Off The Wall (album) - Music and Vocals

Music and Vocals

Music critics Stephen Thomas Erlewine and Stephen Holden observed that Off the Wall was crafted from funk, disco-pop, soul, soft rock, jazz and pop ballads. Prominent examples include the ballad "She's Out of My Life", and the two disco tunes "Workin' Day and Night" and "Get on the Floor". "I Can't Help It" is a jazz piece. In Quincy Jones' autobiography, he compares Jackson to other jazz singers noting that Jackson "has some of the same qualities as the great jazz singers I'd worked with: Ella, Sinatra, Sassy, Aretha, Ray Charles, Dinah. Each of them had that purity, that strong signature sound and that open wound that pushed them to greatness." "She's Out of My Life" is a melodic pop ballad. The end of the former song showed an "emotional" Jackson crying as the track concluded. Of the song R&B writer Nelson George proclaimed, " became a Jackson signature similar to the way "My Way" served Frank Sinatra. The vulnerability, verging on fragility that would become embedded in Michael's persona found, perhaps, its richest expression in this wistful ballad". "Rock with You" is a romantic, mid-tempo song. The album's songs have a tempo ranging from 66 beats per minute on "She's Out of My Life", to 128 on "Workin' Day and Night".

With the arrival of Off the Wall in the late 1970s, Jackson's abilities as a vocalist were well regarded; AllMusic writer Stephen Thomas Erlewine described him as a "blindingly gifted vocalist". At the time, Rolling Stone compared his vocals to the "breathless, dreamy stutter" of Stevie Wonder. Their analysis was also that "Jackson's feathery-timbered tenor is extraordinary beautiful. It slides smoothly into a startling falsetto that's used very daringly". John Randall Taraborrelli expressed the opinion that Jackson sings with "sexy falsetto" vocals in "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough".