In 1974, a 16-year-old Michael Jackson sat in a television attic with legendary singer Roberta Flack, dressed as children, and performed a song about not needing to change. The clip has recently resurfaced online, and it's worth watching for what it shows about two artists at completely different points in their careers finding an easy chemistry.
The performance aired on "Free to Be...You and Me," a TV special built around the idea that kids could become whoever they wanted to be. The song they sang, "When We Grow Up," was straightforward in its message: "I don't care if you're pretty at all, And I don't care if you never get tall. I like what you look like... and you're nice small. We don't have to change at all."
What makes the clip memorable isn't just the song. Jackson and Flack layered in comedy—mimicking the Marx Brothers, with Jackson shaking a fake microphone like Groucho Marx, and both of them playing with the mirror-image bit from the 1933 film "Duck Soup." They also riffed on the space race, which had captivated the country just five years after Apollo 11. Two kids in an attic talking about visiting the moon felt, in that moment, like the most natural thing.
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Years later, Flack reflected on working with young Jackson. In a 2017 interview with The Huffington Post, she described him as someone who didn't need much rehearsal even as a child. "We didn't have to do it a bunch of times," she said. "We did it a few times, and it was a lot of fun. When you have that sort of innate and instinctive gift, you can sort of relax and let it flow."
That quality—the ability to show up and let something work without overthinking it—is rare. It's especially rare to see it preserved on tape, in a moment before either performer became defined by their later fame. Jackson would go on to become the most famous entertainer on the planet. Flack had already recorded "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face," which would become one of the most enduring songs in American music. But in this clip, they're just two people making something together, and it shows.
