Michael Jackson - I Just Can't Stop Loving You (Feat. Siedah Garrett) (1987)

"I Just Can't Stop Loving You" is a 1987 duet ballad by Michael Jackson and Siedah Garrett, and was the first single released ...

"I Just Can't Stop Loving You" is a 1987 duet ballad by Michael Jackson and Siedah Garrett, and was the first single released from his seventh album, Bad. The song was written by Jackson, and co-produced by Jackson and Quincy Jones. The presence of Garrett on the track was a last-minute decision by Jackson and Jones, after Jackson's first two choices for the duet, Barbra Streisand and Whitney Houston, both decided against participating. Garrett, a protégé of Jones's who co-wrote another song on Bad, "Man in the Mirror", did not know that she would be singing the song until the day of the recording session. It became her first hit since Dennis Edwards' 1984 song "Don't Look Any Further".

"I Just Can't Stop Loving You" reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100, R&B Singles and Adult Contemporary charts, making it the first in a string of 5 number-one singles from Bad. It was Jackson's second number-one song on the Adult Contemporary chart after "The Girl Is Mine" with Paul McCartney. "I Just Can't Stop Loving You" was released without an accompanying music video. Jackson and Garrett later recorded "Todo mi amor eres tú", a Spanish-language version of the song, with lyrics translated by Rubén Blades, and "Je ne veux pas la fin de nous", a French language version, with translation by Christine "Coco" Decroix. All three versions are featured on the 2012 reissue album Bad 25. The original English-language version was re-released as a single in 2012, as part of the Bad 25 release.

Chart performance

"I Just Can't Stop Loving You" was the lead single from Jackson's much-anticipated Bad album. The single debuted on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 singles chart at #37, the week of August 8, 1987. The single was the highest debuting single of 1987, and quickly traveled to the top quarter of the Hot 100, advancing to #16 in its second week, and soaring to #1 in its seventh week on the tally, the week of September 19, 1987.

Despite the success, the duet had a relatively short chart run and fell out of the top 40 just five weeks after topping the chart, spending a total of 11 weeks in the top 40, out of a total of 14 weeks on the Hot 100. This was largely due to the quick release of the album title track as the second single (it debuted on the Hot 100 at #40 in the same week that "I Just Can't Stop Loving You" hit number one). Billboard ranked it as #43 on the year-end Hot 100 chart for 1987.

The track spent three weeks at number one on Billboard's Adult Contemporary singles chart, becoming the second and last Michael Jackson single to top that chart.

In the United Kingdom, the song peaked at the top of the UK Singles Chart on August 9, 1987 — for the week ending date August 15, 1987 — and remained at the top for two consecutive weeks until it was dethroned by "Never Gonna Give You Up" by Rick Astley. "I Just Can't Stop Loving You" became Britain's 30th best-selling song of 1987.

In his autobiography, Moonwalk, Jackson stated the song was not written with someone in mind, but that he had been thinking of someone when singing the song live.