Epic 40600
Producer: Quincy Jones
Track listing: Bad / The Way You Make Me Feel / Speed Demon / Liberian Girl /Just Good Friends / Another Part Me / Man in the Mirror / I Just Can’t Stop Loving You / Dirty Diana / Smooth Criminal
September 26, 1987
6 weeks
Thriller wasn’t just a hard album to follow, it was nearly impossible. Nevertheless, when Michael Jackson went to work on his next album in the summer of 1986, he had his sights set on eclipsing Thriller, which had gone on to sell more than 40 million copies worldwide, making it the top-selling album of all time.
Initially, Jackson went to work on Bad without the assistance of producer Quincy Jones, who took time off from work after producing the film The Color Purple. “I went to Tahiti for a vacation and Michael started working on the new album with arranger John Barnes,” says Jones. “That was the first time that I asked Michael to write the whole album.” Jackson took the challenge seriously, coming up with 66 songs. “Eventually we boiled it down to 33, and then down to 10,” says Jones.
Unlike Thriller, the recording of Bad was an extremely lengthy process, lasting 14 months. The album featured eight songs written by Jackson, including the title track, “The Way You Make Me Feel,” “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You,” and “Dirty Diana.” “Just Good Friends,” which was recorded as a duet featuring Jackson and Stevie Wonder, was written by Terry Britten and Graham Lyle, the team responsible for Tina Turner’s “What’s Love Got to Do with It.” “Man in the Mirror” was a collaboration between Siedah Garrett and Glen Ballard, both of whom were signed to Jones’s publishing company.
A few of the album’s songs were written with superstar guests in mind. “‘Bad’ was originally written as a vehicle for Michael to do a duet with Prince,” says Jones. “It was a real confrontation song and it would have been very dramatic. But Prince didn’t want to do it. He said, ‘It would be just as good without me.'”
“I Just Can’t Stop Loving You” was also initially set as a superstar duet. “We talked about having Barbra Streisand or Whitney Houston, but I think it worked out just the way it was supposed to,” Jones says. It was the relatively unknown Garrett, whose voice strongly resembles Jackson’s, who was eventually recruited as Jackson’s singing partner. “They have the same register,” says Jones. “It’s amazing, sometimes I couldn’t tell the difference between their voices.”
As was the case with Thriller, Jackson’s elaborate music videos dominated the MTV airwaves and drove album sales. The video clip for the title track was directed by Jones’s friend Martin Scorsese. “I called Marty, because he’s one of my favorite directors,” says Jones. “He was in the editing room doing The Color of Money. The timing was just right and he agreed to do it.”
The combination of heavy airplay on radio and MTV once again made Jackson nearly unavoidable. Bad couldn’t match the awesome sales of Thriller, but the album did manage to top its predecessor in one sense: Both “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You” and “Bad” went on to top the Hot 100, as did “The Way You Make Me Feel,” “Man in the Mirror,” and “Dirty Diana.” The feat made Bad the first album to spawn five Number One singles, an accomplishment not even Thriller could match.
THE TOP FIVE
Week of September 26, 1987
1. Bad, Michael Jackson
2. La Bamba, Soundtrack
3. Whitney, Whitney Houston
4. Whitesnake, Whitesnake
5. Hysteria, Def Leppard