What impressed producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis most when they worked with Mariah Carey for the first time was that she knew exactly what she wanted, and she had intimate knowledge of their previous work. "She knew our catalog upside down," says Jimmy Jam. "She knew everything about us and what we'd done. She had written a song with Diane Warren called 'Can't Take That Away,' and she said, 'You know how on the song "Again" you did the strings that sound like this and on "On Bended Knee" you did a drum program that sounded like this.' She could paint a total picture for us as to what she wanted the finished record to sound like."
Jam and Lewis didn't have a pre-conceived notion of what they wanted from Carey. "It wasn't like Janet [Jackson], where we all grew up together. Mariah had done her own thing and had been very involved with the arranging and production of her records, so we respected that and said, 'What can we do for you?' She would fly into town for five or six hours. We'd crank out a couple of songs. She'd get on a plane and fly to whatever was the next thing she was doing."
One night Jam and Lewis were at a Timberwolves game when they received a call from Carey's assistant, who told them she had an idea for a song and was arriving in Minneapolis at midnight. They met her at the studio at the appointed time. "She's got 'Thank God I found you' and that's about as much as she's got," Jam remembers. "She sang the melody. We usually have Big Jim Wright sit in on those kind of sessions to work out chords. He wasn't there so I had to work out the chords myself. So I'm playing and there was a part where I said, 'Man, what chord am I supposed to do here?' and Mariah has such a good ear, she sang me the chord."
Carey has a similar memory of that midnight session. "We just like sitting in a studio vibing off each other. 'Thank God I Found You' was a love song inspired by a relationship I was in at the time. I sang it to Jimmy and Terry and we put the song together from there. They have been so inspirational to me throughout my life. Growing up, I listened to so many songs they have written which are classics."
At that late-night session, Jam and Lewis knew Mariah wanted male singers to join her on the track. "Our first choice when we wrote the song was K-Ci and JoJo. They were on a different record label and there were a lot of problems getting clearance for them to do it. We booked studio time and kept saying to them, 'Just come in and sing it. You could nail it in an hour. We'll worry about the politics later.'" It never happened. "So we thought about voices that would work with the song. Joe was a known entity in R&B but nowhere near the star he is now. From what we knew about Joe, he was a nice guy who would be there for the video and performances. That becomes important when you do duets, and his label was willing." Joe was flattered to be asked. "When she called me to come to the studio," says Joe, "I had no idea I would record at that moment, but I couldn't let the opportunity slip away. She sat in the control room while I was singing in the booth and it was amazing to have her sit there and watch her smile and be in her zone."
Jam and Lewis also wanted male harmonies on the track, and recruited the four members of 98 Degrees. "They had to do their part quickly and to this day the guys say, 'Sorry about the vocal.' But they came in and killed it. And Joe killed it. We always thought he had so much talent and should be bigger than he is. It was really a stepping stone for him to go and do what he's done."
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