The 5 Best Michael Jackson Songs You’ve Never Heard
June 25th, 2009
By: Ben
What can I say about the recognizability factor in Michael Jackson’s music? Think of how many MJ songs you can name off the top of your head – are there any other musicians you can identify as readily? The Beatles, maybe? So for many of you, there may well be no such thing as a Michael Jackson song you don’t know.
At the same time, Michael Jackson had so many singles and so many hits that it’s easy to forget the songs that weren’t. Here are five of the King of Pop’s best lesser-known songs, including collaborations with the Notorious B.I.G. and Slash.
Baby Be Mine: This is classic, clap-along MJ. A pure funk song with all the keyboard and horns, it dances in your head. One of only two songs on Thriller never released as a single.
This Time Around: from 1995’s HIStory, this duet with Biggie Smalls is an odd piece, sung through gritted teeth. But it’s a rare freeze-frame of two extreme talents colliding at perhaps the most painful times in each of their lives.
Burn This Disco Out: Journalist Toure called Off the Wall “the greatest disco album of all time” on the NBC special earlier tonight. This is the song that ends the album and brings it home.
Give In To Me: MJ was known for his unusual personal liaisons with washed-up eccentrics, from Macaulay Culkin to Marlon Brando, but he should be remembered also for his bold collaborations with the other top talents of his day. What other musician’s embrace of genres is so broad that he’d sound equally natural opposite Biggie and Slash of Guns ‘N Roses? This is from 1991’s Dangerous, and, contravening the GNR tendency to make every song epic, this one is more powerful for how bare it is.
Dirty Diana: Ok, so you probably know this song. But this is song is still fascinating to me as a turning point in MJ’s artistic life: a strong-boned, aggressive, and sex-charged song recorded right before MJ began sliding into the frail, withdrawn, and fastidious existence he would live with in the last two decades.
What are your favorite lesser-known Michael Jackson songs?
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Unbreakable, featuring the Notorious B.I.G. also, 1st track off Invincible
2000 Watts. Also on the Invincible album.
Morphine from the Blood On The Dance Floor album.
He blew McCauley Caulkin.
speed demon on the BAD album. “CHO!!!! AHH OOOOOYI!”
Liberian Girl (Bad), Heaven Can Wait and Break of Dawn (Invincible)
It is such a great loss that a man with great talent like Michael Jackson dies. RIP King of POP
Can you feel it on the Jacksons Truimph album and Earth Song from History.
Stranger in Moscow
And give in to me is on my top 10 mj songs so i’m glad to see it on the list
Anything off Invincible, one of the most underrated albums of ALL time.
Earth Song, Stanger in Moscow, Little Susie, … there’s so many.
R.I.P.
michael jackson is a very very talented person to the point that he rose as a pop icon. he would live forever in our history books and memories.
It’s the falling in love – Off The Wall
Time Waits For No One – Triumph
Get on the Floor – Off The Wall
Shake Your Body(Down To The Ground) – Destiny
Walk Right Now – Triumph
I Can’t Help It is also good.
wow, that “Dirty Diana” song really had me going. damn that song is the ish
there would be no other King of Pop like Michael Jackson. he would always be the King.
“Biggerman” available on download an unreleased/leaked track from the unnamed 2008 MJ Album….
Threatened – off the Invicible Albumn.
Liberian Girl – off the Dangerous Albumn
i LOVE dirty diana! its always been one of my faves! especially “she said hes not coming back- because hes sleeping with me!” haha
um remember the time, they dont care about us, burn this disco out, and heal the world, oh and man in the mirror. theyre some of the best of the best!