Man in the Music

by Joseph Vogel

  The final single from Bad, “Liberian Girl” was largely overlooked on an album packed with hits. But it is perhaps the LP’s best hidden gem, transporting the listener into a vivid love story in a faraway land.

  5. “JUST GOOD FRIENDS”

  Written and composed by Terry Britten and Graham Lyle

  Produced by Quincy Jones; Coproduced by Michael Jackson

  One of just two songs on the album not written by Jackson, “Just Good Friends” is a fun if forgettable synth-pop duet, featuring two of music’s most famous voices. Particularly after Prince dropped out of “Bad” and Whitney Houston’s record label wouldn’t allow her to perform a duet on “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You,” Jackson and Jones felt they needed a big-name duet partner in the vein of “The Girl Is Mine.” Jackson and Wonder had been friends since their days at Motown and held a deep mutual respect for each other’s abilities. Yet this marked the first time they had officially sung together on the same record. (They would go on to record another duet, “Get It,” for Wonder’s 1987 album, Characters.)

  “Just Good Friends” was written by Terry Britten and Graham Lyle, the British duo who penned Tina Turner’s 1984 hit “What’s Love Got to Do with It.” The song was solid enough. Yet, given the talent involved, some critics (and listeners) felt the song was a bit of a letdown (Rolling Stone called it the album’s “only mediocrity”), arguing that Jackson and Wonder—both first-rate songwriters—should have crafted their own song, rather than outsourcing it. With such a rare opportunity, they argued, why not attempt something more daring, rather than coasting on a relatively lightweight vocal workout?

  But, as it stands, the track still features Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder, and their sheer talent, chemistry, and dynamism make the song a worthy listen (it even features a callback of sorts to “The Girl Is Mine” with the “doggone lover” reference). Extensive video footage was taken of the artists in the studio (revealed in part in Spike Lee’s documentary, Bad 25), in which the two legends warm up, joke around, and improvise some ideas and lines. According to assistant engineer Russ Ragsdale, Stevie laid down “the most ripping synth solo” that day for the song’s bridge, which Jackson loved.

  Recorded on September 23, 1986, it was the first song for Bad started at Westlake Studio, rather than with the B-Team at Hayvenhurst.

  6. “ANOTHER PART OF ME”

  Written and composed by Michael Jackson

  Produced by Quincy Jones; Coproduced by Michael Jackson

  “Another Part of Me” is about the future, and it sounds like it. The slowly crescendoing synth introduction recalls the “Deep Note” that became George Lucas’s sound production company THX’s audio trademark. Its sparkling shimmer unveils a new kind of space-age R&B.

  This sound, of course, wasn’t by accident. Before appearing on the Bad album, a slightly different version of the song was featured in Jackson’s 1986 4-D film, Captain EO. The song, like the film, was about the cosmic power of music to inspire global peace and harmony.

  Jackson worked on the song primarily with John Barnes, and further embellished and polished it with the A-Team at Westlake. The synths were designed to have a metallic texture but also be bright and airy on top. Once again, horns were featured prominently (the saxes played by Kim Hutchcroft and Larry Williams and the trumpets by Jerry Hey and Gary Grant), accenting and punctuating Jackson’s message. Listen, for example, to the three-note burst at the end of the bridge, led into by Jackson’s percussive “shoos” and a rapid drumroll, before culminating in the singer’s signature “ooooohh!”

  The Los Angeles Times called “Another Part of Me” a “heavy R&B riffer…[with] a timely salute to harmonic convergence.” Yet some critics pointed to the song as an example of Jackson’s simplistic, increasingly messianic worldview. Its lyrics about good “taking over” and music bringing “brighter days” might make sense as a Tomorrowland attraction, they argued, but it hardly spoke to real-world issues. While there was some merit to this critique, “Another Part of Me” wasn’t meant to be the Clash. It was more situated in Afrofuturism—science fiction through a distinctly black lens—and intended to offer a sense of hope and possibility.

  This comes through in the lyrics as well as the music. Listen to how Jackson’s vocal opens up in the chorus, matching the sentiment of the lyric (“We’re sending out…a major love…and this is our…message to you…”). The void into which his message is sent is filled by the reinforcing harmony (“message to you”). The point of the title was simply that we are all connected—no matter one’s skin color, ethnicity, nationality—“You’re just another part of me.” It was an extension of previous anthems like “Can You Feel It” and “We Are the World,” but with a more distinctly sci-fi frame.

  “Another Part of Me” was tailor-made to be a stadium anthem, which is exactly what it became on the Bad World Tour. The song peaked at #11 on the Billboard Hot 100—the first Jackson single unable to crack the Top 10. It did, however, reach #1 on the R&B chart in the summer of 1988.

  7. “MAN IN THE MIRROR”

  Written and composed by Siedah Garrett and Glen Ballard

  Produced by Quincy Jones; Coproduced by Michael Jackson

  Critics were slow to recognize “Man in the Mirror” alongside popular music’s greatest social anthems: John Lennon’s “Imagine,” Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Goin’ On,” the Beatles’ “Let It Be.” Part of that might have been Reagan-era reactionism; part of it might have been post-Thriller Jackson fatigue. But “Man in the Mirror” deserves its place alongside those classics.

  A passionate gospel-infused call for individual and social change, it is not only the centerpiece to Bad—it is also one of the crowning achievements of Jackson’s career. In 2009, Time called it “one of [his] most powerful vocals and accessible social statements, not to mention the best-ever use of a gospel choir in a pop song.” Following Jackson’s death in the summer of 2009, it was “Man in the Mirror” (similar to Lennon’s “Imagine”) that people turned to the most. More than twenty years after its initial release, it shot to #1 on iTunes and other streaming sites around the world. “This, more than any other,” observed music critic Paul Lester, “was the song that was given a new lease on life through his death, by public demand.”

  “Man in the Mirror” was one of the final songs recorded for Bad. Songwriter and producer Glen Ballard, whose song “Nightline” missed the cut for Thriller, had submitted about half a dozen songs for Bad. But Jackson was coming up with such great material by himself that there was no real need to look elsewhere. Still, by late 1987 Quincy Jones believed the album needed one more song, something Thriller had lacked: a big, inspirational anthem in the mold of Whitney Houston’s 1985 hit “Greatest Love of All.” Jackson was open to an outside track, but it had to be truly great; it had to give him goose bumps.

  Ballard had assumed he was out of the running for Bad when young singer (and Quincy Jones protégé) Siedah Garrett called him up on a Saturday, urging him to give it one more shot (the two had been writing songs together). “I said, ‘I’ve been writing for Michael for six months, it’s not going to happen,’ ” said Ballard. “She said, ‘Come on, let’s do one more.’ So I agreed. I canceled my plans on a Saturday night….I sat at my Fender Rhodes, we wrote ‘Man in the Mirror’ in one sitting, did a little scratchy demo.” In that session, as Ballard came up with the chords, Garrett began rapidly penning down lyrics in her notebook. By the end of the night, they had a spare but complete demo.

  Garrett was so ecstatic about the song she rushed it over to Quincy Jones the next day. Jones, of course, routinely received dozens of demos for consideration. Under normal circumstances, “Man in the Mirror” may have waited at least a few days, if not weeks. But given Garrett’s excitement and sense of urgency about the song, Jones agreed to listen to it that day. A few hours later, he called Garrett. “ �
�Baby, the song is great,’ ” Garrett recalled him saying. “ ‘It’s really good. But—’ I said, ‘But what?’ And he said, ‘I don’t know. I’ve been playing songs for Michael for two years. And he has yet to accept an outside song.’ ”

  A couple of days later, however, Quincy called Garrett back with good news. Jackson had listened to the song and loved it. He wanted to record it immediately. “I screamed!” remembers Garrett. “Couldn’t believe it.” When Ballard got the news, he couldn’t believe it either. “The next thing I know, on Tuesday, I’m in [Westlake Studio] with Michael,” he recalled. “I’ve got the whole song programmed in my Linn 9000, and we were working on keys, arrangements and everything. It’s like, shit man, every now and then you get lucky. It was the last thing we cut on Bad, and I’d written it in A-flat; we just dropped it a half-step. Then I got to do the half-step modulation back to A-flat, which he loved.”

  Michael Jackson actually recorded Siedah Garrett re-singing the song in the new key on a handheld video camera right then and there in the studio. No pressure. In the video, Jackson snaps his fingers as Garrett sings. Once it was in the right key, Jackson locked into the song intuitively, feeling his way into its rhythm, words, and meaning. The lights were turned out and Jackson went to work.

  Everyone in that session knew they were witnessing something special. Matt Forger, who worked with Jackson over nearly his entire solo career, described it as the greatest moment he’s ever experienced in a studio. “The song was this really magical moment, and it had everything to do with Michael’s vocal interpretation,” concurred Ballard. “In the last two minutes, [he] started doing these incantations: all the ‘shamons’ and ‘oohs.’ He went to that place on his own. We certainly couldn’t have written that….There were all these strange intervals in the vocal harmonies we’d written, and Michael totally got it….He felt music at its core….He was so soulful and rhythmically sophisticated….He knew how to sing flawlessly.”

  “Man in the Mirror” begins as a quiet confession: with a simple synthesized brass bell introduction, Jackson snaps his fingers and sings nearly a cappella. “I’m gonna make a change, for once in my life.” Some critics derided the lyrics as too individualistic (The New York Times’s Jon Pareles dismissed the song as “activism for hermits”). But a closer look reveals a rather bold call for social accountability during an era that often celebrated materialism and greed. These were the years of Dynasty, Donald Trump’s rise in real estate, and Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. In that context, “Man in the Mirror” draws our attention to a different reality. Jackson sings of homelessness, poverty, and injustice (“Who am I to be blind, pretending not to see their needs”); “washed-out dreams”; his own passive complicity in other’s suffering (“I’ve been a victim of a selfish kind of love”); looking outward, then inward, then outward again. Once we see ourselves and others more clearly, he suggests, we can begin to change things. “No one since Dylan,” argued Rolling Stone’s Davitt Sigerson, “has written an anthem of community action that has moved so many as Michael’s (and Lionel’s) ‘We Are the World.’ And no such grandiose plans can succeed without the first, private steps that Jackson describes here.”

  Gradually, with each verse and chorus, the momentum builds and his self-reflection (and by extension, the listeners’) morphs into resolve, conviction, and determination. Jackson, in essence, operates in the style of a black preacher. It was the artist’s idea to bring in a choir for a climactic call-and-response. For that, Quincy Jones reached out to the legendary gospel quartet the Winans, as well as the Andraé Crouch Choir. To get that huge, full sound, Bruce Swedien recorded them in three different spots in the studio, capturing the performance on his favorite pair of Neumann M-49 microphones. The result made it sound as if hundreds of singers were backing Jackson. “[The choir is] not coddling the listener,” wrote cultural critic Armond White, “but singing with a joyous communal strength.”

  The climax of the song is Jackson at his finest: the passionate conviction, the call-and-response, the ecstatic exultations. “It is a remarkable dramatic performance,” observed Time’s Jay Cocks, “intense, direct and unadorned, one of the best things Jackson has ever done.” For Glen Ballard, those final two minutes represent the absolute peak of his life in music. “He just killed it, man. I will never have another moment like that, where everything was working. I had the greatest musicians, engineer, producer, artist, studio in one place at one time—everything was perfect on that one.”

  “Man in the Mirror” was originally released as a single in February 1988; it reached the top of the charts the following month on March 26. It reached the Top 10 again through much of the world following Jackson’s death in 2009.

  8. “I JUST CAN’T STOP LOVING YOU”

  Written and composed by Michael Jackson

  Produced by Quincy Jones; Coproduced by Michael Jackson

  “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You” was originally intended to be a duet with Whitney Houston. By the mid-’80s, Houston was a rising star. Her eponymous 1985 album was a phenomenon, generating three #1 hits and selling more than ten million copies in the United States alone. She became the bestselling artist of 1986. Impressed by both her talent and commercial success, Jackson was determined to get her on his new album. Houston, who had already collaborated with Michael’s older brother Jermaine, reportedly agreed to be on the record. However, Arista Records head Clive Davis quashed the collaboration over concerns it would benefit competing label Epic Records and oversaturate Houston with no compensation to Arista.

  With Houston unavailable, Jackson suggested Barbra Streisand. Jackson had long admired Streisand’s vocal abilities, and the two had developed a friendly relationship over the years. Streisand had recently visited Jackson on the set of Captain EO. Due to Epic Records’ concerns over their age differences (Streisand was forty-four at the time; Jackson was twenty-six), however, the proposed collaboration never came to fruition.

  Running out of time to cut the track, Quincy Jones proposed a simple solution: How about Siedah Garrett? Garrett was almost entirely unknown in the industry at the time. However, with her demo of “Man in the Mirror,” she had already proven herself to the two people who mattered: Jackson and Jones.

  Not long after “Man in the Mirror” was recorded, Siedah Garrett got a call from Quincy Jones. He wanted her to come to the studio to work on another song. He sent her a tape of the song, which featured Jackson singing, and Garrett assumed she might be doing some background vocals as she had for “Man in the Mirror.” When she arrived at the studio, however, it quickly became apparent that she was being offered a much bigger opportunity. “Quincy said, ‘You got the tape, right? Did you learn the song?’ ” recalled Garrett. “I said, ‘Sure, I know the song.’ He said, ‘Well, go in there and sing it.’ ”

  In the recording booth were two music stands facing each other. Michael Jackson was waiting at one of them, wearing sunglasses. The other one was for her. “This is the first time I realized what was happening,” said Garrett. She looked at the sheet music listing her name next to Michael Jackson’s and nearly passed out as she understood she was about to sing a duet with the biggest artist on the planet.

  Jackson helped put her at ease by joking around and even throwing popcorn at her while she sang. “He has a real keen sense of humor,” said Garrett. “Which surprised me, because you hear all these stories about how strange he is.” Quincy Jones wasn’t sure how the pair would work together, but the chemistry turned out great, their contrasting vocals beautifully complementing each other.

  Initially, the song included a spoken intro in which Jackson whisper-confesses his love. “A lot of people misunderstand me,” he said. “That’s because they don’t know me at all.” The awkward introduction, however, was removed from all subsequent releases of the album and the single. The song itself begins with an Enya-like new age vibe (created by David P
aich of Toto) before flowering into a pristine pop ballad, anchored by John Barnes on piano. “It almost sounded like a British ’60s song,” recalled Paich. “It was kind of ballad-y, but it had the timpani in it and everything. It went back to pop music in the ’60s almost, but it was interesting and fun.”

  On the original demo, Jackson sang all the parts. “That was another one of those magic songs,” remembers Barnes. “He called me up at like two in the morning—‘You’ve gotta come to the studio right now. I’ve got this beautiful song.’ So Bill and I went there in the middle of the night and in a couple of hours we had it down. It was another quick, magic musical experience.”

  “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You” was the first single released from Bad and quickly soared to #1. Most critics dismissed it as sentimental adult contemporary drivel (much as they had the lead single from Thriller, “The Girl Is Mine”). Yet the ethereal duet has held up as one of Jackson’s most enduring ballads. It was subsequently rerecorded with Jackson and Garrett singing the lyrics in both Spanish and French, the first time a major artist had made his music multilingual, and an acknowledgment of his increasingly global audience.

  9. “DIRTY DIANA”

  Written and composed by Michael Jackson

  Produced by Quincy Jones; Coproduced by Michael Jackson

  With “Dirty Diana,” Jackson is back in cinematic territory. From the opening sound effects, the mood is tense, coiled, dramatic. Those ominous effects were created by Denny Jaeger, legendary Synclavier sound designer. It is one of many examples on the album in which Jackson was expanding the sonic palette to achieve particular moods and emotions.