He called constantly — but the biggest pop-duet of the 1980s never materialised

In the mid-1980s, Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston were two of the most commercially powerful voices on the planet — and there is a long-circulating industry account that in 1987, the two came very close to recording a duet together during the Bad album cycle.

The song in question was I Just Can’t Stop Loving You, the ballad that eventually became the first single from Bad.

Whitney Houston would later speak publicly about how persistent Jackson was in trying to reach her during that period — describing him calling “seven times a week.”
The way she told it, he wanted the duet to happen directly — artist to artist — not through layers of label negotiators.

the song went forward — but the pairing changed

Jackson and producer Quincy Jones ultimately recorded the track as a duet with Siedah Garrett.
Garrett co-wrote Man in the Mirror, and she was already operating inside the Bad creative orbit.

The Whitney pairing never happened.

why the duet didn’t go ahead

Accounts from that era describe the barrier not as artistic disagreement, but as business timing.

Houston’s second album Whitney was being prepared for release that same year — and label strategy can become very protective in those windows.
Releasing a duet with the star of Thriller in the same quarter could have changed chart focus, radio focus and press bandwidth.

People close to Houston have said she was disappointed the collaboration never happened; she later spoke fondly of Jackson and described him as a friend.

why the story still circulates

The idea of a Whitney/Michael duet endures because it would have united the two most distinctive pop voices of the moment — at the exact time each was reshaping global pop vocabulary.

The calls — “seven times a week” — tell the entire story visually:

two superstars trying to connect directly, with genuine interest on the creative level

and the reality of 1980s major-label strategy stepping in before the microphones ever met.