“I just want hits, that’s all I want.”
That’s what Quincy Jones told a room full of songwriters at his home in Los Angeles. Quincy was Michael Jackson’s longtime producer, the man behind “Thriller,” and he was hunting for songs for Michael’s next album. That album became “Bad.”
One of the people in that room was Siedah Garrett, a young singer who had been working with Quincy. She showed up late. She left with a job to do.
Siedah took the challenge to her writing partner, a songwriter and producer who also worked for Quincy. He’d already written a stack of songs for the album, and none of them had made it. He figured that ship had sailed. But when Siedah called and said they had to write one more for Michael, he dropped his plans for the night.
He sat down at a keyboard in a spare room and started playing. Siedah brought the big idea: before you try to change the world, take a hard look at yourself first.
“It took about an hour, honestly,” her partner later said.
They made a rough tape with Siedah singing, and she drove it to Quincy’s house herself. Quincy liked it a lot. Then he told her something that took the wind out of her sails. He’d been playing songs for Michael for two years, he said, and Michael had yet to say yes to a single one he didn’t write himself.
“So it was always iffy,” Siedah remembers.
A few days later, her phone rang. Here’s Siedah telling the story in her own words.
Siedah Garrett remembers writing it for Michael
On the line was Quincy. Then he put Michael himself on the phone, and Siedah says Michael told her he loved her song, and said nice things about her voice too.
What happened next is music history. Michael recorded the song in 1987 with a gospel choir behind him, and it built into one of the most powerful endings he ever sang. When Siedah’s partner offered to fade that long ending out, Michael asked to keep it, and he made it all his own.
“Man in the Mirror” came out as a single in early 1988 and went all the way to No. 1 in America, where it stayed for two weeks. It was nominated for Record of the Year at the Grammys.
Michael came up with the idea for the video too. It’s made almost entirely of real news footage from around the world. Watch closely, because Michael himself barely appears in it at all.
The video Michael dreamed up for the song
Siedah went on to sing with Michael on tour. Years later, her writing partner watched Michael close a packed show at London’s Wembley Stadium with their song and could hardly believe it. He asked himself if he’d really had anything to do with it.
For Siedah, the song changed how she saw herself. She’d always called herself a singer. After “Man in the Mirror,” she started calling herself a songwriter.
“We knew it was special,” she said, “but we didn’t know that they were gonna love it.”