Teddy Bishop Shares History of ‘Miss You’

“That was an interesting session because that song was originally written for Ginuwine. We were in the studio and we were playing Aaliyah records. She wanted to hear some of the records Johnta and I had written at the time. We played her a couple of tracks and that particular track happened to kind of pass by. She was like, “Wait a minute, back that up. I want to hear that again!” We played it for her and she was like, “I want to cut this record,” and we were like “Well this is Ginuwine’s record.” She was like, “I don’t care, I want to cut it.” She got on the phone, called him and said “Hey I know you cut this record already, but I would love to cut it”. Ginuwine, because he was a part writer on the song, it benefited him anyway. Plus they came from the same camp. Ginuwine told her to cut it and we cut it on Aaliyah and it went on to be a number one hit.

When I first went in to produce that song, the labels didn’t really think it was a hit record. They didn’t. They didn’t think it was a smash record. They bypassed that record a lot. Unfortunately when she passed, it was almost like that passing forced them to put that particular record out because it was symbolically saying “I miss you”. She actually loved the record when we cut it. She loved it. She actually wanted to put it out herself. It took two years for that record to come out after I cut it and it happens like that sometimes. Sometimes you can work on a record in this industry and it might not come out for another 3-4 years then it blows up, but the public would think that you actually did that record at that particular time. It was just an interesting story because I don’t think the label at the time really believed in that record, but they went on and took a chance with it. It blew up. It was number one for a long time on the charts.”