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Michael Jackson · S2 E4
ABC to the World
Three consecutive number ones — and what it cost
A hotel lobby in Los Angeles, 1970. The Jackson 5 try to leave through the front entrance, a crowd of several hundred fans rushes the glass doors, and security carries eleven-year-old Michael out through the kitchen.
While the Jackson 5 are the biggest act in America, another Motown child prodigy is doing something the brothers cannot: writing, producing, and controlling his own music. Stevie renegotiated his contract at twenty-one and won full creative freedom. Michael is watching from inside the machine, taking notes.
Superstition, Stevie Wonder (1972)
Key of E-flat minor. The clavinet riff that opens this track is one of the most recognizable in music history: a funky, syncopated pattern that defined the sound of an entire era. Stevie was signed to Motown at age eleven, just like the Jackson 5, but at twenty-one he renegotiated everything and got what the brothers were nowhere close to having. Creative control, publishing rights, artistic freedom.
J5mania
Their first four singles all reach number one. Their faces appear on lunch boxes, T-shirts, coloring books, and a Saturday morning cartoon. Every live appearance draws thousands of screaming fans, and the American press keeps reaching for the same comparison: this is the biggest thing since the Beatles landed in 1964.
“I had been in music television long enough to know what mass hysteria looked like. And I hadn't seen anything like this since the British Invasion.”
— Dick Clark, on the Jackson 5's American Bandstand appearance (1970)
TAP TO REVEAL: How much money the Jackson 5 actually saw from J5mania
Got to Be There, Michael Jackson
Michael's first solo single, released in 1971 while J5mania was at its peak. While the group sold out arenas, Berry Gordy quietly launched Michael on a parallel solo track. This tender ballad is the first glimpse of something the machine didn't build: an introspective voice that sounds nothing like the energetic frontman the world was screaming for. It reached number four on the Hot 100.
Which legendary TV host repeatedly compared Jackson 5 mania to Beatlemania?
The phenomenon is at its peak, but Michael is not a child anymore. His voice is changing, his body is changing, and the boy the world fell in love with is disappearing in real time. Next: puberty, performance pressure, and the beginning of the mask.
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