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"Will You Be There"

Date range confirmed in Mike Smallcombe’s “Making Michael” (“Over the course of 1990, Michael also worked with Bruce Swedien on a number of new songs… [one of these tracks that] Swedien co-produced include the epic ‘Will You Be There’.”)

 

Michael Jackson, “Ebony” magazine (February 11, 1992)

I wrote “Will You Be There” at my house, Neverland in California. I didn't think about it hard. I always feel that it's done from above. I feel fortunate for being that instrument through which music flows. I'm just the source through which it comes. I can't take credit for it because it's God's work. He's just using me as the messenger.

 

Teddy Riley, “Dangerous” album producer, “MusicRadar” (July 3, 2009) (archived)

This is Michael again. Bringing a vocal choir in on the track was a stroke of genius. It's something I'd consider doing since hearing him do it. It's a long song as well, a lot of this album really clocks in. This nearly hits eight minutes, I think – it's not a punchy radio edit! Yes, it's long but it came across really well for the album. A lot of the songs on the album are long. That's what makes the album I think.

 

Bart Stevens, assistant engineer, Dallas Observer (June 20, 2018)

Stevens also recalls the creation of the song “Will You Be There” in the studio. He calls it “one of the most magical moments I was ever involved with.” Jackson mouthed different melodies for the instruments and wrote the lyrics.

“To see that one originate from nothing to a very popular song was amazing,” Stevens says. “The flip side of that is, a few years later, someone in Italy said, ‘I wrote that song before Michael.’ So it went to trial, I surrendered all my notebooks [and] they used those in pretrial. They ended up settling out of court, and Michael won.”

 

Bea Swedien, wife of studio engineer Bruce Swedien, “My Life as a Studio Wife: A Lifetime of Love and Music with Bruce Swedien” (August 11, 2025)

Michael’s song “Will You Be There?” from Dangerous was used in the film Free Willy. When Bruce was mixing the track at our studio in Moorpark we got to know Basil Poledouris, who had written much of the score for the film. We became good friends with Basil and his lovely wife Bobbie. Unfortunately, Basil died from lung cancer when he was only 61. He had composed the music for the films The Blue Lagoon, The Hunt for Red October, Lonesome Dove and many others as well. How very sad that we lost him so soon.