleased great songs had been scrapped by the managers who would measure music only by financial potential. It is a noteworthy reflection to protect the release of art from any commercial prospect. In this particular case, It Wasn’t Me only became a massive hit because someone made an uploaded of the discarded album to Napster. Pablo Sato, a Hawaiian musical director of local radio and DJ, downloaded the file and played it on the station. When the song was still in the chorus, all the phone lines were busy with people asking about the track.
The connection with the listeners was so instantaneous that it affected a decadent Shaggy tour. He would play for three hundred people a night, and suddenly, there was not enough room for everyone when they went to play in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The lyrics and the upbeat dancehall-infused beat would resonate with people around the globe. The song is one of the most successful singles of the century, and it is still a fresh and catchy dance song to enjoy the night. The brief but well-edited and structured documentary tells us about how corporate greed can prevent the public from having engaging art. It is a fascinating portrait of how an accident changed the lives of Shaggy, who was almost being dropped by the label, and his collaborators forever. A leaked file would proportionate one of the most successful tracks, demonstrating how the internet could save and disseminate artistry.
Banner image courtesy of VICE.
The VICE documentary on It Wasn’t Me by Shaggy is available to watch on Youtube.
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