"This Is It" is a song written by Canadian singer Paul Anka and the American musician Michael Jackson. The song was recorded by Jackson and featured as a track on his sixth posthumous album, This Is It (2009), which accompanies the Sony Pictures motion picture release Michael Jackson's This Is It. The song was premiered worldwide on Jackson's official website on October 12, 2009.
The song is the only airplay single off of Jackson's compilation album, which was distibuted by Epic Records. The song is a power ballad with lyrics that describe falling and being in love with someone. The instrumentation includes piano, guitar, percussion, and strings. Jackson's version, styled as a pop ballad, was his first song to chart on Billboard's Hot Adult Contemporary Chart in over seventeen years.
Sony misleadingly referred to the song as a "new single" during its promotion, but it was later confirmed that the song would only be released to radio, and not be available to buy or download as a single release. The song was generally well received by critics and had a good chart performance; it become a top twenty hit on charts in Japan and Spain, and peaked at number eighteen on both Billboard's Adult Contemporary and R&B/Pop song charts.
According to Anka, the song was recorded in 1983 and was intended to be a duet between him and Jackson on his Walk a Fine Line album under the title "I Never Heard", but these plans fell-through. Thereafter, recording artist Sa-Fire recorded the song for her second studio album, I Wasn't Born Yesterday (1991). While putting together the This Is It album, Jackson's demo version of the song was found. His brothers' vocals and additional instrumentation, both arranged by Mervyn Warren, were then added. The song was accompanied by two music videos. The first consisted of rehearsal footage from Michael Jackson's This Is It. The second video was directed by Spike Lee, and consisted of footage of Jackson as a child and clips of him throughout his career. It also featured footage of tributes from Jackson's fans around the world.