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PAUL ANKA CO-WROTE MICHAEL JACKSON'S NEW SINGLE . . . IN 1983:
Tuesday October 13th, 2009

There was almost a little controversy over MICHAEL JACKSON'S new single, "This Is It".

Yesterday morning, CROONING MACHINE PAUL ANKA came out and claimed that he co-wrote the song with Michael all the way back in 1983, and he was going over his legal options with his attorneys.

Well, it never came to that, because the administrators of Michael's estate . . . John Branca and John McClane . . . ADMITTED that Paul co-wrote the song, and agreed to give him 50% of the publishing rights.

Here's a quick history of the song, according to Paul Anka . . .

Michael and Paul wrote the song in '83, under the title "I Never Heard", and recorded some demos.

But Anka claims that Michael . . . who was just starting to get huge thanks to "Thriller" . . . STOLE the tapes from the studio.  (--He didn't say WHY Michael would have stolen the song.)

Anka called Michael's lawyers at the time and threatened to sue . . . so they returned the tapes.  But Anka says Michael made COPIES.  Then he took a version of the song that had just his voice on it and re-titled it "This Is It".

In 1990, Anka gave the song to a singer you may remember by the name of SAFIRE.  She recorded it under its original title, "I Never Heard".  Michael's version remained unreleased until this week.

Here's an interesting detail to this story:  When Anka first went to Michael's lawyers and claimed he'd stolen the demo tapes, one of those lawyers was . . . John Branca.

Yesterday, when all of this chaos was erupting, Branca said, "We acknowledge that Michael and Paul wrote this song together."

(--So Branca admits this now.  But where was he when the decision was made to release "This Is It" as a single???  We assume he knew.  Was he trying to sneak it past Anka???  Or did he somehow forget the song's history???)

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