Beyonce initially hated Destiny Child’s mega-hit “Say My Name”
Producer/songwriter Rodney Jerkins was in London in the late ‘90s, clubbing with the Spice Girls. It was in a club that he first heard 2-step, a jittery electronic dance style. “I wanted to bring 2-step to the States,” Jerkins said and his first session back just happened to be with Destiny’s Child. He played them “Say My Name,” which featured a prominent 2-step. “Beyonce said, ‘What is this garbage?’ I said, ‘Trust me.’ They sang it, but they weren’t happy.”When it came time to do the final mix, Jerkins “humbled” himself and stripped out all the music and built the song from the ground up again from an a capella vocal track with the trio rapping the beat that was taken out.
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Adele obsessed over Wanda Jackson before writing “Someone Like You”
At Dan Wilson’s first writing session with Adele after they were “blind dated” by produced Rick Rubin, “she had four lines for two songs. Two lines turned into ‘Rumour Has It’ and two into ‘Someone Like You’,” he recalls. “But for the first hour, she played me Wanda Jackson videos on YouTube.” He admits the move was brilliant in that it broke the ice and helped them “wipe the etch-a-sketch clean” in terms of their expectations.
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Beyonce’s “Halo” was inspired by Ray LaMontagne’s “Shelter”
Evan Bogart, who was still working as a booking agent at the time, was writing with OneRepublic’s Ryan Tedder, who was home nursing a ruptured Achilles tendon which has caused him to cancel his band's tour. Bogart was enamored with Ray LaMontage’s song “Shelter” and wanted to write a song that conveyed that same feeling. “Three hours later, we had the song done and four hours later, we had the word that she was going to cut it,” Bogart says. The song they submitted had no bridge, to even though Beyonce has agreed to cut it, they went back later and added a bridge that was Bogart’s tribute to LaMontagne. Don’t recognize it in the final version of “Halo?” For good reason: “When Beyonce recorded it, she ripped it out and replaced it,” Bogart said with a laugh.
When it came time to do the final mix, Jerkins “humbled” himself and stripped out all the music and built the song from the ground up again from an a capella vocal track with the trio rapping the beat that was taken out.
Seems like it was a team effort.
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Beyoncé was displeased. She commented that there was "too much stuff" on the track and it sounded like a "jungle."
Beyoncé didn't start writing fully by herself until Survivor.
And she has never claimed to write Say My Name.
Also, she hated Rodney's productions on the song.
