(Garrett sang backup, too, and Ballard programmed the Linn drum machines.) Jackson seized on that sensibility and fleshed it out further, adding a gigantic key change to the end of the song and bringing in a team of all-star gospel singers, including the Winans Family and the André Crouch Choir, to sing backup on it. There’s tension in the song, in the choppiness of some of the vocal phrasing, and there’s also the relief of that gloriously overwhelmed chorus melody. Instead, “Man In The Mirror” is all about confronting yourself, realizing that you can be a better person, and making it happen. It’s a gospel song, essentially, though it never mentions God. The version of “Man In The Mirror” from Siedah Garrett’s demo is very close to the one that Jackson recorded. It’s clearly a Michael Jackson song, and yet it doesn’t feel like a part of the Michael Jackson myth. But even if the public at large had turned against Jackson - and honestly, we really haven’t - then “Man In The Mirror” would probably still stand apart from all of that. I remember hearing “Man In The Mirror” on supermarket speakers the weekend before HBO aired Leaving Neverland, the documentary about some of the abuse allegations against Jackson, and wondering if I’d ever hear the song on any kind of institutional playlist again. To this day, “Man In The Mirror” seems to stand apart from the increasingly troubling legend of Michael Jackson. It became a kind of self-improvement folk song, a gospel standard. “Man In The Mirror” overwhelmed any and all talk about Michael Jackson the public figure. If that’s what Jackson thought, he was right. Maybe he just knew that the song was powerful enough to shut everyone up, at least for a little while. So maybe it was brave for Jackson to release “Man In The Mirror,” the song about taking a long look at yourself and making a change, as a single in 1988. In the late ’80s, Michael Jackson was one of the most visible people in the world, and people definitely talked about how his features were changing. Jackson’s vitiligo caused blotches on his skin, and he wore makeup to cover it up. Through the ’80s and beyond, Jackson’s face changed. Later on, he said he’d gotten a nose job so that he could breathe better and hit higher notes.
Michael had his first rhinoplasty surgery in 1979, reportedly after he’d broken his nose while falling during a dance rehearsal. When Michael was a kid, Joe would call him “Big Nose.” Michael hated it. Michael was a shy and sensitive kid by nature, and constant hectoring from his father didn’t make him any more confident. Michael was the focus of the Jackson 5, and he was also the youngest member of the group, at least until baby brother Randy joined up years later.
Jackson was five years old when Joe Jackson, the abusive taskmaster patriarch of the Jackson family, organized five of his sons into a singing group. There was plenty of context, even if that context wasn’t known at the time. A song like “Man In The Mirror” practically invited people to notice that changes were being made. The Michael Jackson of 1988 did not look like the Michael Jackson of 1983, and the Michael Jackson of 1983 did not look like the Michael Jackson of 1979. Plenty of them seemed to think that he was a weirdo. But for weird kids who read the gossip columns of local newspapers, like me, it was pretty apparent that plenty of adults did not look at Michael Jackson the way that I did. He came off more as a walking miracle, a manifestation of flash and dazzle and magic. To a kid in the ’80s, it didn’t make sense to look at Michael Jackson as a fallible human being. In The Number Ones, I’m reviewing every single #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart’s beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present.