Sinead O’Connor, Mary J Blige and Martha B Team Up With GEMS & Bandbox

GEMS is using Bandbox to sell a new song and take donations directly from http://www.gems-girls.org/

The Story of the Song
In Summer 2009, iconic musician Sinead O’Connor invited GEMS member Martha B. to join her and Mary J Blige to re-record O’Connor’s song “This Is to Mother You” to raise awareness and funds for GEMS programs. The song expresses a simple promise to vulnerable children in America and around the world: You may not see us, but we see you. And we will love and care for you...

Production on the song began in January 2009 when Sinead and GEMS began to assemble the creative and production team for the project. Sinead’s immediate choice for a vocalist to sing with her was the incomparable Mary J Blige, who responded immediately to Sinead’s invitation with an enthusiastic YES. With this settled, the project quickly added producers Martin ‘Doc’ McKinney (Sting, Alice Smith) and Ali Shaheed Muhammad (A Tribe Called Quest), who spent three months developing the instrumental track for this new recording. On August 13th, Sinead entered the recording booth at the legendary Windmill Lane Studios in Dublin (also known as the ‘U2 Studio’) to lay her vocals for the song. Here in New York, GEMS and the producers waited with great excitement to get the ruff mix of O’Connor’s vocals, and then went to work scheduling Mary J Blige and newcomer Martha B to record at Germano Studios in Soho. On September 10th, Mary and Martha entered the studio to complete the vocal tracking for the song.

“I’ve always said that GEMS needs a song! Now GEMS has a song. It’s as though it was written just for us. Thank you, Sinead and Mary.” – Martha B