

Though the song’s success still proved to be a lift for his career: “The good thing about doing a hit mix is everyone wants the guy who did that sound, so I got work, tons of work,” Stonebridge continues. “I basically composed a new track, but that’s the world of remixes - it’s work for hire,” he says. At the time, she was paid for the service, but it was work for hire,” meaning she had no subsequent participation in the track’s success. “My understanding was she came in, helped the producers flesh out the melody. Martin “was a very, very popular demo singer,” Christina adds. She didn’t get writer’s credit because she did that early in her career.” Later, he continues, she “felt a bit salty about that - ‘I didn’t get credit for writing the melody and I basically did vocal arrangement on top of that.’” “They’d give her lyrics, say, ‘sing this and we’ll give you some cash.’ She’s in her teens, she does it for a few hundred bucks. Martin “would do session singing,” Matias explains. Martin said a similar thing to Matias and to Rich Christina - a young Atlantic employee when the label first licensed “Show Me Love” who is now svp of A&R and venture partners at Warner Chappell Music. “You wake up, it’s a hit… you wrote a little bit of it, you don’t have anybody that came in that’s a witness ,” Martin said ruefully on that 2011 ASCAP panel.
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He only found out his remix of “Show Me Love” was a hit months after its release during a visit to London when he turned on the weekly TV show Top of the Pops. The producer and DJ Stonebridge - who claims he completely reworked the original “Show Me Love” to create the hit version, with its buzzsaw intro and cascading synths - says he was also left in the dark. Martin found out “Show Me Love” was blanketing the radio when she got a call from her sister, according to what she shared on that ASCAP panel. “I did contribute to the song, to the words and the vocals,” Robin S. happens to share the same frustration, telling Billboard that she added to “Show Me Love” when she was recording it, asked for credit, and never received any. While the 2011 ASCAP panel prompted the rumor about the vocals on “Show Me Love,” Martin’s actual claim was that she had a hand in writing the single’s melody, and that she took a one-time $300 fee for her contribution, rather than asking for writing credit, which would have entitled her to publishing income.

When asked if it’s Martin’s voice on the record, he scoffs: “Who the f–k said that? Robin Jackson Maynard sang that song.” Joey Carvello subsequently licensed the remix of “Show Me Love” for Atlantic Records, and he gives the internet scuttlebutt short shrift as well. One person says one thing, and everyone runs with it.”Ĭhampion Records boss Mel Medalie first released “Show Me Love” - both the uptempo, guitar-and-saxophone-slathered funk version released in 1990 and the remix that later became a hit - through his U.K.-based independent label he says “Robin is the vocalist on this recording.” “She was engaged by Allen George and Fred McFarlane as a session vocalist in the production of this record,” he adds. People are like, ‘Oh my god, that’s her!’ It was misinterpreted. “She does sound so much like Robin S’ finished record and people assumed she was saying that was her on the record,” Matias continues. “She sang the demo.”Īt that ASCAP panel, Martin spoke about working on the song and sang a few licks with remarkable ease, claiming that the final recording closely tracked a demo she had worked on. “Andrea didn’t sing on the actual record,” Matias says. Others who were close to Martin, or were involved with “Show Me Love” in other capacities, share Robin S.’s view. “I’ve been called Milli Vanilli and crazy things by other artists,” she says. But it’s notable how many people involved with “Show Me Love” feel like their contributions to the track were not reflected in their compensation - and how pop’s current sample- and interpolation-happy climate ensures that decades-old disagreements about authorship reverberate in the present. The rumor, which appears to have stemmed from a 2011 ASCAP panel featuring Martin, is false, according to Robin S., Matias, and others. “People have been asking me this question for five or six years,” says Ivan Matias, a singer-songwriter-arranger-producer who worked closely with Martin during a run that included penning classics like SWV’s “You’re the One” and Angie Stone’s “Wish I Didn’t Miss You.” As that oldie returned to the popular consciousness, so did a rumor that’s been circulating on the internet for years: That the voice on “Show Me Love” actually belongs to Andrea Martin, a songwriter with a formidable resume of ’90s R&B cuts, who died last year at age 49.
