![\"Quincy](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Quincy-Jones-2014-Music-Producer-Composer-Far-Out-Magazine-2-1140x855.jpg\")
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(Credits: Canadian Film Centre)<\/p>\n
Sun 14 September 2025 21:30, UK <\/p>\n
The archetype of what we know as pop music was shaped by Quincy Jones<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Even though he was responsible for working with some of the biggest stars of the 1980s, he was working with the biggest names in pop before The Beatles had even arrived. He only saw himself as doing the job of a seasoned producer, but he knew that there were always going to be a few albums that stuck out above all the rest.<\/p>\n But when he got into the business, Jones was more than a simple producer. His arrangements on some of Frank Sinatra\u2019s greatest works made him a fixture of the easy-listening circuit, but Jones wasn\u2019t looking to make soft music the rest of his life. He wanted to venture into the big leagues, but even with his track record, nothing was going to eclipse what he did with Michael Jackson<\/a> at the dawn of the 1980s.<\/p>\n Jackson\u2019s fame was always going to be a perfect storm of raw, God-given talent, the right production, and the cultural juggernaut of MTV, Jones should at least get half of the credit most of the time. He knew a hook when he heard one, and even if the \u2018King of Pop\u2019 was resistant to what he was doing, there\u2019s a reason why he won out when he demanded that the violin break be featured at the start of a track like \u2018Don\u2019t Stop Til You Get Enough\u2019.<\/p>\n And it doesn\u2019t take a rocket scientist to figure out why Jackson\u2019s albums sounded so different after Jones left. There was a way for him to make fantastic songs on his own, but it\u2019s very telling that there was a team of producers working on records like Dangerous and History compared to Jones\u2019s singular vision. He had enough to tell Jackson when he thought something was crap, but that only comes from someone that\u2019s been listening to the arrangements for years at a time.<\/p>\n From day one, Jones lived and breathed music whenever he worked with people like Sinatra or Ray Charles, but there was a special place in his heart for jazz. Pop standards may have been what paid the bills when he started working on \u2018The Shadow of Your Smile\u2019, but there was always a certain power in hearing Miles Davis\u2019s trumpet every time his records came out.<\/p>\n