My Personal Top 10 Michael Jackson Songs

With the new Michael Jackson biopic out, it felt like the right moment to put my personal list on paper. Not the greatest songs by chart position, not the most critically acclaimed — just the songs I go back to regularly, the ones that live on my personal Michael playlist.

Let me be clear upfront: this is not a definitive ranking. These are my favorites. Now let's get into it.

The energy on this track is relentless. Dark Child's production just locks in and stays there, and Michael's vocals riding on top of it are genuinely crazy good. The Invincible album doesn't always get the credit it deserves, but Unbreakable is exactly that.

The title tells you everything you need to know. You can feel Michael moving around the studio when he recorded this — the way he delivers those verses with such precision, and then the whole thing just opens up into this classic Teddy Riley New Jack Swing groove. There's really nothing better than that combination.

Great song, but the video is what puts this one in a different category for me. It's iconic, and it's also genuinely one of the most disrespectful videos ever made. You walk into Pharaoh's court — Pharaoh played by Eddie Murphy, no less — and just drop sandstorm energy everywhere. Incredible.

The only Off the Wall song on the list, and it earns its spot. The vocals are tight, the song makes you move the second it starts, and you can picture the whole era just from the groove. It's one of the real tops of his catalog.

This one came to me late. I first heard the instrumental version in Rush Hour — there's a scene where Jackie Chan shoots something and starts dancing, and the music kicks in but the vocals never show up. That hook stuck with me for years.

After Michael passed, I bought every album and listened front to back. When Another Part of Me came on, it clicked immediately. Then I found a Bad Tour performance on YouTube and you can just see how much he loves performing this song. It's a simple structure — three parts repeated over and over — but that simplicity creates all this space for him to move and jam. I think he recorded this song while dancing, and it shows.

The HIStory album is underrated, full stop. And this track is one of the best things on it. It has a message, it's musically epic, and it carries this militaristic energy that never loses its groove. Michael uses his voice differently here — more forcefully, more deliberately. I can listen to this song on any day, in any mood.

Bad is probably my second-favorite Michael Jackson video ever. But the song itself is timeless — you hear it today and you still want to dance, still want to move. Songs that do that a few decades after release are rare.

This song is straight church.

There's a story I heard from the drummer who played on it. He showed up ready to set up a full drum kit, Michael asked for electric drums instead. The drummer wasn't thrilled, but he made a deal: "Let me do the real drums after, and we'll see what you think." They cut the electric version, Michael was ready to walk out satisfied. The drummer called him on breaking the deal, played the live kit, and Michael heard it. The rest is history.

The choir, the message, those drums — everything about Earth Song hits with a weight that most songs never reach.

My favorite Michael Jackson video, full stop. The choreography still holds up completely today. He sang and danced his heart out for this one, and it shows. This is top-tier Michael Jackson in every sense.

The message, the music, the vocals. To me, this is the quintessential Michael performance — vocally, it doesn't get better than this.

You can drop the Human Nature bridge into almost any song and it works. Play it anywhere, hear it anywhere — it delivers every single time. That's not something you can say about many songs from any era.

A few songs that just missed the cut:

Two posthumous Michael Jackson albums exist, and they're worth knowing about. Michael came out in 2010 and was controversial — a lot of people believed the recordings weren't far enough along, and there were questions about whether some of the vocals were actually Michael's. The family raised those concerns publicly.

Then there's Xscape, released in 2014 and backed by the estate. That one took a more careful approach: they played the original recordings alongside the produced versions, and brought in producers Michael had worked with and trusted, building around the existing vocals rather than replacing them.

From each of those, I have a favorite. "I Like the Way That You Love Me" off Michael was my wife's ringtone on my phone for a long time. The track opens with Michael's own reference recording where he's talking through how the song should open — when the rhythm comes in, when the drums drop — and then it just slides into this gorgeous harmony. Beautiful.

And "Chicago" from Xscape is one of those quintessential Michael-feeling songs. I'm not entirely sure what it's about, but it feels great and he is really singing on it. These were demos, which is controversial on its own — would Michael have ever wanted them released? Probably a fair question. But some of these songs are genuinely good, and the fact that we got them after he was gone is something I'm grateful for.

So those are mine. What's on your list? What am I missing?