Headed for a Danger Zone

I can take or leave much of the oeuvre of Michael Jackson, as ubiquitous as his music was in my formative years. I'm pretty sure "Rock With You" was the first single of his I was conscious of, and he was seldom out of my ears thereafter—his was the kind of superstardom that made his work all but ambient in the culture. Being an actual fan would almost have been redundant.

For a time in the late '90s I did a cover of "Billie Jean" with my band Millhouse (and tried on at least one occasion to mash it up with Patti Smith's "Dancing Barefoot," which has some similar chords when you break both songs down, not to mention a possibly dangerous fixation on an offstage "she"). My first son happened to be born prematurely a week after Jackson's death, which meant that a radio in the St. Vincent's NICU kept an informal MJ vigil in the first days of his life. Around that same time, I played "Man in the Mirror" with my church band in Brooklyn.

These—along with some appreciation for his singular genius as a dancer—comprise the sum of my touchpoints with the career of the Gloved One. Which is why I view the threat of his cultural cancellation over the credible abuse allegations that dogged him during his life, and after, with more equanimity than others. Besides, as Carl Wilson unsurprisingly said best: Jackson may be too big too cancel, like Chuck Berry, another problematic great who can't so easily be summarily discarded, and about whom he wrote, "If American music matters to you, it’s not a genuine option."

There is at least one shining exception—a song that is in any case not encumbered by associations with the predations of the adult Jackson, as he recorded it when he was 11, as frontman of the Jackson 5. Indeed the flawless pop of that junior-Motown combo never fails to lift my spirits, in a (mostly) uncomplicated way. But it's "The Love You Save" that especially sends me soaring, in part because its beguiling chord progression literally climbs upward, then elegantly back down, over and over, like one of those Ziegfield black-tie-and-top-hat staircase routines.

Stepwise motion is hardly unique to this Jackson 5 number—think of the syncopated upward swoop of the three chords under the title of "ABC" or the bittersweet downhill slide of the chorus of "I Want You Back." But the harmonic churn of "The Love You Save" exerts a uniquely compelling tug, on me at least.

Starting with an exclaimed "Stop!" over a funky vamp in E, the song quickly takes off in G, with Jermaine Jackson's "bum bum bum" backup vocals helpfully outlining the chords that will define the song: an ascent from G to A-minor to B-minor, finally to a C major over a descending bass of C, B, A, and back to G. This is the progression for both the verse and the chorus, yet they don't really sound the same at all, partly due to the contrasting rhythm arrangement—simmering tambourine and hi-hat giving way to a full drum groove—and the vastly different melodic shape. The verse has a schoolyard sing-song quality that was one of the Jackson 5's signature sounds:

Elementary stuff, but just compare it to the chorus, with the clean sweep of its phrasing and the light appoggiaturas on "Dar-" and "some-" (an E over a D chord, a C over an E-minor, respectively):

I'm honestly struggling a bit to understand why I find this so stirring, and the best I can come up with is the friction of reverse motion: In both the verse and especially in the chorus, the melodic trajectory is mostly downward while the chords are climbing up, creating an inward-bound tension that gives this song—styled as a warning to a "fast" girl about her budding promiscuity—a tinge of melancholy under its pint-sized bravado. It's essentially the musical inverse of the effect I noted in Dido's lament, in which Purcell's falling bass, topped by a rising melody, seems to crack open a middle space into which feeling can flow. Here the drama feels a bit more like a case of emotions bottled up, redirected, suppressed, sublimated.

The cross purposes of the music seem borne out in the lyrics (writing credits are Berry Gordy, Freddie Perren, Alphonzo Mizell, and Deke Richards). In his relentless scolding of a girl for allegedly cheating on the singer (with four other named boys!), the singer is telling on himself a bit. So when Michael sings:

They'll ruin your reputation
They'll label you a flirt
The way they talk about you
They'll turn your name to dirt

It's a bit like shouting from the rooftop, I would hate for others to get the wrong idea about you, slut! Indeed the song can be read as a desperate, all-or-nothing ploy to win a girl back (or win her affection in the first place), and there's something inherently sad about a relationship that has come to this near-breaking point, not to mention the bittersweet spectacle of a tween singing with such precocious possessiveness about a schoolyard crush. ("I'm the one you need!")

There's also a kind of elegant circularity in the title idea, probably borrowed from the similarly titled Flannery O'Connor short story, in which the singer's attempt to appeal to the listener's self-interest—I'm talking about the love you may save for yourself, so this isn't about me—sounds more like something he's telling himself, or ought to. Maybe stop lecturing this girl, my dude? The love you save may be your own.