In the summer of 1982, Michael Jackson stood at a studio microphone, reading a children’s story out loud. And when he got to the sad part, he started to cry.
Nobody asked him to stop.
The story was E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, the movie about a lost little alien and the boy who hides him. Steven Spielberg had directed it, and that summer it was the biggest film in America.
Spielberg wanted a storybook record to go with it. A big one, with Michael telling the whole tale over clips from the film and music by John Williams, the composer behind the movie’s score.
Michael was already busy. He was making Thriller with producer Quincy Jones, the man who’d helped shape his sound since Off the Wall. So Quincy produced the E.T. album too, and Michael ran back and forth between the two projects.
“That album is a little new for me because I’ve never narrated a story,” he told Interview magazine in August 1982.
He loved it anyway. In the same interview, he talked about a photo shoot with the E.T. puppet. “He’s hugging me and everything,” Michael said, sounding like a kid on a field trip.
That shoot became a poster tucked inside the album, E.T. resting his long fingers on Michael’s shoulders.
The record also needed a song. Rod Temperton, who wrote “Thriller,” built the music, and the songwriting couple Alan and Marilyn Bergman wrote the words. Michael sang it at the start of the album and again at the end.
It’s a soft, aching ballad, and you can hear him leaning into every line.
Someone In The Dark
Then came the narration.
Near the end of the film, E.T. gets sick and seems to die. According to accounts of the sessions, Michael got so upset reading that part that he broke down crying.
Normally, that means you stop and do another take. Quincy and Spielberg reportedly figured a new take wouldn’t change a thing, since Michael would just cry again. So they kept it.
The tears are on the finished record.
MCA Records put the album out on November 15, 1982, about two weeks before Thriller hit stores. It came as a big package with a booklet full of movie stills and that poster.
There was a TV ad too.
Michael Jackson ET Album Official TV Commercial 1982
But Michael was signed to a different label, Epic Records. Epic had agreed to let him do the project on two conditions. MCA had to wait until after Christmas, and “Someone in the Dark” could never come out as a single.
MCA broke both rules. It shipped the album early and mailed promo copies of the song to radio stations.
Epic sued for $2 million, and the album was pulled from stores. Those promo copies of the song are now some of the rarest Michael Jackson records out there.
Still, the record got its moment. In February 1984, the same night Thriller swept the Grammys, the E.T. album won Best Recording for Children. Michael and Quincy walked up to accept it together.
And Quincy had a few words for the people who’d tried to bury it.