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“I’ll Be There” is a soul song written by Berry Gordy, Bob West, Hal Davis, and Willie Hutch, which resulted in two U.S. number 1 hit singles: the original 1970 recording by American vocal quintet The Jackson 5 and a 1992 live version by American pop singer Mariah Carey and American R&B singer Trey Lorenz.
The Jackson 5 original was recorded for the Motown Records, and released as the first single from their Third Album in 1970. Produced by the songwriters, “I’ll Be There” was The Jackson 5′s fourth number 1 hit in a row, following “I Want You Back,” “ABC,” and “The Love You Save.” “I’ll Be There” is also notable as the most successful single released by Motown during its “Detroit era” (1959-1972). It is also the fifth in the group’s string of 5 consecutive number one pop hits, making them the first black male group to achieve this.
In his Moon Walk autobiography, Michael Jackson noted that “I’ll Be There” was the song that solidified The Jackson 5′s careers and showed audiences that the group had potential beyond bubblegum pop. Allmusic.com commented that “rarely, if ever, had one so young sung with so much authority and grace, investing this achingly tender ballad with wisdom and understanding far beyond his years”.[1]
The most successful single ever released by the Jackson 5, “I’ll Be There” sold 4.2 million copies in the United States, and 6.1 million copies worldwide. It replaced Marvin Gaye’s “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” as the most successful single released on Motown in the U.S., a record it held until the release of Lionel Richie’s duet with Diana Ross, “Endless Love” (1981). Outside the U.S., “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” remained Motown’s biggest selling record with worldwide sales of over 7 million copies.
The song held the number 1 position on the Billboard Pop Singles Chart for five weeks from October 17 to November 14, replacing “Cracklin’ Rosie” by Neil Diamond, and replaced by “I Think I Love You” by The Partridge Family. “I’ll Be There” was also a number 1 hit on the Billboard Black Singles Chart for six weeks, and a number 4 hit in the United Kingdom. The single’s B-side was “One More Chance.”
“I’ll Be There” was the Jackson 5′s final number 1 Hot 100 hit as a group. For the rest of their twenty-year-career as a major-label act, Jackson 5 singles would get no higher than number-two. Michael Jackson scored several number 1 hits as a solo artist, beginning with “Ben” in 1972. He performed “I’ll Be There” on all his world tours. In the live versions from his 1981 Triumph Tour to his 1987 solo Bad World Tour, Jackson would seemingly break down in tears, struggling with the words until feeling a jolt as he harmonized and shouted “can you feel it!” to the delight of the audience before dancing to the beat of “Rock With You,” in his later tours from Dangerous World Tour onwards, by the time he would almost cry and struggle with the words, instead, he reminisced on his childhood past, shouting out his brothers’ names and ending the song with a jump and a spin to end the song.
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