They were three young brothers named Taj, Taryll and TJ Jackson, and together they went by 3T. Their father was Tito Jackson, one of the original Jackson 5, which made Michael Jackson their uncle. In the mid-1990s the boys were building a music career of their own, signed to MJJ Music, the label Michael ran himself. Their first album, “Brotherhood,” came out in 1995.
Somewhere in their pile of songs sat a demo the brothers had already passed on. It didn’t move them, so they set it aside.
Michael had the same demos. He heard that one very differently.
TJ says his uncle would not let it go. He kept pushing them to record it, and finally he made it plain. “I’m serious, you guys have to do this song,” Michael told them. “If you don’t do it, I may do it.”
When Michael Jackson tells you a song is that good, you don’t argue.
So 3T recorded it. The song was “I Need You,” a gentle ballad first written and sung by Eric Carmen, the voice behind “All By Myself.” In the brothers’ hands it turned into something tender, and it reached No. 3 in Britain in 1996. It was never even put out as a single here in the States, so a lot of American fans have never heard it at all.
Michael was working in a studio nearby while they cut the track. He stopped in and asked if he could sing the ending himself. Not a duet, just his voice lifting the last part of the song behind theirs. He’s credited with backing vocals.
If you want to hear it, play the video and stay with it until the final moments.
3T’s official music video for “I Need You,” with Michael on the closing vocals
Then came the moment TJ still talks about all these years later. Two producers were in the room when Michael finished singing, and both men were so shaken that they had to get up and walk out. “Max Martin and Denniz PoP stepped outside and they were crying,” TJ remembers.
That first name, Max Martin, is the quiet surprise in this story.
Back then he was a young Swedish producer most Americans had never heard of. Within a few years he would become one of the biggest hit-makers in all of pop. He wrote and produced Britney Spears’s “…Baby One More Time,” and later shaped many of Taylor Swift’s biggest songs too. The man standing in that studio with tears in his eyes went on to make records you’ve known by heart for years.
For one afternoon though, he was just a producer undone by the sound of Michael Jackson’s voice, raised up for a song his own nephews had almost let slip away.