The Way You Make Me Feel

Michael Jackson songs are difficult to reduce. They are dense productions where a lot of the character lives in the arrangement rather than the melody, and taking away the band usually takes away the song.

This one survives better than most because the groove is in the rhythm of the vocal line itself. Sung with the right emphasis, you can hear where the beat should be even when nothing is playing it. That is what makes it viable as a duet - the guitar can stay sparse and let the voice imply everything the record spells out.

We still play it in this format at drinks receptions, and the full band plays a much bigger version later in the night. Having both arrangements of the same song available across one day is one of the more useful things about booking a band that scales.

The same approach applied to a very different song on Let’s Stay Together, filmed the same day.