JACKSON 5 - I’LL BE THERE

Released : August 28, 1970

Charted:  UK: #4  US: #1 (5 wks)

The day after the Jackson 5 released “I’ll Be There,” their fourth national single and fourth #1, Michael Jackson turned 12. Even if you’ve been living your entire life with “I’ll Be There,” with the myth of Michael Jackson’s whole career, that’s staggering. “I’ll Be There” is an almost painfully adult song, a song about regret and longing and warmth and support and mixed-up feelings. And Jackson sings it with an almost absurd grace, a sense of empathy and tenderness and understanding. 

Before “I’ll Be There,” the three Jackson 5 songs that had hit #1 were all variations on the same thing. They were springy, funky, uptempo jams that reimagined the giddiest bits from Sly & The Family Stone, as reworked by Motown’s assembly line geniuses and interpreted by a group of adorable, frighteningly talented children. This was a formula, and it was a formula that worked better than anyone could’ve ever anticipated. On their first three singles Michael Jackson and his brothers practically vibrate with excitement. That’s not what happens on “I’ll Be There.” “I’ll Be There” is something else.

The song itself is as shatteringly lovely as any Motown ballad. It’s a pledge to support and comfort another person, no matter what happens. We don’t find out the whole story until the third verse: “If you should ever find someone new, I know he better be good to you / Cuz if he doesn’t, I’ll be there.” With that line, the whole song shifts. We learn that we’re hearing someone singing about an ex, promising that he’ll drop everything and come running whenever his former love gets lonely. That line transforms it from a song of friendship to one of heartbreak.

A song like “I’ll Be There” is central to the legend of Michael Jackson, both for being an amazing song and for what it represents. Here, this angelic child was singing these incredibly adult songs, doing them better than any adult ever could. Jackson was a global superstar as a small child, which means he never got to enjoy anything resembling childhood. Then, as a galactically famous adult, Jackson chased those childhood feelings that he never got to feel, remaking himself as an alien manchild. In that pursuit of what all his money couldn’t buy him, Michael became strange and creepy and tragic. He definitely died too young. All that transcendence came with a heavy price tag. And yet, after all that, after everything we saw, those songs are perfect. “I’ll Be There” is perfect.

In his autobiography Moon Walk, Michael Jackson noted that "I'll Be There" was the song that solidified The Jackson 5's careers and showed audiences that the group had potential beyond bubblegum pop. Nevertheless, "I'll Be There" was the Jackson 5's final number-one Hot 100 hit as a group. For the rest of their career as a major-label act, Jackson 5 singles would climb no higher than number 2.