Christina Milian shuts down ridiculous rumors of a 22-year feud with Jennifer Lopez over her 2001 song Play.
Milian, 41, wrote the catchy song when she was just 19 years old. Once that was done, Sony honcho Tommy Mottola gave the song to Lopez, 54, to record on her second album, J. Lo.
“Without question, she killed him. She’s so good. I love this song,” the singer told Page Six.
“And I couldn’t believe that at 19 I wrote a song for J.Lo.”
Milian – who holidayed in Saint-Tropez last month with her husband – explained that she wrote the song the same week she wrote her hit AM to PM.
She explained that she was attending a songwriting camp in Sweden and the song came to her about 15 minutes in the morning, after a long night of partying.
“I went to bed late that night, woke up the next morning and had to go to the studio. I had the song and I didn’t write anything [to it]. So I sat up in bed, I had this song, I was really tired and I played the song and I was like…’ she said, humming the song a little.
“And I thought, ‘That sounds too easy. “It was just too easy to write at that point. I wrote the song in about 15 minutes and it was a joke to me because I had just started becoming a writer.
And although she loved Play, she felt her label wouldn’t want to put two party songs on her first album and she preferred AM to PM.
She explained that her album Christina Milian wasn’t released until 2002, but long before that, Mottola had claimed the song for Lopez.
“The guy comes in and he hears ‘Play,’ and he loves it and says, ‘I want that as his single,'” Milian recalls. “And the next thing I know, she’s in New York, she’s recording the song and I came to help her rewrite some things.”
The Falling Inn Love actress also explained the roots of the feud. Mottola and JLo kept Milian’s vocals in the background of the song, leading fans to speculate that this must have bothered Milian.
But that doesn’t bother her at all. “It’s funny when people say it’s kind of the fact that I sing on the song with Jennifer. I mean, I have backup singers on some of my songs,” Milian said.
She added: “It’s no different than Michael Jackson having background singers on his songs or Britney Spears. This is what music is made of. You want a mix of voices. For me it makes the songs better.
But some fans insist she must be angry that the Jenny From the Block singer didn’t give her credit on the song for singing backup.
She insisted she didn’t need a feature credit.
“I’m in the credits, whatever my nature is, as a writer… There’s merit for that. I’m also so happy that she did it because she’s an icon, she’s amazing.
And even though she didn’t get to record Play, it’s still one of her karaoke songs.
