by Joseph Vogel
Recognizing Jackson’s vast potential, Jones challenged the artist in a variety of ways. “We tried all kinds of things I’d learned over the years to help him with his artistic growth,” Jones recalled. “Dropping keys just a minor third to give him flexibility and a more mature range in the upper and lower registers, and more than a few tempo changes. I also tried to steer him to songs with more depth, some of them about relationships. Seth Riggs, a leading vocal coach, gave him vigorous warm-up exercises to expand his top and bottom range by at least a fourth, which I desperately needed to get the vocal drama going.”
Jackson responded to the challenges, impressing his older colleagues not only with his talent but also with his trademark preparation. Jones remembers him coming into studio sessions with all his parts completely memorized—lyrics, harmonies, timing. “He can come to a session and put down two lead vocals and three background parts in one day,” Jones said in a 1982 interview. “Studio time is enormously expensive, and that’s why someone like Michael Jackson is a producer’s dream artist. He walks in prepared. We accomplish so much in a single session, it stuns me.”
Jackson and Jones made quick decisions in terms of potential songs and weren’t against reaching out to other songwriters for tracks that might fit the album, especially given Jackson’s other commitments. They wanted the album to be cohesive, but also to showcase a variety of colors, sounds, and styles. As the album began coming together, Jackson was motivated by the incredible material being put forward by fellow songwriters, including Rod Temperton. “[One day],” Jackson recalled, “he came in the studio…with this killer [groove]…‘doop, dakka dakka doop, dakka dakka dakka doop,’ this whole melody and chorus, ‘Rock with You.’ I go, WOW! So when I heard that, I said, ‘Okay, I really have to work now.’ So every time Rod would present something, I would present something, and we’d form a little friendly competition.” Jackson compared it to the way Walt Disney brought in different artists to compete for animating a film. “Whoever had the most stylized effect that Walt liked, he would pick that….It was like a friendly thing, but it was competition….So whenever Rod would bring something, then I would bring something….We created this wonderful thing.” Temperton and Jackson ended up writing a combined six of the album’s ten tracks (the pair would also write a combined seven of the nine tracks on Thriller).
LIVING OFF THE WALL
Given the time constraints, Jackson and Jones didn’t record dozens of songs for Off the Wall (as the artist would for every subsequent album). Only a handful of developed outtakes didn’t make the cut, among them “Sunset Driver” and an early iteration of “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’ ” (which Jackson held back intentionally).
“Don’t Stop,” “Rock with You,” “Workin’ Day and Night,” “Off the Wall,” “She’s Out of My Life,” and “It’s the Falling in Love” were all recorded in December 1978. “Get on the Floor” was recorded in April. And “Girlfriend,” “I Can’t Help It,” and “Burn This Disco Out” were recorded in June. Most of the work was done at Allen Zentz Recording Studios, though, according to Bruce Swedien, “She’s Out of My Life” was recorded at Cherokee Studios in Hollywood, as were most of the string parts for the album. Most of the horn parts, meanwhile, were recorded at Westlake Recording Studios, which was then Westlake Audio, on Santa Monica Boulevard (which would be Jackson’s primary studio for his remaining Jones-produced albums).
Final touches were made in the last weeks of June and early July. The album was mastered by audio engineer Bernie Grundman at A&M Studios on July 17, 1979. “Michael’s approach is very dramatic,” recalled Quincy Jones. “Very concise. When he commits to an idea he goes all the way with it. He has the presence of mind to feel something, conceive it and then bring it to life. It’s a long way from idea to execution. Everybody wants to go to heaven and nobody wants to die….You have to be emotionally ready to put as much energy into it as it takes to make it right.”
With the album complete, attention turned to the album’s packaging and promotion. The title came from a song on the album by Rod Temperton, written specifically to highlight Jackson’s uniqueness as an individual. That’s what living “off the wall” meant—that it was okay to be different. “It was a phrase that was used in New York a lot at the time,” recalled Temperton. “What I made of the meaning of the lyric was he was a little bit off-center—and when you look at Michael, there was a little bit of eccentricity there that gave him an amazing energy.”
The cover, meanwhile, introduced the adult Michael Jackson as mature, polished, sensual, and sophisticated. Before one even played the record, this was the new image they saw on the cover: a grown-up Michael Jackson, cool and cultivated, wearing a stylish tuxedo for the first time and flashing his megawatt smile. The photo was taken by celebrity photographer Mike Salisbury, who remembers the shoot taking place in an alley near CBS’s TV studio in Los Angeles. (Jackson’s first choice of location was the Griffith Observatory—the iconic art deco building made famous by the 1955 film Rebel without a Cause, starring James Dean. The shoot, however, didn’t ultimately materialize as the artist hoped.) Salisbury wanted to capture the symbolism of Jackson’s evolution with the tuxedo—something that fused Old Hollywood glamour with the contemporary moment. It worked. As music critic Anthony DeCurtis observed, “It looked like a photo taken at a graduation or a wedding, or any other rite of passage.”
Jackson’s manager at the time, Ron Weisner, claimed credit for this imaging game plan—with the exception of the white socks, which were Jackson’s idea (at Jackson’s insistence, later versions of Off the Wall only showed his bottom half, highlighting the glowing socks and loafers). This new image, incidentally, was very closely aligned with the manifesto Jackson had penned earlier that year about creating “a whole new character, a whole new look.” Now it was time to unveil it and see how the world responded.
THE ROSETTA STONE FOR R&B
On August 10, 1979, Off the Wall was released to an eager public. For months, a steady flow of details had leaked—about collaborators, potential songs, and the release date. In the wake of Destiny, there was a great deal of anticipation. Jackson favored the emotional ballad “She’s Out of My Life” as the lead single, feeling it showcased his growth and maturity, but Epic Records correctly opted to come out with a bang. “Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough,” accordingly, was the opening single. By October, the song had already ascended to the top of the pop charts.
It wasn’t until the album was heard in its entirety, however, that people began to realize that something truly special had coalesced in the partnership of Jackson and Jones. “Fans and industry peers alike were left with their mouths agape when [it] was issued to the public,” wrote biographer J. Randy Taraborrelli. Listeners spinning the record for the first time marveled at its cascading rhythms, its colorful textures, its unbridled energy.
In addition to the album’s two #1 hits (“Don’t Stop” and “Rock with You”), two other tracks (“Off the Wall” and “She’s Out of My Life”) reached the Top 10 in 1980. Meanwhile, the album stayed in the Top 20 for an incredible forty-eight weeks. By 1981, it had already sold close to seven million copies in the United States alone, making it the bestselling album ever by an African American artist.
In its 1979 review, Rolling Stone praised it as “a slick, sophisticated R&B-pop showcase.” But it took time to fully process its significance. Many retrospective reviews, writing with the benefit of hindsight, put the album in exceptionally rarefied company. “If you asked me to choose between Off the Wall and the entire back catalog of the Sex Pistols and the Beatles,” wrote music critic Mark Fisher, “there would be no contest. I respect the Beatles and the Pistols, but they had already calcified into newsreel-heritage before I even took heed of them; whereas Off the Wall is still vivid, irresistible, sumptuous, teeming with Technicolor detail.”
Fisher was not alone in this assessment. DeCurtis noted
that while it “is a dance album released at the height of disco fever…it indulges none of the genre’s clichés. Its rhythms are smooth but propulsive, charged but gracefully syncopated; the melodies are light as air but immediate and unforgettable.” NME, meanwhile, described it as the “most intricately time[d], fully textured, glossily sensual dance music ever made.” While not overtly message-driven, its implicit themes were important as well. Off the Wall was a celebration of possibility. It was a temporary escape from the problems of the “real world”—an invitation to feel alive, young, confident, and free.
Considering its enormous commercial success and positive critical reception, it is no wonder Jackson felt so devastated when the album was snubbed at the Grammy Awards in 1980 (receiving only one nomination, for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance). “I remember where I was when I got the news,” Jackson recalled. “I felt ignored by my peers and it hurt.”
Family members remember him sobbing inconsolably. “Jackson felt that the music industry was trying to keep him in his place as a niche artist,” observed Rolling Stone, “a black singer making dance music.” Jackson, however, refused to accept this fate. “That experience lit a fire in my soul,” he reflected in his 1988 autobiography, Moonwalk. “All I could think about was the next album and what I would do with it. I wanted it to be truly great.”
Regardless of the Grammy snub, Off the Wall has stood the test of time. Fans and critics alike now recognize it as one of the most important albums of the past fifty years. In a VH1 poll of more than seven hundred musicians, songwriters, DJs, radio programmers, and critics in 2003, Off the Wall was ranked the thirty-sixth greatest album of all time. Rolling Stone rated it #68 on its list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. In 2008, it was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. For multiple generations now, the album has served as what music critic John Lewis described as the “Rosetta Stone for all subsequent R&B.”
THE SONGS
1. “DON’T STOP ’TIL YOU GET ENOUGH”
Written and composed by Michael Jackson
Produced by Quincy Jones; Coproduced by Michael Jackson
Music critic Paul Lester called the opening measures “possibly the most thrilling intro to any pop single, ever.” Journalist Gerri Hirshey described it as “ten seconds of perfect pop tension.”
There’s Jackson, coyly whispering (“You know, I was wondering…”). There’s that shifty, stuttering bass. There’s the nod to Star Wars (“Because the force has got a lot of power…”). There’s that perfect balance between innocence and timidity on the one hand, and sexual suggestion and rapture on the other. There’s the anticipation.
And then that signature yell bursts through—“Oooooohhh!”—a sudden, uninhibited explosion. Of what? Confidence? Energy? Joy? “That’s his free at last, free at last,” said musician and journalist Questlove. Jackson’s yelp ushers in a kaleidoscope of sound: swirling strings, a blast of horns, a funky guitar riff, and a pulsing synthesized beat. Meanwhile, Jackson soars over it all in falsetto ecstasy.
Michael Jackson had written many songs before. But “Don’t Stop” marks his unofficial beginning as a solo artist. It was the first single released from Off the Wall, his first to win a Grammy Award (for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance), and his first to hit #1 in the United States since the early Jackson 5 days (it stayed at the top of the Billboard R&B/Soul chart for an incredible six weeks through the fall of 1979). It is, in other words, Jackson’s breakthrough song on his breakthrough album, and the track’s very composition symbolizes this transformation.
Running more than six minutes in length, the energy is relentless, making it a perennial dance anthem. “ ‘Don’t Stop’ practically leads you by the hand to the dance floor,” wrote Fisher, “the Milky Way swirl of the strings sweeping you up, the deliquescing delight (‘I’m melting’) of Michael’s enraptured falsetto gently undoing any resistant character armor. It’s a love song to dance itself, just like ‘Rock with You,’ which similarly sees the whole universe in a disco mirrorball.” Jackson’s falsetto is balanced with responses in his lower register, which Jones believed gave the song a sexier feel.
Compared to most dance-club hits, “Don’t Stop” sounds downright exotic. Beyond the standard four-on-the-floor beat, there is an intricate web of instruments and sounds, from saxophones and flutes, to glass soda bottles, to what Jackson described as “guitars chopping like kalimbas, the African thumb pianos.”
Meanwhile, the sensual lyrics announce the adult Michael Jackson—one who has moved on from the more innocent expressions of love that had dominated the Jackson 5 songs. He’s now singing about real sexual desire (“Touch me, and I feel on fire…I’m melting like hot candle wax”). Jackson’s mother, Katherine, a devout Jehovah’s Witness, expressed shock at the title and warned her son that it could be misinterpreted. Jackson, however, liked the song’s provocative lyrics. He told her not to worry, that it could “mean whatever people want it to mean.” For Michael, himself still a member of the faith and just beginning to get a taste of personal and artistic independence, the song represents a kind of liberation—sexual and otherwise.
The original 1978 demo of “Don’t Stop” was recorded in the Jackson family’s studio at Hayvenhurst. Michael sang the overdubs “as a kind of group” and wrote himself a high solo part to match the music he was “hearing in [his] head,” thereby allowing the “arrangement [to] take over from the singing.” Just about every detail in the song, from the percussion to the bass to the rhythm guitar is right there in Michael’s demo. The artist gives instructions for different parts of the song to brother Randy and sister Janet (both teenagers at the time). Greg Phillinganes later assisted with the rhythm arrangement and the bridge.
Listening in on the home demo is a revealing window into Jackson’s songwriting process. You can hear the artist feeling his way into the rhythm of the song with shakers and glass bottles serving as percussion, the alternating two-chord groove (more common with Eastern than Western music), and the subtle syncopation in the bass. “Michael is rarely discussed as an arranger since our vision of him is tied up in his persona as a live performer,” observed music critic Nelson George. “But the argument for his greatness in the recording studio begins with his arrangements of ‘Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough.’ The layers of percussion and the stacks of backing vocals, both artfully choreographed,…still rock parties in the twenty-first century.”
2. “ROCK WITH YOU”
Written and composed by Rod Temperton
Produced by Quincy Jones
Michael Jackson described the smooth disco-soul of “Rock with You” as “perfect for me to sing and move to.” Listeners seemed to agree.
On the heels of “Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough,” “Rock with You” soared to #1 in January 1980, where it stayed for four consecutive weeks. It remained in wide circulation on radio and in dance clubs, and roller-skating rinks the remainder of the year, becoming—according to Billboard—the fourth most successful single of 1980.
Following the trademark opening drumroll, Jackson locks into the song effortlessly. Where “Don’t Stop” is exuberant, “Rock with You” is subtle, evocative. It takes its time, slowly seducing the listener into its sparkling pleasure dome. The effect is intoxicating. “Is there any record which better captures the cosmic vertigo of falling in love than ‘Rock with You’?” asks Fisher. “That headlong synesthetic rush in which music, dancing and love feed each other in a reflexive virtuous circle which, even though it seems miraculous, unbelievable, at the same time seems like it couldn’t possibly end (‘And when the groove is dead and gone / You know that love survives / And we can rock forever’). This was soul to sell your soul for.”
The track is one of three songs composed for the album by Rod Temperton. On the original demo, Temperton provides the guide vocal, blocking out the contours and making up lyrics as he works through i
t. Jackson remembered the original song being more up-tempo before Quincy Jones “softened the attack and slipped in a synthesizer that sounded like a conch shell’s insides on a beach.”
As great as the songwriting is on its own, it is equally remarkable what Jackson’s vocal adds to it. From that opening lyric (“Girl, close your eyes…”), he makes the listener feel each word as if it contains an electric charge. Music critic Steven Hyden describes the line where Michael sings, “Girl, when you dance, there’s a magic that must be love” as “the most purely joyful moment I’ve ever heard in a pop song.”
If “Don’t Stop” hadn’t driven home the impression, “Rock with You” confirmed it: Michael Jackson had moved beyond the bubblegum material of his childhood. “Rock with You” was sensual and erotic. Not erotic like Prince. But erotic in its own suggestive, poetic way. The song’s mood, texture, and feel set the blueprint for countless R&B artists to come.
3. “WORKIN’ DAY AND NIGHT”
Written and composed by Michael Jackson
Produced by Quincy Jones; Coproduced by Michael Jackson
The second of the three Jackson compositions on Off the Wall, “Workin’ Day and Night” accelerates the frenetic pace established in “Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough,” while once again showcasing his rhythmic genius. Jackson worked on the arrangement with Paulinho da Costa, and the Brazilian influence can be heard in the propulsive percussion. It’s intricate. It’s funky. And it’s relentless.
The song begins with Jackson’s own voice as percussion (something the artist commonly did in his demos). In this case, he kept it on the final cut, giving the track a raw, organic feel. It contrasts with the pristine production on “Rock with You.” You can feel the sweat on this one.