Was "It Wasn't Me" a song about cheating? We asked Shaggy himself...
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00:00♪ But she caught me on the counter, it wasn't me ♪
00:02♪ Saw me banging on the sofa, it wasn't me ♪
00:05♪ I even had her in the shower, it wasn't me ♪
00:07♪ She even caught me on camera, it wasn't me ♪
00:10Yo everybody, this is Shaggy, Mr. Love,
00:12love of Boom Buster, Guru Mantra, yeah.
00:15And you're tuned to Brood, yeah.
00:18Number one, salute, Mr. Love, I said that.
00:20♪♪♪♪♪
00:29It's crazy when it comes to wasn't me,
00:31is I was in the process of writing the Hot Shot album.
00:34And I had watched a comedy special
00:38from Eddie Murphy called Raw.
00:40And in the comedy special, there's a skit
00:44that he says he got caught and the woman comes in
00:47and he says, wasn't me.
00:49And she's like, but I saw you on the counter, wasn't me.
00:52But I wasn't, I got you on camera, wasn't me.
00:57You know what I mean?
00:58And he was saying, oh, she still took him back,
00:59you know, and that's how dudes are.
01:01And it was a whole skit and it was really funny.
01:04So I thought, I said, man, that's so funny.
01:06That's a song in a sense, because it is so relatable.
01:10And whenever I write songs, I try to write them
01:12where they're relatable to general people's lives.
01:15You know, and the thing about it wasn't me,
01:17is either you're banging, you know,
01:18somebody banging or you wish you're banging.
01:20It is very relatable to people's lives.
01:24And so I sat with my little townhouse here in Kingston
01:29with a friend of mine by the name of Rick Rock.
01:31And we just started to come up with the melodies.
01:33And then the lyrics of Bonnie came in
01:35and she caught me red-handed
01:36creeping with the girl next door.
01:39And we wrote the song.
01:40We had a lot of laughs because we were coming up with these,
01:43she caught me on the counter.
01:45You know what I mean?
01:46We were saying like, yeah, she was spying,
01:48she was spying in a tree.
01:49We were doing all these other scenarios, you know?
01:53And of course we sent her down, caught me on the counter,
01:55saw me banging on the sofa,
01:57even had her in the shower.
01:58You know what I mean?
01:59We ended up going there, but there were all these,
02:01we were thinking so outside the box of crazy.
02:04We said, oh yeah,
02:05we should have her swinging from the chandelier.
02:07It was all kind of crazy stuff.
02:09And it became just this, you know,
02:12we were like, okay guys, you know,
02:13we really need to make this to where it's airplay.
02:15So we need to write adult content without being explicit.
02:18And we just thought it was, I thought it was really funny.
02:21I thought it was such a hit that when I brought it
02:25into my record company, they couldn't understand it.
02:27And so it's so much to a point that my manager
02:29didn't want it to go on the album.
02:30He thought it was total rubbish.
02:32You got to remember at that time,
02:33we were in a Britney Spears and NSYNC mode.
02:36So there was nothing that sounded like it.
02:38And that's why the record company was like,
02:39what the are you bringing to me?
02:41This isn't, what is this?
02:43How are we going to market this?
02:44It doesn't fit with what's going on right now.
02:46Okay, we're not going to spend a lot of money on this guy.
02:49A lot of people thought it was a cheating song,
02:51but really if you listen to it down the end,
02:53on that bridge section, I'm going to tell her that I'm sorry
02:55for the things that I've done.
02:56You might think that you're a player,
02:57but you're completely lost.
02:59Was really what it's about.
03:02It's me telling a story.
03:04And at the end, the guy is saying,
03:07hey, that's total that you're talking.
03:10I want to, I'm going to go and apologize to my girl.
03:13You know what I mean?
03:14And she's not going to take the picture that you're selling.
03:16And that's the story of it.
03:18The thing is nobody really listened to the record
03:21down to the end.
03:21It was such a club smash that everybody just partied to it.
03:24You know what I mean?
03:25And all the guys love it because he's like,
03:26hey, it wasn't me.
03:27It wasn't me.
03:28You know what I mean?
03:29And the crazy thing about it was when this record
03:31was at its peak, we were getting a little bit
03:35of a backlash from some women rights group about it
03:40and how it's a cheating song.
03:43And this song is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
03:45But then when we looked at the sales of it,
03:49you know, and got the data on the record,
03:52it was predominantly women that were downloading this record.
03:55It was written, the people who were buying it
03:59was mainly women that were buying it.
04:01I was like, oh my God.
04:02You know?
04:03And so it's either two things is telling you that
04:05either women are just way better players than men,
04:10you know, or it's just a myth, you know?
04:13So it's just one of them things,
04:15but it is really an anti-cheating song.
04:18Na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na.
04:22Just such an infectious melody.
04:25You know, that's what I really love about it.
04:27I have always made music selfishly.
04:28I make music so that I like it,
04:30and if I like it, then I'm good.
04:33Do you get what I'm saying?
04:34So I never really paid attention to anybody else
04:37or what people say.
04:37They always write things.
04:38You know, I've been a one-hit wonder my whole career.
04:40You know, and somebody said to me,
04:41this, Shaggy, you're the most consistent one-hit wonder
04:44I know, you know, because I'm criticized
04:48because I started to do dancehall,
04:49but I didn't do dancehall in its authentic stage.
04:51I always did kind of a hybrid style of dancehall,
04:54and so the purists would always, you know,
04:56the dancehall and reggae purists would always criticize me,
05:00you know, but I don't pay any attention to it.
05:01I just kept doing music that was unique
05:03because I just said to myself,
05:04well, they criticized Bob Marley, too,
05:06and said, you know, his music was rubbish,
05:09and yet still it became the blueprint
05:12of what reggae and dancehall,
05:13of what reggae music is today,
05:14that it really changed my life,
05:16and it brought me to a mainstream
05:18and it brought me on all these other platforms.
05:20So though I had Mr. Boombastic and Old Carolina
05:23and these records that were big,
05:25it wasn't me, it really was a record
05:27that brought me to a household name on a global scale.