Michael Jackson Remembered: Glen Ballard on Making “Man in the Mirror”
I‘d been producing for Quincy [Jones], and I had tried to write something for Bad but it hadn’t been accepted. We were closing out the record, and Quincy said, “Don’t you have anything for us?” So [singer] Siedah Garrett wrote “Man in the Mirror” on a Saturday night at my house in Encino. We didn’t have a chance to dress it up, so I didn’t feel like it had a chance, but Quincy played it for Michael, and he said, “Make a track.” The song was this really magical moment, and it had everything to do with Michael’s vocal interpretation. In the last two minutes, Michael started doing these incantations: all the “shamons” and “oohs.” He went to that place on his own. We certainly couldn’t have written that.