Michael Jackson — “Girlfriend”: The Paul McCartney Song That Came Home

1979 · Behind the Songs

Paul McCartney wrote it for Michael Jackson, recorded it with Wings instead, and watched it circle back to its intended singer on Off the Wall.

Few songs in pop history have taken a stranger route to their singer than “Girlfriend.” The song was written by Paul McCartney — and written specifically for Michael Jackson. McCartney had mentioned the idea to Jackson at a party in Hollywood, planting the seed that one day he would write the young star a song of his own. Jackson, who had told interviewers throughout the 1970s that he was a devoted Beatles fan, must have been thrilled at the prospect. But the music business rarely moves in straight lines. Before Jackson could claim it, McCartney recorded “Girlfriend” himself with Wings, releasing it on the band’s 1978 album London Town. The song McCartney meant for Michael Jackson became, temporarily, a Wings song — a McCartney original that sounded like a gift waiting to be delivered.

Fate, however, has a way of correcting such detours. When Michael Jackson began work on Off the Wall — his fifth studio album, released on August 10, 1979, and the record that would announce his arrival as an adult solo artist — his producer Quincy Jones went hunting for material. Jones heard “Girlfriend” and immediately suggested it for the album, apparently unaware that McCartney had originally written it with Jackson in mind. The circle closed without anyone planning it: the song had found its way home, carried there by a producer who simply recognized a good tune when he heard one.

The Off the Wall Sessions

Jackson cut “Girlfriend” in June 1979, during the Off the Wall sessions, and his version made one notable structural change — he dropped the middle eight, tightening the song to a sleek 3:05. It was a canny edit: without the bridge, the track moves like a single breath, all forward motion and shine. Quincy Jones produced, and the studio band was the cream of Los Angeles session players. Michael Jackson sang lead and background vocals. Louis Johnson — of the Brothers Johnson — played bass. John Robinson played drums. Greg Phillinganes played Rhodes piano. David Foster and George Duke played synthesizers, with synthesizer programming by Steve Porcaro and George Duke. Wah Wah Watson and Marlo Henderson played guitar. Jerry Hey arranged the horns, played by the Seawind Horns, with an alto saxophone solo by Larry Williams. The rhythm arrangement was by Quincy Jones, Tom Bahler, and Greg Phillinganes; the vocal arrangement by Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones; and the whole thing was recorded and mixed by Bruce Swedien, the engineer whose crisp, spacious sound would define Jackson’s greatest records.

That personnel list tells its own story. Off the Wall was Jackson’s first album with Jones as producer, and the first for which he had real creative control — he co-wrote several tracks and shaped the album’s direction. The musicians Jones assembled were the architects of late-seventies Los Angeles pop-soul, players who could move between disco, funk, jazz, and balladry without breaking stride. “Girlfriend” sits among them as the album’s lightest moment — a confection, but a confection built by masters.

A Quiet Single

“Girlfriend” was released on July 4, 1980 — in the United Kingdom only — as the fifth and final single from Off the Wall. The B-side was “Bless His Soul,” credited to the Jacksons. As a single it was a modest affair, a closing chapter to one of the most successful album campaigns of the era rather than a major event in its own right. By the time it arrived, Off the Wall had already yielded “Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough,” “Rock with You,” “Off the Wall,” and “She’s Out of My Life” — a run of hits that left little room for a gentle album track to make noise.

The critics who noticed it, though, were kind. Cash Box declared that Jackson’s version was “rendered brilliantly,” and the single earned a Gold certification in New Zealand for 15,000 copies sold. It was the kind of record that did not need to conquer the world — it simply needed to exist, a small perfect thing at the edge of a monumental album.

What It Started

The song’s deeper significance lies in what it began. “Girlfriend” was the first recorded meeting of two of the biggest musical lives of the twentieth century, and it would not be the last. McCartney and Jackson went on to collaborate directly: on “The Girl Is Mine,” the duet that opened Jackson’s Thriller, and on “Say Say Say” and “The Man,” which appeared on McCartney’s 1983 album Pipes of Peace. For a brief moment in the early eighties, the ex-Beatle and the young King of Pop were friends and creative partners, trading songs and studio time, two songwriters from different generations discovering they spoke the same language.

Then came the rupture that everyone remembers. In 1985, Jackson acquired the ATV Music Publishing catalog — which included the Beatles’ songbook — outbidding McCartney himself for one of the most valuable properties in music. The two men drifted apart, and one of pop’s most fascinating friendships cooled into a business rivalry that colored both men’s stories for decades. “Girlfriend,” the song McCartney had once offered as a gift at a Hollywood party, now plays like the opening chapter of a much more complicated tale — a reminder that in the music business, even generosity can have a long half-life.

What to Listen For

Heard today, Jackson’s “Girlfriend” is a small delight — light, graceful, and utterly charming. It lacks the thunder of “Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough” or the ache of “She’s Out of My Life,” but it was never meant to compete with those monuments. Listen for Jackson’s vocal — bright, eager, and technically dazzling, gliding over Quincy Jones’s immaculate production. Notice what he left out, the missing middle eight, and what he added, those stacked background vocals arranged with Jones. Catch Larry Williams’s alto sax solo, a small burst of jazz in a pop setting. It is the sound of 1979, of Off the Wall, of everything about to change — and of a song that took the long way home and got there in the end.