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Particularly with Michael, who literally grew up under the megawatt glare of the public spotlight, there’s virtually no way to separate the man from his music. While it’s true for some that the eyes are the window to the soul, that has never been the case for Michael — it’s always been his voice that’s provided the keenest insight into the innermost depths of the ‘Man In The Mirror’. And it’s been true even since the days of those very first recordings, when a young singer stepped into a legendary Detroit studio to begin a career that would amaze, and inspire, fans all over the world.
Maybe no song in the history of Motown has been recorded so often as “Who’s Lovin’ You”… with so little success. When Smokey Robinson wrote it back in 1960, it got buried on the B-side of the Miracles’ first Top Five hit, “Shop Around.” The next year it got buried on the B-side of the Supremes’ second single. Four years after that, it got buried in the middle of the Temptations’ second album, and on Peter & Gordon’s fourth album.
In fact, the closest it ever came to becoming a hit was in 1967, when Brenda And The Tabulations’ single struggled to Number 66 in the Billboard Pop Singles chart. But are any of those versions the one that Smokey — and everybody else who loves soul music — would pick as the definitive recording of this star-crossed song? Not a chance. It’s a version that would get buried yet again, this time on the B-side of the Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back.”
This wasn’t the sort of song that lent itself to an 11-year-old singer. Not by a long shot. It’s about a guy who treats his one true love so badly that she leaves him and he finds himself in the painful position of paying the price for his past misdeeds, wracked with guilt and wondering who has taken the place — and the woman — he once held. Yes, it’s an adult song.
Little did Robinson know back then that by the time the pint-sized star-to-be led his bell-bottom-bedecked brothers into Hitsville U.S.A. to cut the track with producer Bobby Taylor, he’d already been singing it for a couple of years. Fact is, it was the very song that had sealed the deal during the Jacksons’ Motown audition the previous summer. And when Smokey heard the finished recording, he posed the same question that’s followed Michael around his whole career: Where did that performance come from? Robinson was so shocked by the young Jackson’s beyond-his-years soulfulness that he demanded to see the singer’s birth certificate, certain that somebody was trying to pull a fast one, because nobody Michael’s age could possibly have the life experience or vocal authority necessary to bring “Who’s Lovin’ You” home. Yet there was the record. And the grooves never lie.
The song is instructive in a couple of ways. Not only is it proof positive that Jackson’s vocal genius was in full force from the very first time he stepped into a studio (and people lucky enough to have seen him in the pre-Motown days would assert that it had been even before the J5 got signed), but it also reveals Michael’s artistic commitment to burrow into a song’s very core to discover what makes it special… even if it was destined to be only a B-side or an album cut.
Or, for that matter, a smash hit, as in “The Way You Make Me Feel” from Bad, a song packed with pure, unadulterated, industrial-strength joy. Nineteen seconds in, after the drums and synth bass have laid down a foundation-quaking bottom end, Michael opens his throat and lets loose with an ecstatic “woo hoo!” that sets the tone for the entire track, telegraphing the nerve-tingling, roller-coaster rapture of love in full flower.
How could an emotion so powerful and complex be reduced to two simple syllables? Well, that’s the genius bit, isn’t it?
Of course, even as far back as Michael’s very first solo album, 1972’s Got To Be There, he had a gift for following the bliss into the studio and capturing it on tape. On his cover of the ’50s smash “Rockin’ Robin,” you can practically see him hoppin’ and a-boppin’ around the mic stand as he tweedly-deedly-deed his way to the top of the charts.
Of course, there’s something a little comical right from the get-go about a 41-year-old international musical legend being locked in hormonal combat with a 25-year-old international musical legend over some unspecified female without her even having so much as a say in it. And the pair played that up with a nod and a wink, complete with a little spoken-word sparring at the end, leading out with what amounts to an extended “nuh-uh/nuh-huh” back-and-forth.
Surprisingly, in an about-face as dramatic as pop music has ever witnessed, the very next single from Thriller was anything but light and frothy, and it became the biggest song on the best-selling album ever recorded: “Billie Jean.”
At first, producer Quincy Jones pressured Michael to change the song’s title to “Not My Lover,” thinking that people might imagine it referred to tennis legend Billie Jean King. But as soon as the first note hit the speakers, that notion went straight out the window. Gone was the easygoing buddy of “The Girl Is Mine,” replaced by a darker, mysterious — maybe even haunted — protagonist, stalked by an equally shadowy fan who claims that he is the father of her child. Thirteen seconds into the song (could that be a coincidence?), Michael’s first utterance into the microphone is a heavily reverbed whisper of “ch-ch,” which, on top of the feline bass riff and heartbeat kick drum and snare, lends a sinister, spooky quality to the track even before he sings so much as a single word. And then… he fires up the turbocharger. With a hiccup like a rifle shot punctuating every few phrases, an almost otherworldly falsetto “hee hee hee”, and a double fistful of “huhs” and “woos” sprinkled across the track like improvised explosive devices, he pulls the song out of soap opera land and drops it into a Stephen King novel. Pure, petrifying intensity, and we could never get enough. The song that nearly didn’t make it onto the album became the signature hit of Michael Jackson’s career.
As he rounded the quarter-century mark, at a time in life when most young people are just beginning to get a rough idea of what their vocation might be, Michael had already racked up 15 years’ experience at his craft. And, clearly, he’d taken a giant leap, both commercially and artistically, since Off The Wall. But something else about his voice was changing too — not so much the timbre, but the grit. He’d never been short on confidence; while the mere prospect of getting up onstage would have sent most ten-year-olds running for the safety of Mom’s apron strings, even Michael’s earliest performances were poised beyond his years. And his voice had never lost its capacity for innocence, wonder, and hope. By this time, though, it had taken on an edge, honed by the countless hours that he’d spent in the spotlight, by the hundreds of professionals he’d studied with (or from afar), by the demands of being both a solo artist and a member of The Jacksons.
And if Bad’s title track brought his new, tougher image to the fore, then the album’s “Smooth Criminal” launched it over the top. Firing off his phrases like a 9-mm semi-automatic, Jackson drew a vocal chalk line around ‘Annie’, the fictional victim of an imaginary home invasion, leaving us a little unsure whether his crime-scene persona was on the side of the angels or something more sinister.
At other times over the course of his career, Michael used his voice to portray the victim himself. From the meditative melancholy of the first few bars of Off The Wall’s “She’s Out Of My Life,” it’s immediately apparent that this wasn’t going to be the finger-snappin’ bon vivant of “The Girl Is Mine.” In fact, this time the girl wasn’t his, and much like he had ten years earlier when covering Smokey Robinson’s “Who’s Lovin’ You,” Michael tapped into rivers of bone-crushing despair. Like a great athlete, he left it all on the field; by the end of every single take, he’d worked himself into a state of actual tears.
At first, producer Quincy Jones couldn’t believe it and figured Michael had just had a little breakdown. Then it happened again. And again. Ultimately, Quincy got it. And so did we.
The greatest singers of any era, of any genre from pop to opera to rock, all share two key traits: they know how to reach into a song and seize its still-beating heart, capturing it for themselves, and they have the ability to translate that energy into something that resonates with their audience.
Whether it’s Frank Sinatra setting ’em up and knocking ’em flat in “One For My Baby,” or Billie Holiday curling the hairs on the back of our necks with her remarkable detachment in “Strange Fruit,” or Michael being reduced to sobs in “She’s Out Of My Life,” every noteworthy song stylist forges a link, through his or her music, to a common humanity. Who hasn’t lost a lover, or a friend, or seen something in life that’s disturbed them profoundly? And when we can’t give voice to our own deepest feelings, we often turn to a professional — someone like Michael Jackson — to be that voice for us. Because, for his audience, hearing is believing; we can tell from his songs that he shares our pain.
Michael wasn’t merely blessed with the gift of expressing our heartaches; he also had a finely-tuned capacity for articulating our hopes. In 1984 Ethiopia was in the throes of a major drought and famine. The plight inspired a series of events that led to the creation of the most popular charity recording of all time, “We Are The World,” which was co-written by Michael and Lionel Richie.
us that a voice is something more than a pair of vocal cords flapping against each other at high velocity’
Opening the track with just a hint of a tremor in his voice, Michael seemed to build his resolve as the song progressed, culminating in a revival-tent exhortation of “Oh, yeah! Thank God, yeah!” just before the final chorus. That’s not singing — it’s testifying.
Released 20 years after that historic session on Michael Jackson: The Ultimate Collection, Michael’s home recording not only guided the superstar ensemble in its approach to the song, but it also beautifully illustrates the sincerity and depth of his commitment; this wasn’t just an opportunity for some good PR — it was a cause that had touched his soul.
It’s a theme he returned to again on the Dangerous album, with a song that was anything but dangerous: “Heal The World.” Michael called it the song he was proudest of creating, and it’s easy to see why: it’s the perfect union of his musical talent and his deeper aspirations for peace and healing among his fellow man.
It also placed him squarely at that crucial intersection many vocalists never reach — and one that the very best achieve only rarely — where an artist’s metaphoric “voice” combines with a singer’s physical voice for an exponentially enhanced impact that neither could accomplish alone. There’s a fundamental gentleness underlying “Heal The World,” both in terms of Michael’s singing style and the song’s philosophy, and both are informed by his unfaltering faith in the redemptive power of love.
It’s pretty clear that pop music, Jackson’s vocation for as long as we’ve known him, wouldn’t even exist without romantic love. After all, there are only so many hot rods, dance steps and bling-bling things to write about. Even when he’s been at his smoothest, sexiest summit — “Rock With You,” for instance, from Off The Wall — his notion of love has never descended into the tawdriness that some of his peers turned into a career. Perhaps because of the pivotal role his mother has played in his life, perhaps due to familial bonds forged in the crucible of working and living together 24/7 for so many years, Michael has never viewed love as a one-night stand; it’s a commitment, not undertaken lightly or surrendered easily.
In “Rock With You,” he’s clearly dressed to impress; the music is as sumptuous and sensuous as anything Michael ever committed to tape, and even the backing vocals are as lush as an orchid corsage. While his aim is clearly to rock with his intended all night and dance her into sunlight, he also makes her a promise, which is all the more believable by the way he conveys it, gift-wrapped in a feather-soft vocal crafted to entice, rather than overpower: “When the groove is dead and gone/You know that love survives.” And it’s not enough that he merely gets what he wants; he needs her to want it too.
In a pop jungle where love has so often been portrayed in terms of struggle and conquest, Michael has always seen it in a touchingly tender light, an almost idyllic state of grace.
It’s a stance he’s taken even as far back as the days of the Jackson 5, when the idea of love’s permanence was embodied in “Never Can Say Goodbye.” At a time in his life when the idea of romance couldn’t have been anything more than an idea, he still managed to stake the turf that he would hold long after love and loss became more than a mere concept. Even though the lyric seems quaint and innocent by modern standards, particularly when expressed by a boy who had yet to reach his teens, Michael’s fundamental sincerity — right from the mini-swoon he executes flawlessly in the tune’s opening phrase — permeates the song. Yet again, he delivers on the promise: he’ll always be there; his heart is pure; we can count on him. It’s little wonder that the kids who heard that song — and the adults they ultimately grew to be — have always held the man and his music so dear.
In 2009, 40 years after Michael cut his initial sides for Motown, “Never Can Say Goodbye” resurfaced on the album Pure Michael: Motown A Cappella. What possible reason could Jackson’s original label have had for releasing a collection of his songs pared down to their very nucleus? Just this: they knew that everything that Michael had become over the last five decades had been built on this rock-solid — no, let’s make that soul-solid — foundation. Even though the scope of this album necessarily touches only on his earliest recordings, listening to it provides a revelatory experience.
For the first time, his audience has essentially been brought into the studio to hear his genius in its undiluted form.
Throughout it all, in fact throughout his whole career, Michael’s remarkable instrument continued to remind us that a voice is something more than just the sound of a pair of vocal cords flapping against each other at high velocity, more than the air that rushes across the diaphragm of a studio microphone. It’s a conduit that can convey the entire spectrum of human emotion directly from one mind, one heart, to another. It’s a seamless blend of art and craft, of gift and effort, of intellect and emotion. And while it may be reinforced by style, music, or celebrity for it to be effective — for it to be transformative — it has to be able to stand on its own.
When all is sung and done, after we’ve stripped away all its accoutrements, a voice as magnificent and as timeless as Michael Jackson’s is nothing more, and nothing less, than a window… into an incomparable artist’s soul.