On January 29th, 2019, James Ingram, one of my favorite singers, passed away from brain cancer. I’m a little late in paying tribute to him, but I wanted to do so because his work, as with so many musicians who were active in the 1980s, helped get me through some of the darkest times of my life.
I woke up this morning to some rather disheartening news. It was announced that Rod Temperton, a British songwriter, had passed away after a short battle with cancer. Who was Rod Temperton, I can hear some of you asking? To simply dub him a songwriter isn’t enough. He’s a man who made you dance ecstatically, even if you didn’t know his name. He’s a man who wrote music you might’ve been conceived to in the 1970s, even if others did the vocals. He’s one of the best examples of blue-eyed soul, and this is my tribute to this legendary talent. I first heard Rod Temperton’s music when I was a young child. I was a fan of Michael Jackson’s music as a kid, but I didn’t know until years later that he didn’t write a lot of his biggest hits. There was one song of Jackson’s that I absolutely loved. You all know it as well. It’s “Thriller”. When I was a child on vacation in Upstate New York, that was one of the first songs I ever tried singing at karaoke. I loved the spirit of the song and the full-on energy of both the music and the video. I didn’t know until years later that Rod Temperton had written it. I was impressed. I had no idea of Temperton’s origins. I just knew he created an amazing song. The music video for “Thriller” ended up on many lists of the greatest music videos of all time, but even without the visuals, the music takes you away to an unusual place where you find yourself lost in mystery.