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"Little Susie"

Date range confirmed in Mike Smallcombe’s “Making Michael” (“Over the course of the late spring and summer”, he “decided to resurrect two songs he began writing over ten years earlier, ‘Little Susie’ and ‘Much Too Soon’”)

Mike Smallcombe, author, “Making Michael”

‘Little Susie’, a unique song about a neglected and mistreated young girl, had been worked on for previous albums, but was always a bit of an orphan. ‘Little Susie’ is one of the songs orchestrator Geoff Grace was brought in to work on. “Michael wanted some orchestrations re-done on ‘Little Susie’, and my version was at least the second time it had been orchestrated,” Grace said. “To have orchestrations re-done cost a lot of money, it was almost unheard of. But Michael was not afraid to cut orchestra, despite the costs involved. In the end, he cut my orchestra as well, and replaced the orchestra parts with keyboard.” The music box intro was created by Rob Hoffman and fellow engineer Andrew Scheps. “We bought a bunch of music boxes, tore them apart and created a sample set,” Hoffman said. “Brad Buxer then played the part in the intro. A little girl [Markita Prescott] was called in to hum the melody of the music box.”

Chris Cadman, author, “Michael Jackson the Maestro”

Opens with the Pie Jesu segment of Maurice Durufle’s Requiem OP. 9, conducted by Robert Shaw and performed by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra & Chorus. Little girl’s voice at the beginning belonged to Markita Prescott. Little Susie was originally recorded with orchestra and arranged by Geoff Grace. Steve Porcaro re-did it again later.

This was one of five songs hand-written by Michael around 1979 - lyrics included in a personal notebook, with young actor Mark Lester on the cover.

Several stories have emerged over the years on what inspired Michael to write the song. One version was that it was written about a young girl who was murdered in 1972.The Bridge of Sighs, by Thomas Hood, was also talked about as being an inspiration for the lyrics. Another popular story was that ‘Little Susie’ was based on a painting by Gottfried Helnwein called ‘Beautiful Victim.’ The artwork for it appeared in the HISTORY booklet in 1995.

But Brad Sundberg has said at his well received Michael Jackson In The Studio seminars that it was actually written about the Holocaust.

Ryan Arnold, assistant audio engineer, Reddit AMA (April 25, 2019) (archived)

Reddit user: What was it like working with Michael in general? Many people have said that he's the most kind and fair boss you could ever have and that's exactly how I'm imagining him as well.

Ryan Arnold: It was hard to gauge him most of the time, but he seemed very full of energy. When we were talking about Little Susie, I remember him randomly saying, "Hey stand like this," and he pointed his toes inward. I gave him a look of confusion and mimicked him. "Now do this," he said while making a face. Then he broke out in hysterics laughing. Apparently, I'd just made a face at one of the marketing executives for the albums inside the studio's lobby. That guy shook his head like he thought I was dirt, but Michael just kept laughing, and before long, so was I. You know, it was a nice break, because I don't know if you've never been to New York City, but everyone's super serious and not very nice at times. It was a nice change of pace.

Reddit User: How did [“Little Susie”] get created and what did Michael think of the final product?

Arnold: Michael had difficulty composing what exactly it was he wanted with the song. It sounded too much like Basszouille haha. That's why it kept getting shoved off the schedule until eventually being dropped.

I'm not sure what he thought of it since it was supposedly finished in LA, but he explained to me it was a personal song about a little girl that was actually murdered, which was the greatest sin to him, and he had to sing his feelings, even if it was 20 something years later.