In the summer of 1982, Michael Jackson was already busy making Thriller, the album that would soon make him the biggest star on the planet. But that June he stepped into a studio for a very different job.
He was going to read E.T. out loud.
The movie was everywhere that year. Its makers wanted a storybook album kids could play at home, with the film’s music running under one warm voice telling the whole tale. Michael’s producer, Quincy Jones, ran the sessions, and Steven Spielberg, the man who made the movie, worked on it with them. Michael also sang a brand-new ballad for it called “Someone in the Dark,” which opens the record and comes back again at the very end.
He didn’t treat it like a side job. “When I was doing that recording I really felt that I was E.T.,” he told Ebony magazine that December. He said the little alien was “in a strange place and wants to be accepted,” and he knew exactly how that felt.
He even sat for a photo shoot with the E.T. figure from the film. The photographer who shot the famous Thriller cover took those pictures too. “I had a picture session with E.T. and it was so wonderful,” Michael told Interview magazine in 1982. “He’s hugging me and everything.”
Then came the hardest scene in the story, the one that’s had grown-ups reaching for tissues for more than 40 years. Michael reportedly couldn’t get through it with a steady voice. The people in the room talked about doing another take. They decided it wouldn’t change a thing, so they kept what he’d given them.
You can hear the whole storybook below, and it’s worth listening closely once the story turns sad.
Michael reads the E.T. story, start to finish
The record came out in November 1982, about two weeks before Thriller. Then Thriller took over the world.
On February 28, 1984, Michael walked into the Grammys with 12 nominations. He was 25 years old. He walked out with eight trophies, more than anyone had ever won in a single night. Thriller took Album of the Year, and “Beat It” won Record of the Year.
At one point he and Quincy walked up together for one more award, so wait for what Michael says when it’s his turn at the microphone.
Michael and Quincy step up for one more Grammy
Michael never stopped loving that little alien. “His story is the story of my life in many ways,” he once said. “He gives love and wants love in return, which is me.”
The original box set came with a big poster from that photo shoot. In it, E.T. rests his long wrinkled fingers on Michael’s shoulders, and one fingertip glows.