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Michael Jackson · S2 E6
Ben
The movie song that revealed something tender and strange
A film studio calls Motown in early 1972 looking for someone to record a love ballad for a horror movie about killer rats. Berry Gordy sends them a thirteen-year-old.
A horror sequel about intelligent, deadly rats. This is the film that asked Motown for a love ballad and got a thirteen-year-old singing the most sincere song of the year.
Ben (Michael Jackson, 1972)
Written by Don Black and Walter Scharf for the closing credits of a horror film. The song reaches number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in October 1972 and earns an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song. Michael, at thirteen, sings a love ballad to a rat with such sincerity that the audience forgets what the movie is actually about. This is the first time the world sees his defining gift: an emotional transparency so total he can make you believe anything.
The Movie
Ben (1972) is a horror sequel to Willard (1971), and both movies are about large, intelligent rats that terrorize people. The title character is a rat who bonds with a lonely boy named Danny. The filmmakers want a tender closing theme that captures that bond.
“Ben was a song I could really relate to. It's about someone who has a friend and people don't understand their relationship. I knew what that felt like.”
— Michael Jackson, Moonwalk (1988)
TAP TO REVEAL: Michael kept real rats as pets after recording Ben
With a Child's Heart (Michael Jackson)
From Michael's 1973 album Music & Me. Originally a Stevie Wonder track from 1966, reimagined here as a slow, earnest ballad about approaching the world with innocence and openness. Michael is fourteen and singing about the exact quality that makes Ben work: an emotional directness that most adults have long since abandoned. If Ben is the song where the world noticed something different, this is the one where you can hear him leaning all the way into it.
The song "Ben" was the closing theme for a 1972 film. What was the movie about?
A number-one single and an Oscar nomination at fourteen, and still Berry Gordy won't let Michael write a single note of his own music. Next: the fight that breaks Motown open, and the road to freedom.
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