The Guitar Riff on "That's The Way Love Goes" is from an Obscure Italian Keyboard
A look at the multiple samples and sounds that helped make a Janet Jackson classic.
Production duo Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis have always maintained a unique creative synergy with Janet Jackson—despite a rather inauspicious initial meeting in the mid-1980s. “I come from a sheltered background,” Jackson told journalist David Ritz in a 1993 Rolling Stone interview when describing her first encounters with them. “And then suddenly I’m off to Minneapolis, and these guys, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, are running around cursing like crazy. That made me so uncomfortable I wanted to go home—until I saw that they meant no harm or offense.”
In the 30-plus years since they have more than learned to navigate any differences in language and style, as the trio has worked together on many wildly successful and enduring records. Whenever they make music together, the end result is often boundary-pushing, captivating, and totally unique. And the process behind how they get such distinct sounds is just as fascinating as the music itself.
For starters, much of Janet Jackson’s 1986 monumental critical and commercial success Control was recorded too loudly after Jam and Lewis’ engineer left when they had just started producing her third album. The resulting music came out distorted and some of it was left that way, but this odd quirk somehow ended up working in the record’s favor. “It made for an interesting sound because some of the things [were] fixed and some [were] left distorted,” Jimmy Jam told reporter Mark Savage in 2005 BBC interview. “The record has this kind of loud, frantic sound.”
On Janet’s Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation 1814 follow-up, Jam and Lewis once again figured out new ways to push the boundaries of conventional R & B sound—this time with a bit more deliberate intention. They used an E-mu SP-1200 and paired it with sounds from an Ensoniq Mirage keyboard sampler to make the instrumentals for three of the album’s most successful songs—“Love Will Never Do Without You,” “Escapade,” and “Miss You Much.” (For more on these songs and Jam and Lewis’ catalog in general, check out Chris Williams’ essential Red Bull Music Academy interview with them.)
Though the 1200 is often associated with producers like Large Professor and Pete Rock, it is not necessarily a machine one would think of in association with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. Their use of it early on in the sampler’s existence goes to show their dedication to mastering their musical craft and understanding any tool that might give them a creative advantage.
Jam, Lewis, and Jackson were once again ready to achieve sonic perfection when Jackson went back to work on her 1993 album janet.. As the trio prepared themselves to come up with yet another hit to serve as a lead-off single, Janet admitted that the massive success of their previous projects together set quite a high bar for record label expectations.
Despite this, the three collaborators opted to try something stylistically subtle and different for the first song from janet. aimed at clubs, radio, and TV. “There was pressure to kick off the album with a more spectacular song,” Janet told Rolling Stone. “But I wanted to go the other way. I didn’t want to break down the door, just slip in through the side. We thought this easy-to-get-with groove—real gentle but real sexy—would be a warm way of kicking things off.”
To make the groove for “That’s The Way Love Goes,” Jam and Lewis took two familiar samples and flipped them on their heads by adding different elements to the beat. Blending the opening of James Brown’s “Papa Don't Take No Mess” with a smooth snippet of The Honey Drippers 788-times-sampled “Impeach The President” drum break, the Minnesota duo took Jackson’s sound to a different place. “That's as hip-hop as you can probably get,” Jam told Steve Appleford in a 2015 Rolling Stone interview. “It set the tone for what the album is.”
The James Brown and Honey Drippers elements are probably easy catches for seasoned sample spotters, but the source of the irresistible guitar strums on the track is a real jaw dropper. When a curious fan asked Jam about the guitar part in 2014, this was his response.
Jam is likely referring the S3 keyboard manufactured by the Italian company Generalmusic (GEM). A later iteration of the similar S2 model, the keyboard was introduced to the consumer market in the early 90s and would make sense in terms of the timeline of when janet. was released.
To think that Jam and Lewis were able to achieve such a fine balance of sound between two obvious/often-used samples and guitar strums from a little-known Italian keyboard is remarkable—a true testament to their talents as producers.
Perhaps even more incredible is the fact that Jackson didn’t like the original demo version of the beat when she first heard it.
According to Stephen Sears excellent 2013 Idolator article on the making of the album, Jam snuck his demo onto a tape he gave Jackson for a trip to Anguilla when she expressed lukewarm feelings at first listen. After returning from her trip, Janet had a change of heart and was so inspired by the beat that she rang Jam at 1 am while staying with him to lay down the official version of “That’s The Way Love Goes.”
In another interesting reveal, “If”—another one of the album’s major singles—was crafted on a Roland JD-800, something Jam also pointed out in the aforementioned interaction with fans.
It’s worth asking if there was a particular reason for such a specific focus on the use of samples and keyboards throughout the album. Apparently there was—Jam and Lewis wanted to emulate the production style of The Bomb Squad, Public Enemy’s long-time production team. “The idea was to make it sonically sound like a Public Enemy record,” Jam told Idolator. “Hank Shocklee took these dissonant samples that shouldn’t have gone together and somehow made it all work.”
Just as things always seem to work out well when Jam, Lewis, and Jackson take risks together, their efforts to create a bold new sound worked out flawlessly on janet.. In addition to the album selling over six million copies, “That’s The Way Love Goes” remains one of the biggest singles of her entire storied career.
“It was her longest-running Number One pop record,” Jam told Rolling Stone. “‘That's the Way Love Goes’ was a new era of Janet. It's so funky, but it's so smooth at the same time.”
Thanks for reading, see you on Friday!
I love how well mixed the version on Design of a Decade 1986/1996 is. Everything sounds so real. You would swear that was a real guitar. Listening to the album version is not quite as rewarding, as the sounds aren't blended as well. I absolutely loved reading about this masterpiece, thanks so much for all the hard work in researching this song!