How TLC Nearly Worked With David Bowie

TLC has reflected on the moment they nearly had the opportunity to sing for David Bowie’s 1999 track Thursday's Child — only for the star’s guitarist to convince him otherwise.

In a recent cover story for The Music, during the chat, the trio were told the details from Bowie’s side of the story for the very first time.

"You know what?," T-Boz reflected. "[Chilli] just said she didn't know. But I remember David wanted to do a song with us – I didn't know what the song was and I didn't know what you just said. But I remember getting a call from the record company – 'cause I'm a big David Bowie fan!"

"I am too!," Chilli added.

"I love him, okay?," T-Boz continued, before bursting into a breezy rendition of Let's Dance. "So knowing that he even wanted to do a song, even though it didn't work out – that was just an honour within itself."

Chilli joked, "I want to know the name and number of that person who convinced him to do it by himself!"

"Yeah!," T-Boz laughed. "How could you ruin our chance like that?"

That person was current The Cure guitarist and longtime Bowie collaborator Reeves Gabrels, who convinced Bowie to have his friend Holly Palmer do the vocals instead.

“When he told me he wanted TLC, I was like, ‘TLC? I stopped listening to you when you sang with Bing Crosby!’ I was so pissed off I didn’t buy your next two albums!” Gabrels explained in 2017.

“Now we’ve acquired the audience that we wanted, and you’re gonna put TLC on the record, and they’re going to say, ‘Fuck him!’ And I know better singers than that!”

“So I called Holly and put her on speakerphone, and David asked her to sing [TLC’s] Waterfalls. And she did and then he said, ‘OK, now do it without vibrato.’ And she did. And then he said, ‘OK, now do it with more vibrato.’ And she did. And he says, ‘Can you come to the studio right now?’ And she did, and she ended up singing on Thursday’s Child, and was in what became the next touring band.”

“But ‘cool’ — in quotes — is a very subjective thing,” he added. “I was David’s friend, and his guitar player, musical director, and co-producer, but I was also a fan. I felt like I was protecting his ‘thing.’ I wanted to make sure he stayed cool and stayed connected”

“He was a voracious chaser of new things. But not every new thing [should be chased].”