Michael Jackson and Prince seemed almost destined to be compared.
Both were born in 1958, both were obsessive about their music and both became extraordinary performers. By the mid-1980s, Michael had Thriller while Prince had Purple Rain, and the media increasingly presented them as pop music’s two competing geniuses.
One of their strangest encounters happened at a James Brown concert in Los Angeles in 1983.
Brown called Michael onto the stage. Michael briefly sang and danced, then leaned toward Brown and apparently asked him to bring Prince up too.
Prince eventually appeared, played guitar and delivered a wild improvised performance before leaving the stage in dramatic fashion. The grainy footage has since become legendary because three generations of superstar performers were suddenly sharing one stage.
Michael Jackson, Prince and James Brown Together in 1983
The competition only became more interesting after Michael released Thriller and Prince answered with the enormous success of Purple Rain.
In 1985, Prince notably skipped the all-star recording session for “We Are the World,” which Michael had co-written with Lionel Richie. The reason has been debated for decades. Accounts suggest Prince preferred to contribute guitar rather than join the mass vocal session, and he later contributed a separate song, “4 the Tears in Your Eyes,” to the USA for Africa album.
But the collaboration fans really missed came a few years later.
Michael originally wanted “Bad” to be a duet with Prince.
Quincy Jones arranged a meeting, but Prince ultimately declined. Years later, Prince gave Chris Rock a hilarious explanation.
The opening line was “Your butt is mine.”
Prince joked that there was an obvious problem: neither man was going to sing that line to the other. He also believed Michael did not need him because the song was already going to be a hit.
The rivalry even reportedly reached the ping-pong table. Accounts say Prince challenged Michael to a game while they were working at the same studio and relentlessly teased him after discovering Michael was inexperienced at the game. The story comes from later recollections rather than footage, but it became another famous piece of their competitive mythology.
Still, people who knew both men have argued that calling it simple hatred misses the point.
Producer Jimmy Jam described two very different perfectionists: Prince could create and finish music incredibly quickly, while Michael might spend days perfecting a tiny detail. Jam said the influence worked both ways, with Prince influenced by Michael and Michael influenced by Prince.
That may be the most interesting part of their rivalry.
They never gave the world the Michael Jackson–Prince duet everyone imagined.
Instead, two artists born only months apart spent the 1980s pushing pop music forward while constantly being measured against each other.