‘Baby Be Mine’: The song that defines the outlook of Quincy Jones
Quincy Jones is more of a scientist of the pop song than a traditional songwriter. While most people strive to find the perfect marriage of lyric and melody, Jones focuses on sculpting a track until it becomes the best version of itself. Despite making a living by creating some of the most exemplary pop music ever known, Jones’s heart has always been in jazz. ‘Baby Be Mine’ is the perfect example of his two loves coming together harmoniously.
That is because before a little kid named Michael Jackson even came across his radar, Jones was already known as an arranger making some of the most eclectic turns anyone had ever seen. Although most fans know that someone like Rick Rubin works great with rock and hip-hop and Dr Dre is one of the best rap producers, not many can claim to have Jones’s knack for going from bossa nova to jazz to pop.
However, Jones didn’t see it as just one musical venture throughout his career. It was about sampling pieces from every side of music history and seeing what comes from it, and even though he was working on what would become the biggest-selling pop album of all time, why not try to put some jazz lines into the mix as well?
Although it wasn’t one of the seven hits off the record, ‘Baby Be Mine’ is still a damn fine piece of pop music from Jackson and Jones. Compared to the rest of the record, though, this feels more like a product of Jones fine-tuning different fragments of what Jackson put together, almost like he was arranging the little tunes in his head until it turned into the makings of a hit.
Outside of megahits like ‘Thriller’ and ‘Beat It’, Jones still thought ‘Baby Be Mine’ is descended from his musical ancestors, saying, “The best example of me trying to feed the musical principles of the past — I’m talking about bebop — is ‘Baby Be Mine’. [Hums the song’s melody.] That’s Coltrane done in a pop song. Getting the young kids to hear bebop is what I’m talking about.”
That might not make a ton of sense on paper but just listen to the way that Jackson sings the main chorus line. If you were to substitute that same voice for a horn section or maybe a soft clarinet and cut the track to just drums, it would be a pure Coltrane rip, especially with how the rhythm swings.
That wasn’t even the last time Jones flirted with different song styles across the record. There were still the makings of great funk and R&B jams like ‘PYT (Pretty Young Thing)’ and the title track, but ‘Beat It’ was straight hair metal, ‘Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’ had a world music break, and ‘Human Nature’ is the kind of tender-hearted ballad that got millions of people swaying along.
If Jones didn’t take the pure vocabulary of jazz on with Jackson, it still bled through everything he did. Say what you want about how poppy a song like ‘Billie Jean’ is, but the fact that the breaking track never does the same thing twice is the result of jazz’s improvising brilliance.
