“I Am A Loser” was first conceived more than a year after the release of ‘Invincible’, in January of 2003, shortly after wrapping up the last of a series of interviews for Martin Bashir’s ill-fated “Living With Michael Jackson” documentary.

Jackson and his long-time collaborator Brad Buxer, who is responsible for contributions towards a plethora of tracks including “Who Is It” and “Stranger In Moscow”, were staying in adjoining hotel rooms at the time while working on music together.

Buxer, who was going through a breakup at the time, was awake late one night. Upset about the breakup, he was pacing around his room repeating, “I’m a loser! I’m just a loser!”

Before long Jackson, who could hear Buxer through the wall, knocked on his door and came in and asked, “What’s the problem?”

“Oh I’m a loser…” answered Buxer, before explaining his situation.

“Let’s write a song about it,” suggested Jackson.

And so Jackson and Buxer got to work, co-writing and composing the track “I Am A Loser” into the early hours of the morning.

“We had our typical recording setup,” explains the pair’s engineer/producer, Michael Prince. “ProTools, keyboards, a microphone set up with headphones – the whole thing. So it’s basically a mini recording studio.”

“Brad was playing keys and Michael was doing a scratch vocal. It happened very fast,” recalls Prince, who began working on the song soon after the first scratch vocal had been laid down.