That Weird Time Michael Jackson Narrated ‘E.T. The Extra Terrestrial’

Michael Jack­son and E.T. are two of the biggest pop cul­ture icons of the 1980s, so it makes sense that this exists:

Little-known fact: the above photo was shot in Michael Jackson’s bed­room.

But some­how I made it through child­hood with­out ever hav­ing known about it, which is a shame because I loved Michael Jack­son, E.T and those  Read-Along Adven­ture books ‚  which I was just talk­ing about the other day. This would have prob­a­bly made my head explode.

Lis­ten­ing to the album as an adult, how­ever, I’m bewil­dered as to how this thing won a Grammy award for Best Record­ing for Chil­dren in 1984, espe­cially when it was up against the likes of a Sesame Street  album and Rocky Moun­tain Hol­i­day by John Den­ver & The Mup­pets, two things that are still rel­e­vant to kids today. I think they just gave awards to Michael Jack­son for being Michael Jackson.

If you’ve never lis­tened to this album before, it’s as weird and uncom­fort­able as you would expect a children’s album nar­rated by Michael Jack­son to be. Though it includes voices from the orig­i­nal cast and much of John William’s fan­tas­tic score (one of my all-time favorites by him), you’ll have a hard time main­tain­ing a straight face through it.

Some per­son with awe­somely bad taste (my imme­di­ate sus­pi­cion was Corey Feld­man) was cool enough to  upload the whole thing to YouTube:

And here is  Part 2 , Part 3 , Part 4 , and  Part 5 .

If you’re a hor­ri­ble human being like myself, you’ll be tempted to make all kinds of ter­ri­ble jokes when you hear him say “he put the lit­tle round object in his mouth”

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