Michael Jackson: 35 years of ‘I Just Can’t Stop Loving You’, the first single from the album ‘Bad’
After the success of Thriller, King of Pop returns with a romantic ballad
July 20, 1987. To everyone’s surprise, after the success of Thriller and the Victory tour, Michael Jackson returned to the stage with a romantic ballad.
Nothing, or next to nothing, had yet been leaked about the Bad project. Only one single and the cover image had been released until July 1987. The images stood out for their simplicity: Jackson looks serene, arms crossed in front of him and his eyes are barely visible.
The song is followed by a beautiful duet, which Michael planned to sing with Barbra Streisand or Whitney Houston before Quincy Jones decided on Siedah Garrett.
Speaking about the recording, assistant recording engineer Brad Sundberg mentioned “pillow talk”. The plan was to bring Michael’s voice as close to the listener as possible, to emulate an intimate conversation. The methods used were impressive. For the spoken intro, Bruce Swedien had Michael whisper the lyrics into the ear of a mannequin, whose head was covered by microphones. After that they switched to the impressive QSound processor. There are pictures of Michael lying in bed with his head covered by microphones and a nylon stocking:
The original version of the song is marked by Michael Jackson’s whispered intro. This intro was cut from the third edition of the ‘Bad’ album in order to take the listener straight to the song.
As with the first single from Thriller, The Girl Is Mine, I Just Can’t Stop Loving You didn’t get its music video, at Michael’s request. The song was the biggest debut for a song in 1987, and within weeks, it reached the spot on the US Billboard, staying there for 14 weeks, gradually raising expectations for the highly anticipated album.