Angela Lansbury, Actress Who Inspired Chaka Demus & Pliers’ ‘Murder, She Wrote’, Passes Away At 96

Angela Lansbury, star of the long-running television series Murder, She Wrote, which sparked the name of the Chacka Demus and Pliers’ legendary Dancehall song about a woman who seemingly committed abortion, has died at the age of 96.

The British actress died peacefully in her sleep on Tuesday at her home in Los Angeles, five days shy of her 97th birthday, according to a statement from her family. 

In 2019, Lansbury, upon hearing Chaka Demus and Plier’s Murder She Wrote song for the first time, in 2019, had endorsed the song, as she laughed and told CBC radio show host Tom Power, who played the Dancehall track for her listening pleasure during an interview, that she was “thrilled to be a part of Reggae.”

Back then, Chaka Demus had told The Star tabloid that Lansbury’s response to the song, gave him “a great feeling” and that he had been a fan of the series.

Chaka Demus had also said that the song title came about because his longstanding collaborator Pliers, “was fooling around a girl named Maxine” who later informed him that she was carrying his child.

“Him wait nine months, 10 months and no baby can’t come. So me say well this is ‘murder she wrote’ and so Pliers go and do a song with that title for producer Harry J,” Chaka had said at the time.

The veteran deejay had also said he had originally recorded his part of the song for producer Bobby Digital, after which the two songs were combined and recorded for Sly Dunbar.

The version produced by Sly and his late colleague Robbie Shakespeare, on the infectious Bam-Bam rhythm, sold more than one million copies globally, and propelled Chaka Demus and Pliers to international stardom.

Murder She Wrote was one of the singles featured on Chaka Demus and Pliers’ 1993 album, Tease Me, which spent 17 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at number 57 in 1993.

The song also rose to number 27 on the United Kingdom charts in 1994, and according to Billboard, had “introduced a new style of dancehall rooted in the performers’ native Kingston, Jamaica to the US mainstream”.

As for the Murder, She Wrote television series, it was highly popular on Jamaican television in the 1980s.  Led by Lansbury who played the role of mystery writer and amateur detective Jessica Fletcher, it ran for 12 seasons between 1984 and 1996 and saw the actress being nominated for 10 Golden Globes and 12 Emmy Awards for her role on the show.

Uncannily, and somewhat amusingly, in 1999, the American cartoon Family Guy, had featured a caricature of Lansbury’s character Jessica Fletcher, in which she was pinpointed as her own culprit after admitting to abortion.

In November 2021, American singer Omarion’s hit song Post to Be, which sampled Murder She Wrote, was listed among the “50 Best Song Interpolations of the 21st Century” by Billboard.  Lines from the opening verse of Murder She Wrote as well as the hook “murder she wrote”, were interpolated in the 2014 song.

Post To Be, from Omarion’s song from his fourth studio album, Sex Playlist  had also featured Chris Brown and Jhené Aiko.  The song peaked at number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was certified triple platinum in the United States. 

Billboard, in commemorating what it described as “the art of the interpolation at its most successful”, had listed in no specific order, its 50 picks for the best examples of the form from the 21st century, which it said “crossed genres and generations to revive old classics and make new ones”.

Murder She Wrote was also sampled in numerous hip-hop and reggaetón hits, such as French Montana’s Freaks and Daddy and Yankee’s “Que Tire Pa’ ‘Lante, Too Hot by Jason Derulo, and Murder by Young Thug in 2014.