How Michael Jackson Updated The Beatles’ ‘Come Together’ for the 1990s
The Beatles‘ “Come Together” is a swamp rock classic that sounds nothing like a Michael Jackson song. Yet, the King of Pop covered the track in the 1990s and made it all his own. Interestingly, the original song was inspired by the work of a 1950s superstar.
Michael Jackson turned The Beatles’ ‘Come Together’ into a new jack swing song
Jackson changed the rule book for pop when he put out HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I. The two-disc epic starts as a greatest hits album before evolving into a record of new material. If you want to appreciate the breadth of Jackson’s career, HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I is a good place to start.
The second half of the album includes a jagged cover of The Beatles’ “Come Together.” While the original track was bluesy, Jackson’s cover takes a lot of inspiration from new jack swing, a style of upbeat hip-hop/R&B that became popular in the 1990s. Jackson proved that the essence of “Come Together” was so strong that it could be reinterpreted in many genres. You might not think a Beatles cover would gel with synthesizers, but Jackson makes it work.
You can imagine Jackson’s “Come Together” getting played in a club between 1990s classics like Bell Biv DeVoe’s “Poison” and Whitney Houston’s “I’m Your Baby Tonight.” Play Jackson’s cover at your local bar’s next 1990s night. Everyone will love it!
Why covering a Beatles song made so much sense for Michael Jackson
“Come Together” also fits with the themes of HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I. The record has a lot of songs about making the world a better place. Some of them were old, like “Man in the Mirror” and “Heal the World.” Others were new, like “Earth Song.”
“Come Together” has a lot of nonsense lyrics, but ultimately, it’s a song about unity. Jackson got his start in the 1960s, and some of the hippie ethos of peace and love impacted his work. It’s only fitting that he took inspiration from the ultimate love and peace band.
How John Lennon wrote ‘Come Together’
During a 1980 interview from the book All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, John discussed the origin of “Come Together.” “‘Come Together’ is me — writing obscurely around an old Chuck Berry thing [‘You Can’t Catch Me’],” he said. “I left [Berry’s] line in ‘Here comes old flattop.’ It is nothing like the Chuck Berry song, but they took me to court because I admitted the influence once years ago. I could have changed it to ‘Here comes old iron face,’ but the song remains independent of Chuck Berry or anybody else on Earth.”
Surprisingly, the track had political roots. “The thing was created in the studio,” he said. “It’s gobbledygook; ‘Come Together’ was an expression that Tim Leary had come up with for his attempt at being president or whatever he wanted to be, and he asked me to write a campaign song. I tried and I tried, but I couldn’t come up with one. But I came up with this, ‘Come Together,’ which would’ve been no good to him — you couldn’t have a campaign song like that, right?”
John wrote some amazing gobbledygook — and Jackson made it hip again.
