Back in the early 90’s, two entities that captured the hearts and imaginations of American pop culture were undoubtedly Michael Jackson and Sonic The Hedgehog. While seemingly unrelated, a new interview shows an interesting connection between the two entities.
Apparently Jackson was not only obsessed with the video game character, but he toured the Sega facilities and wound up contributing music to the third installment of the series in 1994. However, when the music was compressed to fit onto the 16-bit cartridge, MJ was displeased with the quality of the audio and asked for his name to be taken off of the credits.
The long-time-rumored contribution was recently confirmed in a Huffington Post interview with Brad Buxer, who both worked on music with Jackson and has a songwriter credit on the game. Buxer said, “I was working with Michael on the Dangerous album, and he told me he was going to be doing the Sonic the Hedgehog soundtrack for Sonic 3. He asked me if I would help him with it.”
He continued, saying that they recorded “something like 41” tracks for the game. “We did use a lot of samples made from [Jackson’s] beatboxing… We would chop this up and use it in cues. Of course there were Michael ‘he-he’s’ and other signature Michaelisms.”
The interview also confirms that some of MJ’s music made it into the Sonic 3, and careful listeners have pointed out some similarities between Jackson’s own music and songs from the game. You can check out a few examples below: