"Remember The Time" was the second single released from Michael Jackson's highly anticipated album Dangerous, the follow-up to Bad four years earlier. The song was written and composed by Teddy Riley, Michael Jackson and Bernard Belle. It was an attempt at connecting Riley's smooth New Jack Swing sound with Jackson's more earthy R&B. It's a pretty anodyne breakup song, with Jackson asking an ex-lover (over and over) to remember the special times they had together.
This won the 1993 Soul Train Award for Best Male R&B Single. Jackson, who was laid up with a severely twisted ankle, gave a memorable performance of the song at the awards show in a chair.
The lavish video, set in ancient Egypt, was directed by John Singleton and starred Eddie Murphy, Magic Johnson, and the Somali fashion model Iman, who married David Bowie in 1992.
In the video, Iman plays the object of desire, and while Jackson had leading ladies in previous videos, including "
Thriller" and "
The Way You Make Me Feel," this was the first time he shared a kiss on screen. Jackson always seemed a bit reluctant to kiss in public; at the 1994 MTV Video Music Awards he tried to placate fans by
very publicly kissing his new bride, Lisa Marie Presley.
Magic Johnson's private struggles had just become public. Director Singleton remembered to
Rolling Stone: "Magic Johnson was going through his thing where he'd just revealed he had HIV. Michael said, 'We have to put Magic in this video.' I'll always remember that."
An extended, 9-minute version of the video was made where the storyline of Jackson causing all kinds of monkeyshines at the Egyptian palace plays out. Advanced special effects were used to turn him to sand just as he is about to be captured.
Teddy Riley and Michael Jackson produced this track. Riley recalled to Music Radar that Jackson's vocal deliverance on this song "really blew me away." He added: "I came to the project with this track. That was the sound I was thinking of for this album. Basically it was the sound I wanted on Dangerous and he loved it – loved it from the beginning. I'd describe that sound as, really, like the New Jack Swing sound. The elements on this song that give it that New Jack Swing sound are the ones that I used when I recorded with Guy and Bobby Brown to pioneer it. Sort of like the twisted samples I brought in. There were no samples of other people on that; what I did was make the sounds myself – I was sampling myself. I'd just jam with a riff and think, 'That's a cool bit there…' Yeah, it kinda really brought a lot to the production side. It worked."
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Despite the video, there is no indication that the song has anything to do with Egypt. The only place mentioned in the lyric is Spain ("Remember the times, you and me in Spain").
One of the dancers in the video, Jossie Harris, wore braids that inspired Janet Jackson's iconic hairstyle in the 1993 movie Poetic Justice, which like the video, was directed by John Singleton.
2009 American Idol winner Kris Allen brought this song back to the forefront when he performed it on the show's Michael Jackson week, earning solid reviews from the judges.
According to Teddy Riley, "Remember The Time" is all about the hook: "Do you remember the time when we fell in love?"
"I put myself in that position with my fiancé at that moment, because we were falling out of love, and I always go back to that line,"
he told Billboard in a 2023 interview.
Teddy Riley was playing Michael Jackson some of his demos - it was his first time presenting demos to the King of Pop. After he'd played 16 bars of the fifth track, "Remember The Time," Jackson unexpectedly halted the music, making Riley anxious. "I actually thought I was getting fired," he confessed to Billboard.
The next moment, Michael invited him to his office, adding to Riley's anxiety.
Inside the office, trembling with anticipation, Riley awaited Jackson's words. Jackson asked about the first chord of the song. Riley admitted he wasn't sure, but Jackson's response was far from critical. He chuckled and assured Riley that he wasn't trying to put him on the spot. Instead, Jackson expressed how utterly amazed he was by that chord, a chord he had never encountered throughout his illustrious career.
That magical chord turned out to be a C7 augmented, consisting of C, E, G, B flat, and E flat - a combination Riley aptly described as a "church chord."
Michael Jackson entered the studio and passionately sang the first verse after receiving the lyrics from Teddy Riley's friend, Bernard Belle. "We all get excited," Riley recalled to Billboard. "And then he takes a break, and we think he's going to work out with his vocal coach Seth Riggs, and [he] keeps us waiting."
After waiting a while, Riley went to the back and sought out Riggs, inquiring about Jackson's whereabouts. To his surprise, he discovered that Michael had slipped away through the back exit without a word. Shortly afterward, Riley received a phone call from Jackson: He was on a plane bound for Switzerland. "He didn't mention it," he said. "This just gives the people an idea that creativity has no time. It's whenever, whatever, however. I was just floored."
