The Jackson 5

In 1969, out of a grey industrial town in Indiana called Gary, a bomb of pure joy went off. Five brothers, colourful suits, enormous afros, split-second choreographies, and out front a boy of ten or eleven singing with an emotional maturity that had no explanation at all. The Jackson 5 didn't arrive in music: they burst into it. And they did it by breaking a record nobody had broken and very few have broken since.

The record nobody held

Their first four songs for Motown —"I Want You Back", "ABC", "The Love You Save" and "I'll Be There"— all reached number one in the United States. The first four, without a single miss. No group had ever debuted like that in the history of the charts. Imagine the level of talent and of sheer accuracy that takes: not one lucky hit, but four in a row, all at the top, right out of the gate.

More than fifty years later, "I Want You Back" is still one of the most perfect pop songs ever recorded: that bass, that piano falling like a waterfall, and the voice of a boy begging a love to come back with a conviction no boy should understand yet. Motown had manufactured many hit machines, but the Jackson 5 were something else: they were, on top of everything, an explosion of family charisma you could feel through the radio.

The impossible boy

It has to be said plainly: out front of that machine was a talent that appears once every several generations. Michael Jackson, while still a child, sang, danced and felt music with a precision and a depth that left adults speechless. He wasn't imitating the soul stars of his era; he was already better than almost all of them. The brothers —Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon— brought the harmonies, the dancing, the unity; Michael brought that something that can't be taught or bought.

Watching the Jackson 5 was watching the future of popular music being born in real time, in the body of a kid who barely reached the microphone. What that boy would go on to do, alone, would change pop forever. But it all started there, with his brothers around him, looking after him, holding him up, dancing at his side.

Brothers

And that is, perhaps, the loveliest part and the easiest one to forget. Before the legends and the tragedies that would come, the Jackson 5 were, simply, a family singing together. Five brothers from a poor town who rehearsed to the point of exhaustion in order to get out of there, and who managed it with a joy that is still contagious. Every time "I Want You Back" plays at a party and the floor fills up with people of every age, there it is, that original joy, intact, the joy of five brothers who saved their own lives by singing.

What to remember

The Jackson 5 came out of an industrial town in Indiana and broke a record nobody had broken: their first four songs all reached number one. They were the biggest explosion of joy Motown ever produced, with harmonies, dancing and family charisma. And out front they had a boy whose talent had no explanation, one who would change music forever.

Remember it this way: before everything that came afterwards, there were five brothers and one perfect song. And that joy —the joy of "I Want You Back", the joy of a family singing its way out of poverty— is still filling dance floors half a century later. It all started there, and there it is still beautiful.

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Sources

The Jackson 5, American group formed in Gary, Indiana, made up of the brothers Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon and Michael Jackson, signed by Motown and launched in 1969 under the direction of Berry Gordy. Their first four singles for the label —"I Want You Back", "ABC", "The Love You Save" and "I'll Be There"— all reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100, making them the first group to have their first four singles top that chart. Michael Jackson, lead singer while still a child, would later develop a solo career of enormous impact on popular music. Michael Jackson has his own profile in this series. Profile compiled for Rebobinados with fact-checking; interpretations of the meaning of the work are offered as the author's reading. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Information drawn from Classic Motown, Britannica, uDiscover Music, the Motown Museum and other coverage.