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“Happy Birthday Lisa” (just not with Michael Jackson)

Simpsons actress Yeardley Smith talks about the 1991 episode, "Stark Raving Dad," in which Michael Jackson hand-picked a vocal impersonator.

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Simpsons actress Yeardley Smith has spoken about Michael Jackson never aving sung “Happy Birthday Lisa” in the 1991 episode, “Stark Raving Dad.”

“[Michael] was not allowed to sing on the show, so he literally hand-picked a guy to sing like him,” she told TMZ.

“How unnerving would it be to sing like Michael Jackson in front of Michael Jackson?”

Jackson, who was credited as “John Jay Smith” did provide the speaking voice but was not contracted to sing.

In fact the impersonator was Kip Lennon, who also sang “Ben” and “Billie Jean”. He also provides Jackson’s singing voice in The Jacksons: An American Dream.

According to producer Al Jean, Jackson did record versions of the singing parts but The Simpsons music editor Chris Ledesma has stated the Lennon versions were used.

Lennon also sang the songs “Flaming Moe’s” in the episode “Flaming Moe’s”, “The Sound of Grandpa” from “Lady Bouvier’s Lover”, and “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head” from “Duffless”. He sang the original song “I’m Checking In” featured in the Betty Ford musical in “The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson”.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLIUlaJsGwU[/youtube]

Source: Wikipedia

12 Responses

  1. i think its Very obvious its not mike singing, i mean even if i didn’t read it first that it aint him, still it aint no big deal to know its obviously not him! anyway Happy Birthday michael! i love u.. <3 🙂

  4. One of my favorite eps and it’s a catchy little tune. I knew it wasn’t MJ singing, but I’m surprised (and pleased) he actually wrote it!

  7. I think he wasn’t aloud to sing cause of contract reasons.. i believe Michael Jackson wrote ”happy birthday Lisa” and ” everybody do the Bart man” but again couldn’t take credit for it cause of his contract with Sony…

  8. It’s hard to imagine a time when stars didn’t want their names attached to an episode of The Simpsons.

    Sure if Michael Jackson or Dustin Hoffman did voices in The Itchy & Scrathcy Movie you could understand them not using their real names (“but you could tell it was them”), but on The Simpsons?

  9. Cool bit of trivia there. I’m one who never knew that it wasn’t actually MJ singing in that episode, learn something new every day :P. Ah, those have must been the days, when Simpsons having celebrity guest stars was actually Fun and Different.

    Does anyone actually know why MJ wasn’t credited for the episode, but used an alias?

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