Bad

The album took two years to make, between 1985 and 1987. Jackson recorded demos at his Hayvenhurst home studio in Encino with the engineers Bill Bottrell, Matt Forger, John Barnes and Christopher Currell, known as the B team. The tracks were finished at Westlake Studios by Jones and Bruce Swedien, the A team. Recording at Westlake began in August 1986, resumed in January 1987 and was completed by July. Jackson reportedly wrote around sixty songs and recorded thirty-three, and Jones encouraged him to narrow the record to eleven tracks. He composed and co-produced all but two of them. Just Good Friends was written by Terry Britten and Graham Lyle, and Man in the Mirror by Siedah Garrett and Glen Ballard. The team used digital synthesizers including the Fairlight CMI and the Synclavier. Stevie Wonder duets on Just Good Friends and Garrett on I Just Can't Stop Loving You, Steve Stevens plays the guitar solo on Dirty Diana, and the cover photograph by Sam Emerson was taken during the shoot for the title track's video.

It sold more than 2.25 million copies in its first week in the US and stayed at number one for six weeks. I Just Can't Stop Loving You, Bad, The Way You Make Me Feel, Man in the Mirror and Dirty Diana all reached number one on the Hot 100, the first five from one album, and Smooth Criminal reached seven. It was the best-selling album worldwide in 1987 and 1988 and has sold more than 35 million copies. Simon Frith of The Times wrote that if Thriller was magic, Bad is mastery, while Richard Cook of Sounds felt it lacked that once-in-a-lifetime spark. The album won the Grammy for best engineered recording, and the video for Leave Me Alone won best short-form music video in 1990. The Bad tour ran from 12 September 1987 to 27 January 1989 and grossed $125 million.