10 Iconic Rock Stars Who Guested On Pop Songs

In the years since Thriller, Michael Jackson was almost starting to exist outside of genre at this point. Though he has been known as the King of Pop for most of his career, Jacko was looking to break out of the traditional pop bubble that he was known for on albums like Bad, with Dirty Diana showing a much rougher side to him. When he needed the real deal though, it made sense to call in the best of the best behind the fretboard.

As work started on Dangerous, Slash came up as one of the main collaborators for Michael to use on the album, being an integral part of the song Black or White from around this time. While you can hear Slash's fingerprints all over that one, Give It To Me actually holds up as the better rock song from this era, bringing together all of the guitarist's fireworks and Jacko's ad libs and giving you the chocolate and peanut butter musical combination that no one had even thought of before.

This opened the floodgates for thousands of other artists reaching out to Slash to guest on their records, bringing the same rock flair to the likes of Bob Dylan and Carole King in the next few years. Ever notice how Slash always sounds like himself on all of these recordings though? Yeah, it turns out when you perfected your craft this well, you don't really need to change anything once they hit the record button.