• Home

  • My Books

  • Blog

  • Press

  • Bio

  • Editing and Collaboration

  • Publishing

  • Clips

  • Contact

  • More

    Lou Aronica

    Sign Up for News, Events & Much More!

    • Facebook Social Icon
    • Twitter Social Icon
    • LinkedIn Social Icon
    RSS Feed

    Imprinted by Love

    July 13, 2018

    When I Grow Up I Want to Be Like You

    July 3, 2018

    The Autobiography of a Life I Never Lived

    June 29, 2018

    Food and Home

    June 26, 2018

    Degree of Difficulty

    June 22, 2018

    On Editors and Editing

    June 19, 2018

    Going Back to It

    June 15, 2018

    In a Sentimental Mood

    June 12, 2018

    Based on a True Story

    June 8, 2018

    Track 6: A Million Miles Away

    March 30, 2018

    Please reload

    Recent Posts

    Track 7: Forever

    March 23, 2018

    In the Company of women

    November 3, 2017

    Track 6: A Million Miles Away

    March 30, 2018

    1/8
    Please reload

    Featured Posts
    100 Best Lists
    Pop Music
    R&B

    The 100 Greatest Songs of the Rock Era: #86: I'll Be There

    October 4, 2017

    |

    Lou Aronica

     

    Lyrics

     

    The Jackson 5 from Third Album (1970)

     

    “You know what’s interesting?” Peggy said. “This is the second artist on your list already who had his first hits as an adolescent and continued deep into adulthood.”

     

    “You find that interesting?”

     

    “You don’t? How often does it ever happen? You have Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder. How many more can you name?”

     

    “Okay, good point.”

     

    Peggy paused. I noticed that she tended to pause when she said something I wouldn’t have observed myself. I wasn’t sure if this was to let me consider it or to have me stew in the fact that she was smarter than me. 

     

    “Do you think Michael Jackson had any idea what he was singing about when the Jackson 5 recorded this song?” she said.

     

    “Given his public persona throughout his life, I’m guessing the answer to that question is ‘no.’”

     

    “But even if that weren’t the case, how could any twelve-year-old sing a song this romantic convincingly?”

     

    “And yet he did.”

     

    “Yes. He absolutely did. How does that happen? This isn’t Justin Bieber singing ‘baby, baby, baby.’ This is a mature love song that sounds entirely believable coming from a middle-schooler.”

     

    She had me there. What Jackson was doing wasn’t mimicry. It wasn’t a producer in a studio telling him to whisper here and get soulful there. It was a twelve-year-old singing like a man and making adults all over the planet believe it. “I’ll Be There” had been a massive hit across a wide demographic, and at this point it definitely wasn’t because little Michael looked cute fronting a band of his brothers. That might have been the case with “ABC,” but it certainly wasn’t the case with “I’ll Be There.”

     

    “He was tapping into something,” I said. “Maybe he really was an alien. Maybe he’d lived multiple lifetimes on other planes before adopting this form. Maybe he’d loved and lost repeatedly in those other lifetimes.”

     

    “I was going to say that he was a skilled student of human interaction, even if he didn’t turn out to be much of a participant.”

     

    “Yeah, that’s probably a better theory.”

    Tags:

    Michael Jackson

    100 Best

    Pop music

    R&B

    Love songs

    Ballads

    Please reload

    Follow Us

    100 Best

    Acoustic music

    Adele

    Angst

    Ballads

    Beatles

    Breakup songs

    Classic rock

    Hard Rock

    Heavy Metal

    Led Zeppelin

    Les Paul

    Love songs

    Marvin Gaye

    Message songs

    Michael Jackson

    Muses

    Nirvana

    Paul McCartney

    Paul Simon

    Pop music

    Protest songs

    R&B

    R.E.M.

    Ray Bradbury

    Songs about sex

    Stevie Wonder

    The Who

    Traffic

    U2

    adulthood

    amateur musician

    analysis

    autobiography

    book editing

    characters

    coming of age

    discovery

    editors

    fantasy

    fath