If you’ve caught Gap’s new holiday ad, you’ve already heard this one. Gap’s big holiday ad for 2026 is set to “I’ll Be There,” the Jackson 5 classic Michael recorded with his brothers in 1970.
This version is sung by choirs. Three American vocal groups, A Cappella Academy, Tonality and Sainted, come together on the song. It’s the third year of Gap’s “Give Your Gift” campaign, and the ad was directed by Carissa Gallo, with the vocal arrangement by Alexander Lloyd Blake.
There’s a nice family echo, too. Gap’s 2024 choir ad used “Together Again,” the 1997 hit by Michael’s little sister Janet Jackson. Last year it was Miley Cyrus’s “The Climb.” Now it’s Michael’s turn.
Before we get to that slip, it’s worth hearing what the choirs do with the song, since all three groups take part.
Gap’s holiday ad with three choirs singing “I’ll Be There”
The original record has a story of its own. The Jackson 5 cut “I’ll Be There” in June 1970 at Motown’s Hitsville West studio in Los Angeles. It came out on Aug 28, 1970, and Michael turned 12 the very next day. So when he sang it, he was still 11.
It was written by Motown founder Berry Gordy with Hal Davis, Bob West and Willie Hutch. And it’s a duet. Michael’s big brother Jermaine sings lead with him.
The song went to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. It was the Jackson 5’s fourth No. 1 in a row, which made them the first group whose first four singles all reached No. 1. It sold 4.2 million copies in the US and became Motown’s biggest-selling US single, a record it held until Diana Ross and Lionel Richie’s “Endless Love” came along in 1981.
Michael himself thought the song mattered. In his 1988 memoir “Moonwalk,” he said this was the one that showed people the brothers could do more than bubblegum pop.
Now for the slip.
Near the end of the record, Michael sings an ad-lib that’s easy to hear a hundred times without noticing anything odd: “Just look over your shoulders, honey.”
Shoulders. Plural.
According to Songfacts, he was meant to sing it a little differently. “He had been instructed by Berry Gordy to sing “just look over your shoulder” (as an allusion to what Levi Stubbs had said in The Four Tops’ “Reach Out I’ll Be There”), but the fluffed line was allowed to remain in the final mix.”
The nod makes sense. Levi Stubbs of the Four Tops had a famous line in their 1966 hit “Reach Out I’ll Be There,” and the two songs share those last three words. Michael’s little extra “s” stuck, and Motown let it ride.
Songfacts couldn’t resist poking a bit of fun at it. “To look over both shoulders at the same time would require an act of contortion.”
Once you know it’s there, you can’t miss it. And it makes the record feel even more human, an 11-year-old giving it everything and getting one tiny word not quite right.
For a look at how the brothers sang it together, here are Michael and Jermaine trading lines on TV in 1972, two years after the record came out.
The Jackson 5 sing “I’ll Be There” on TV in 1972
Live performances don’t always match the record word for word, so for the “shoulders” moment, go back to the original 1970 single and listen near the end. It’s right there in Michael’s voice.