Twenty-five years ago tomorrow, Michael Jackson put out the last album of all-new songs he would ever make. It was called “Invincible,” and it reached stores in the US on October 30, 2001. The album went straight to No. 1.
Ask most people to name their favorite Michael song and they reach for the giants. “Thriller.” “Billie Jean.” “Bad.” The ones everybody knows by heart.
His own daughter went somewhere else.
Her name is Paris Jackson, Michael’s middle child and his only daughter. Back in January 2012, the family gathered in Hollywood for a special day. Michael’s hand and footprints were pressed into cement at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, the famous courtyard where movie legends leave their marks. His three kids came to stand in for him.
A reporter from Access Hollywood, Billy Bush, asked each of them the same simple thing. Which of your dad’s songs is your favorite?
See the day itself, with Michael’s children at the ceremony in his place.
Michael’s hand and footprint ceremony at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, 2012
Prince, Michael’s oldest son, kept it classic. “I like ‘Thriller’ or ‘Bad,'” he said. The youngest, then known as Blanket, just grinned and said, “I like all his songs.”
Then it was Paris’s turn. She thought about it. “Really hard [to] pick,” she said, “but I’d probably say ‘You Are My Life.'” She added, “And I also love ‘Human Nature.'”
Here’s what makes that first pick land. “You Are My Life” is a soft, quiet song tucked into “Invincible,” the kind most casual fans scroll right past. It’s the song he wrote about Prince and Paris, his two children at the time. Bigi, the youngest, was born the next year. So of all the songs her father ever made, Paris reached for the one he wrote about her.
And there’s a small twist to how it got made. “You Are My Life” almost didn’t make the album at all. Carole Bayer Sager, the songwriter who helped Michael write it, told Fox News the song came together at the very last minute. “I thought by then the album was shrink wrapped and ready to go,” she said. It was the final song he finished, recorded only about eight weeks before “Invincible” came out. A track called “Shout” got bumped to a B-side to make room for it.
So the song Michael slipped in right at the buzzer turned out to be the one his daughter would name years later, standing in front of his handprints.
You can listen to it below. It’s gentle and warm, nothing like the stadium hits, and once you know who he wrote it for it hits a little differently.
Michael Jackson, “You Are My Life,” the song Paris chose
Paris was barely more than a toddler when her dad recorded it. She grew up and still carried it with her, which tells you something about what that song meant inside their home.