Songs in the Movie Michael (2026)

Antoine Fuqua's biopic Michael, with Jaafar Jackson stepping into his late uncle's shoes, became one of 2026's biggest releases and is now streaming. The soundtrack is essentially a guided tour through the most influential pop catalog ever recorded — from a child star in Gary, Indiana to the lonely global icon of the 1990s.

Below is every major song featured in the film, grouped by era, with the real story behind each. We've linked each title to a deeper dive, so you can follow the music as closely as the movie does. Track listings and which songs appear on screen may vary by cut, so treat the era groupings as a map, not a setlist.

Jackson 5 / The Jacksons

• I Want You Back — Reportedly written for Gladys Knight before Motown handed it to five kids, it crams about four hook ideas into one song to make sure nobody changed the channel.
• ABC — A deliberate rewrite of the "I Want You Back" formula, using a classroom metaphor to package teenage flirtation as something parents could safely buy.
• I'll Be There — The ballad that proved the group wasn't just a dance act, and it became Motown's biggest-selling single up to that point.
• Never Can Say Goodbye — A breakup song about being unable to actually leave, later reborn as a disco anthem by Gloria Gaynor.
• Dancing Machine — The track where Michael debuted "the robot" on TV, single-handedly turning a stiff novelty move into a national craze.
• Blame It on the Boogie — Curiously, it was written by a different, unrelated Michael Jackson (a British songwriter), and the family had to out-chart his own rival version.
• Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground) — Co-written by a teenage Michael with brother Randy, it was the brothers proving they could produce a club smash without an outside hitmaker.
• Can You Feel It — A near-religious call for racial unity dressed as a stadium anthem, paired with one of the most ambitious special-effects videos of its day.
• Ben — A tender love ballad that is, famously, sung to a pet rat from a horror movie — and it gave young Michael his first solo No. 1.

Off the Wall (1979)

• Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough — His first self-written, self-produced smash; the breathy spoken intro reportedly captures a shy 21-year-old psyching himself up to claim his independence.
• Rock with You — One of the last great disco-era No. 1s, released just as the "Disco Sucks" backlash was killing the genre everywhere else.
• Off the Wall — The title track is a quiet manifesto: leave your "nine-to-five up on the shelf" and live for the weekend nightlife.

Thriller (1982)

• Wanna Be Startin' Somethin' — Beneath the party groove it's a paranoid song about gossip and being eaten alive by fame, ending in a chant borrowed from a Cameroonian musician.
• Billie Jean — Reportedly inspired by obsessive fans who claimed Michael had fathered their children, it's a tense denial set to one of pop's most iconic basslines.
• Beat It — An anti-gang, anti-machismo message ("walk away") wrapped in a hard-rock guitar solo from Eddie Van Halen, who reportedly recorded it for free as a favor.
• Thriller — The horror-movie pastiche whose 14-minute video, complete with Vincent Price's rap, essentially reinvented the music video as cinema.
• Human Nature — A wistful, almost melancholy ode to the pull of city nightlife, originally a demo by a Toto songwriter that nearly didn't make the album.
• P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing) — Co-written by Quincy Jones and James Ingram, it's a sleek, synth-driven flirtation that smuggled vocoder "tender love" into the mainstream.
• The Girl Is Mine — A friendly duel with Paul McCartney over a girl, chosen as the lead single partly to ease white radio toward the rest of the album.

Bad (1987) & beyond

• Bad — The title track reframes "bad" as a swaggering claim of toughness, reportedly inspired by the true story of a kid from the projects who tried to escape his roots.
• Smooth Criminal — A noir mystery about a woman named Annie left for dead, immortalized by the gravity-defying "anti-gravity lean."
• The Way You Make Me Feel — A flirtatious street-corner chase that Michael reportedly wrote partly at his mother's urging to record something more upbeat.
• Dirty Diana — A rock track about the predatory groupies who follow a star on tour — explicitly not about Princess Diana, despite the persistent rumor.
• Man in the Mirror — His most personal-sounding anthem wasn't even written by him; its message is that real change starts with the self, not the world.
• Leave Me Alone — A bitter clap-back at the tabloids, whose video gleefully mocks the very "Wacko Jacko" rumors the press kept printing.
• Black or White — A racial-harmony anthem whose original video ended in a controversial, violent "panther dance" that he later apologized for and edited.
• Remember the Time — A new-jack-swing love song set in ancient Egypt for its star-studded short film, looking back on a romance that has faded.
• Heal the World — The song Michael reportedly called the one he was most proud of, tied to a children's charity he founded under the same name.
• Will You Be There — A gospel-tinged plea for faith and support, famous as the theme to Free Willy and opening with a Beethoven choral excerpt.
• Earth Song — A thunderous environmental lament that was his biggest UK hit, structured almost like a prophet arguing directly with God over the planet's fate.
• They Don't Care About Us — A raw protest against injustice and brutality, with two separate videos — one shot in Brazilian favelas, one inside a prison.
• You Are Not Alone — Written by R. Kelly, it became the first song in history to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
• Scream — A furious duet with sister Janet venting at media persecution, paired with what was then the most expensive music video ever made.
• Stranger in Moscow — Perhaps his most nakedly lonely song, reportedly written during a low point on tour about the isolation of "swift and sudden fall from grace."

Whether the movie sent you down a rabbit hole or just reminded you how deep this catalog runs, every track above has a story worth hearing in full. Explore all songs to keep digging.

How to dive deeper

• Search the Michael movie soundtrack & MJ collections — The fastest way to find the biopic's official soundtrack release alongside related Michael Jackson compilations as they appear.
• Browse the Thriller and Bad essentials — Start with the two albums that anchor the film's middle section; reissues and vinyl pressings turn up here regularly.
• Find Jackson 5 greatest hits — For the Motown-era songs that open the movie, a hits collection is the most efficient way to hear them all in one place.