Album dossier / 1987

Bad

Michael Jackson · Pop/R&B

Bad was the third and final Michael Jackson album produced with Quincy Jones and engineer Bruce Swedien, following Off the Wall and Thriller; Jones later called it a "very honest" record, made after he encouraged Jackson to open up about the turmoil in his life and write almost the entire album himself. The famously marathon, all-night sessions -- Swedien recalled second engineers being "carried out on stretchers" -- yielded five consecutive US #1 singles, a chart record that stood for decades, including "Man in the Mirror," written by Siedah Garrett and Glen Ballard after Jones asked his stable of songwriters for an "international anthem." The planned Jackson/Stevie Wonder duet "Just Good Friends" was, by Jones's own admission, one of the album's few missteps, while the Martin Scorsese-directed short film for the title track underscored the record's outsized visual ambition.