It’s about eighty gazillion degrees in Los Angeles today. But the sun is shining, the palm trees at my office are freshly trimmed, and my coffee is ice-cold. I keep humming to myself, and this particular melody has been on repeat.

“Save Me” is a song by Dave Mason on Old Crest on a New Wave in 1980. At present, I don’t know much more about it other than that Dave was recording next door during some downtime during Off the Wall production at Westlake and Michael hopped in.

I have to admit even has a superfan at the time of Michael’s death, I knew about several collaborations he did, some songs he had featured on (credited or not) but this one slipped through my fingers and I discovered it just a few months after he died. And, man, this did a number on me when I heard it.

I absolutely love this song. It’s run-of-the-mill yacht rock, but it was a bittersweet delight to hear Michael’s voice glittering like this in 2009.

I recommend it to fans any chance I get. Is it the absolute best? No. Was his voice super-refined and tight? Definitely not. But that’s the fun in it. To me, one can hear the joy in his voice, just spitting out some carefree adlibs one afternoon.

The lyrics also hit hard that year as well. The chorus left me bawling on more than one occasion:

Nothing turned out like she thought it would
And I was waiting right there where she stood

She said: save me!
From this wicked world I’m livin’ in
She said: save me!
I don’t wanna lose, I wanna win
I can’t run and I can’t hide…

I’d love to know as much as possible about the history of this song, it’s production, and if the brief legend I have on hand is accurate at all. If there’s more to the story, I’m eager to know; please enlighten me!

And in any case… I hope this makes it to your end-of-summer barbecue playlists soon.