“I Want You Back”

December 4, 2014 • 5:43 am

Wake up!  Here’s a song that’s almost as good as coffee.

Michael Jackson was already a performing genius back in 1969 when this song was released. Jackson was only 11, but look at the guy sing and dance! His talent was huge even then.

Written by the group called “The Corporation”, comprising  Motown founder Berry Gordy as well as Freddie Perren, Alphonzo Mizelland and Deke Richards, the instrumental introduction, a specialty of Motown, is a classic (I invented my own dance step for it). And despite the fact that this is by what would now be called a “boy band,” and that the lead singer wasn’t even in his teens, it’s a soul classic—one of the greats. And it’s a great dancing song.

“I want you back” is #121 on Rolling Stones’ list of the 5oo Greatest [Rock] songs of all time. I have a lot of problems with that list, but am still considering doing a countdown starting from #500, putting up one song a day on this site. That would take about one year and five months.

As far as I can tell, this is a live performance:

54 thoughts on ““I Want You Back””

      1. Yes, but polyester today is far superior to 1969 polyester. Unless you kept the clothes since 1969.

  3. You should do a song countdown… you could do one a week for 10 years! Of course such lists are contentious, but still fun.

      1. Does and iPod have a camera built in? You will be returning down that same elevator this evening won’t you?

      2. Security probably have it recorded – it should be all round the university by now 🙂

  5. They’re playing the studio recording and lip synching and faking the guitar playing to it (a very common practice back then). Notice that Michael’s lips don’t perfectly match the song and there is no one playing the drums, so where are the cymbal sounds coming from? It also sounds exactly like the recording, which is 3:00 long, compared to this video of 2:59. Coincidence? I think not. Of course, none of this detracts from the great talent of the composers and performers.

    1. There is a drummer. One of the things missing is a keyboard player.

      At least they aren’t doing that cheezy American Bandstand lip syncing, where there are no cables to any of the instruments and the singer’s hand held mic has a radio antenna shoved into an XLR connector to make it seem like it’s wireless.

      1. There is a keyboard player, you can see him on stage left in the opening. There’s only one electric piano, I can hear an organ part too. A decade before midi….I’m suspicious.

        My guess is that they are miming to part of the original track. the string section is missing, but there are 3 guitar parts, and only one guitar player?!?!?

        Vocals might be live, J5 were that good.

        Great tune though….I love the 2/4 bars at the end of each chorus, it surprises the listener with the verse coming back in just a bit early. That’s a very crafty songwriting/production trick.

    2. I also thought this was lip-synching but for your final reason, since I didn’t watch that closely. I was just the right age in 1969 to lie on the floor by the phonograph and play this 45 over and over again. The original version is thus permanently burned into my brain and my guess then is that any tiny variation in a live performance would trigger an “error” message. But that didn’t happen.

      If it wasn’t lip-synching then damn, the Jackson 5 is super spooky smooth.

    1. Yeah my late dad liked one pop song in his life and it was this. Because of the bass line. Good spot, Dad! It was recorded by Wilton Felder: lay out the red carpet for that Fender bass. I’ve been told that the recording took a year from start to release. x

  7. Love that song, love the early Jacksons, thanks!

    Just watching the dance moves reminds me of another Jackson song that I think of as just as classic: The Love You Save. I find it even more danceable.

    And on that note, Jerry (and others) I urge you to check out a hilarious performance of Love You Save, not by the Jacksons, but on the show “just for laughs” by
    chuck harris, a sort of comedic performer from the 80’s. As far as I know he only did this performance once on TV, but it’s one of those things that if you saw it, you always remember it: did you that guy the puppets!!??

    I’d put a link but I’m not sure how to do so without embedding, so:

    Google this for the video:

    just for laughs chuck harris

    It’s hard not to smile watching it 🙂

    1. (Just a note, the performer is apparently “The Amazing Christopher” but nonetheless Googling the phrase above gets you the video).

  8. I was out shopping and I heard some Justin Bieber song followed by this song. Some music programmer clearly meant it as a “take that ” to Bieber. Michael Jackson had more talent in his little finger than that Canadian brat will ever have.

    And yes, the bass line is quite good. It’s a joy to play. Simple to learn, hard to master. I notice Jermaine has some kind of Gibson bass, possibly a short-scale. I don’t think he’s playing live here, and Wilton Felder played bass on the studio track. Even so, rumor among bass players is that Jermaine is actually a pretty good bassist.

    1. Nice spot. Definitely a Gibson SG short scale bass, probably an EB-3, very much the same, if not identical, to the bass that the very recently departed Jack Bruce was playing when he was with Cream. Well, now you’ve done it! You’ve gotten me needing to spin up Wheels of Fire and listen to the bass line from “Deserted Cities of the Heart”. My goodness, how Bruce could make that short-scale growl.

    1. Do you know what bass he used? It’s so crisp. I’ve listened to the isolated bass track and I would guess it’s played with a pick using a Fender “ashtray” mute to kill the sustain. I know Motown was switching to that sound in the late 60’s, quite a departure from Jamerson’s melodic finger-style on the FenderJ.

      I usually play everything finger-style on a Squier VMJ with both pickups wide open. Makes even my best attempts at this song sound sloppy, though it’s a good sound for a lot of other songs.

  10. I play this tune in my 6 piece group, (sax, tpt, gtr, bass, drums, vox), and it is by far the HARDEST tune to play well, (in our repertoire), and it always gets the best reaction from the crowd. There are some cool covers out there, (KT Tunstall for one), but they dumb down the groove, for lack of a better expression.

    You can find some isolated tracks out there, and MJ’s vocal is oddly not good on its own, but in the context of the whole mix, it’s unbelievable.

    For J5 tunes, my fave is Darling Dear. YMMV.

  12. My absolute favorite Jackson 5 song! I have a great “remix” version of it (album: Motown Remixed that incorporates some of the raw track of the rhythm guitar getting into the groove, then a little bass, then a little drums, with the producer cutting in and saying “okay stand by now, I’m going back up to the top,” and Michael singing “yeah, yeah, yeah.” The remix leaves out the strings and brings the guitar up – not there’s anything wrong with the released version, but the energy in the guitar line is fantastic and I love hearing it by itself.

    The great Wilton Felder plays bass, which I notice another commenter called out above.

    “Oh darlin’ I was blind to let you go.” Poetry!

    This is a go-to karaoke song for me, and a 6′-4″ 220 lb white dude channelling the Jacksons is something to see I am sure.

    1. “This is a go-to karaoke song for me…”

      I’d as lief try to cover all five octaves in Minnie Riperton’s range as sing an early Michael Jackson song in front of strangers.

  13. Have no idea what Rolling Stone uses to come up with their top 100 or 500. It’s all kind of like going to a garage sale – one person’s junk is another one’s treasure.

    The song you feature came out just about the time we were going to the moon.

    1. Agreed. Top 100 – 500 might as well be picked by un-musical statisticians using computer algorithms that say explicitly which methods they are following. The best top 100 list would be one that iTunes or iPod develop over the course of twenty years on one’s own computer/tablets and picks your top 100 songs for you.

      1. Problem there is that one of the joys of listening to someone else’s all-time 500 list, is that you’re bound to hear at least a couple of missed (or forgotten) classics.

        Not that I’m defending the Rolling Stone list — it’s awfully Boomer-centric (I say as a guy who cut his teeth on those same Boomer-centric tunes). Plus, it’s hypocritical of Rolling Stone now to praise artists that it panned, big-time, for the same songs when they were first released.

        1. Aw, c’mon: give RS a break for at least evolving on certain opinions they held hard and fast. You’re right; RS panned songs decades ago which are now on the list. Sometimes it takes time to see the light.

          1. You’re right, opinions regarding the esthetic value of works of art frequently evolve (my own, I’m happy to say, included) and ought to be given plenty of critical space grow.

            My problem with RS is that it rarely acknowledges (and even less frequently explains the basis for) its change in valuation of a record — or, often, of an artist’s entire oeuvre — leaving the impression that it picked every song on its list as a winner from the get-go.

            That’s the part I find hypocritical.

            Also, there’s a fair amount of crap and filler in their list o’ 500, and some gems they’ve ignored. (But I would say that, wouldn’t I? Wouldn’t we all?)

  14. Absolutely the best cover of a MJ song: the Bottle Boys doing “Billie Jean.” Check it out on YouTube!

    1. I don’t know if it is the best cover of Billie Jean, but that was pretty darn impressive and entertaining. Definitely the best beer bottle pan flute quintet cover of Billie Jean.

  15. The Jacksons had cool taste in guitars. The guitar player looks to be playing a Gibson ES-345 and the bass player some kind of Gibson SG bass.

  16. That performance (even though lip synced) brings to mind the debate about “which Michael Jackson was the better singer – young or older?”

    His voice and style really changed when he got older. I’m in the camp that feels the young Michael Jackson was actually the better singer. He was more forceful, full-throated and confident in his delivery. He could really belt it out, but with fantastic soul and musicality. Whereas the older Michael Jackson sung more and more like he was swallowing all his words, shivering, locked in a freezer. It was a less confident sounding voice.

  17. Definitely one of the catchiest pop compositions of all time.

    The Jackson 5 were part of Motown’s effort to catch up with the sound of Sly and the Family Stone–a group that unfortunately never received as much attention from baby boomers. The funkier sound and swapped vocal lines also characterized the revamp of The Temptations.

    Speaking of the them, their former lead singer David Ruffin also sang a version of “I Want You Back,” since it was Motown policy to have its stable record multiple versions of promising material. Ruffin’s version was not released until a few years ago. While I prefer the Jackson 5 arrangement, I like Ruffin’s vocal more–he sings with the same mix of yearning and grit that he used with “My Girl” and “I Wish It Would Rain.” You can hear his version here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5XVyrioSV4

    2. Sly was The Bomb, avant la lettre. He and The Family Stone were that rare group that was both highly-regarded (especially by fellow musicians), yet still underrated.

      I’ve turned everyone I know on to their ultra-cool cover of the old “Que Sera, Sera” standard, and it hasn’t failed to raise gooseflesh on a single one of them when Sly breaks in with the chorus (trading riffs with his sister Rose’s gospel-style verses) — like a distilled version of the soul-infusion Ray Charles gave those Country & Western tunes back in the early ’60s.

      I think it no overstatement to say: no Sly, no Funk; no Sly, no Fusion; no Sly, no Psychedelic Soul (which would have saved The Temptations the embarrassment of “Psycheledic Shack” — a musical style that ill-fit them, like the double-knit leisure suits the petit-bourgeoisie had a fetish for wearing during the same era).

      1. I fully agree, regarding Sly. However, I’ll say a word in defense of the Temptations’ psychedelic period. True, the words of “Psychedelic Shack” are incredibly silly, but the tune cooks hypnotically and Dennis Edwards delivers one of his most molten vocals. Norman Whitfield was a brilliant producer, and though prone to self-indulgence, his 70s work with the Temptations (recently collected on the 2 CD Psychedelic Soul) is a major achievement–“Ball of Confusion,” “Cloud 9,” “Runaway Child,” “Papa Was a Rolling Stone” and “Plastic Man” are all masterpieces to my ear.

        1. You know, you’ve got me halfway convinced — or, more precisely, three-fifths: I’d almost forgotten how crazy I was about “Ball of Confusion,” “Cloud 9,” and “Papa Was a Rolling Stone” when those records first charted. They were always in a fat stack on my 45-changer, along with Gladys and the Pips cover of Marvin’s “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.”

          I hesitate, however, for a couple of reasons. First, because I came to realize that one of the reasons I loved those records so much was simple narcissism, because it seemed The Temptations (the first of my all-time favorites) and other Motown acts were moving in the direction of my own evolving musical tastes.

          Second, and very much related, I came to suspect that making these types of records might be compromising those musicians themselves, by moving them away from their real love — a suspicion compounded by seeing them in the rather clownish outfits these formerly sharp dressers were then wearing. I also came to suspect that this compromise was being heavily orchestrated (like everything at Motown) by Berry Gordy who, with visions of big bucks dancing in his head, was lusting after huge cross-over hits that might poach a market-share of the burgeoning ofay record-buying public (to wit, guys like me).

          Still, reading your comment has me burning again to hear those tunes you listed, which I’m going to get down to doing just as soon as I can push away from this goddamned Calvinist keyboard.

          Thanks, rev.

      2. I’ve got a Sly story.

        In the fall of 1968, Sly and the Family Stone played in the Patrick Gym at the University of Vermont for homecoming weekend.
        The performance was amazing and spectacular.

        I tracked SATFS back to their motel after the concert. It was Sly, me, and a half dozen other kids in his room. Sly kept a stoked hash pipe moving around. After about a half hour, Sly instructed us all to stay quiet and listen to two songs he was going to play for us from his portable Sony cassette player. He said the two songs were new and unreleased and he wanted to get our opinions as to which one we thought should be on side-A. (Think 45 RPM, TOP 40, AM Radio.)

        The two songs? “Everyday People”, and “Sing a Simple Song”. I chose “Sing A Simple Song”.

        “Everyday People” debuted on side-A in November 1968. It was number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 from Feb 15, 1969 to March 14, 1969. (Wikipedia)

  18. If you love this song like I do, check out the live version by Lake Street Dive, on YouTube, a very different take from the original, but excellent nonetheless (sorry, I don’t know how to do a link without embedding it).

  19. Bit of an aside: I like that ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ has brought this song to the attention of a new generation.

  20. this is the only jackson 5 song i have on my ipod. graham parker did a pretty good cover of this song, included on his 1979 live album.

    ever the groove on this one.

Comments are closed.