The greatest songwriter most people haven’t heard of has to be Rod Temperton. He wrote most of my favorite Michael Jackson songs (Thriller, Off the Wall, Rock with You, etc.), but also many other hits for other artists. Often, the only songs I really like by certain artists (George Benson, Herbie Hancock, Bob James, Manhattan Transfer, etc.) turn out to be written by him. His songs all have an incredible, unmistakable groove and funky beat. They’re musically adventurous and unpredictable. Each one is like an intricate clockwork mechanism of funk ingenuity. Although he’s best known for his MJ tracks and other top-10 hits he wrote for other famous artists, many of his best songs were written before he became Quincy Jones’ top writer, for the funk band Heatwave that he played keyboards for. It’s all a very unlikely story for a professorial-looking guy from Lincolnshire in the UK who was writing accounting software for a frozen-fish company in Grimsby before deciding to pursue music full time! Frankly, I’m surprised it hasn’t been turned into a movie yet à la Jersey Boys. It would probably be too expensive to secure the music rights for the movie because his hits were too huge! Maybe the Jackson estate would make an exception for Rod, though. Anyway, if you want to improve your mood, raise the energy level, or entertain small children, I can’t recommend this Spotify playlist highly enough (I’ve played the whole thing through at least 100 times):