Michael Jackson recorded a remarkable 12 number one pop singles between 1972 and 1996, the most of any male solo artist of the era. The hit streak began with "Ben," a touching ballad about a young boy's devotion to (*checks notes*) his beloved pet rat.
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Jackson first topped the Billboard Hot 100 at age 11 with the 1969 single "I Want You Back," the debut Motown Records release by the Jackson 5, and the sibling group's three successive efforts ("ABC," "The Love You Save" and "I'll Be There") all repeated the feat, fueling a fan frenzy unseen since the heights of Beatlemania. Motown responded to the Jackson 5's meteoric rise by licensing dozens of products – posters, stickers, a board game, even a Saturday morning cartoon – and the Gary, Ind.-bred brothers' success spawned dozens of bubblegum-soul copycats, some later featured on the Numero Group compilation Home Schooled: The ABCs of Kid Soul. None was more popular than Provo, Utah's Osmonds, who signed to MGM Records following a long run as regulars on NBC television's Andy Williams Show; MGM swiftly dispatched the five Osmond brothers (including 13-year-old Michael soundalike Donny) to producer Rick Hall's FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Ala. to record "One Bad Apple," penned by George Jackson, FAME's most prolific songwriter of the period. "I had written ‘One Bad Apple' up in Memphis without knowing about [the Osmonds]," Jackson (no relation) told the producers of the Kent Records collection The FAME Studios Story: 1961-1973. "I had half a hope that Rick might pitch it to the Jackson 5, and I may have been a little disappointed when I heard he was playing my demo to a bunch of white kids."
That disappointment dissipated when "One Bad Apple" rocketed to number one in early 1971, making Donny Osmond a teen heartthrob. Osmond was originally approached to sing "Ben," authored by Don Black and Walter Scharf for the feature film of the same name, but the Osmonds' touring schedule forced the movie's producers to turn elsewhere. By this time Michael Jackson was on the brink of solo stardom: Motown would release his debut solo effort Got to Be There on January 24, 1972, four weeks after unleashing the Jackson 5's Greatest Hits collection, and the album's second single, a cover of the 1958 Bobby Day smash "Rockin' Robin," would climb all the way to number two on the Hot 100. As the Jackson 5's chart dominance tapered off, Motown further channeled its energies into promoting Michael's solo career, and in November 1971 he recorded "Ben" with longtime producers The Corporation, a.k.a. Motown founder Berry Gordy Jr., Freddie Perren, Alphonso Mizell and Deke Richards.
Ben – directed by noir specialist Phil Karlson, bankrolled by Bing Crosby Productions and released to mixed reviews on June 23, 1972 – continues the storyline introduced the previous year in the horror hit Willard, about a human who trains rats to do his evil bidding; in the sequel, a sickly child named Danny Garrison befriends Ben, the long-tailed leader of the murderous rat army. The song "Ben" eschews any mention of the title character's species, however. "When it came to writing about a rat, I said 'You can't write about a rat.' I mean, I'm not going to use words like 'cheese,'" Black recalled during his 2007 induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. "I thought the best thing to do is write about friendship." Motown also promoted Jackson's single independently of the movie, guaranteeing that many listeners never linked the object of the song's affection to vermin synonymous with spreading bubonic plague and myriad other diseases.
The strategy worked. "Ben," the title cut from Jackson's second solo LP, topped the Billboard charts in October 1972, going on to win the Golden Globe for Best Song. It was also nominated for Best Original Song at the 1973 Academy Awards, but lost out to Maureen McGovern's "The Morning After," recorded for The Poseidon Adventure. Jackson did not earn his second solo number one until 1979's classic "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough," which forswore sentimentality and schmaltz in favor of the revolutionary R&B sound that dominated popular music throughout the decade to follow. "Ben" remained close to his heart, however: in 2013, four years after the singer's death, his mother Katherine revealed that as a young boy, Jackson smuggled a mouse into a Beverly Hills restaurant in his coat pocket.
"I loved the song, and I loved the story [of the film]," Jackson revealed in his autobiography Moonwalk. "People didn't understand the boy's love for this little creature. He was dying of some disease and his only true friend was Ben, the leader of the rats in the city where they lived. A lot of people thought the movie was a bit odd, but I was not one of them."
