Glen Ballard: The Songwriter, Uncovered

On October 9, Glen Ballard did something he has spent fifty years letting other people do. He sang his own songs.

The album is called “Uncovered,” and the tracklist reads like a résumé the whole world already knows by heart — in other people’s voices. “Ironic.” “The Space Between.” “You’re In Love.” “A Hero Comes Home.” Songs that were No. 1 records, movie themes, wedding staples. This time the voice is the writer’s.

Every songwriter has a short list of the ones who showed them how it’s done. Glen Ballard is on mine — he’s one of my songwriting heroes. Here’s why he’s on half the lists in Nashville, LA, and everywhere else songs get written.

The Catalog

Start with the one everybody knows. In 1987, Michael Jackson released “Man in the Mirror” — written by Glen Ballard with Siedah Garrett. It has been streamed more than 700 million times on Spotify alone, and it still sounds like a man talking to himself in the glass.

Then came the run. He co-wrote and produced Wilson Phillips’ debut — “Hold On” — and their follow-up. In 1995 he sat down with a young Alanis Morissette and co-wrote and produced “Jagged Little Pill”: 33 million copies, four Grammys including Album of the Year, Billboard’s album of the decade. “You Oughta Know.” “Hand in My Pocket.” “Ironic.” In 2001 he did it again with the Dave Matthews Band’s “Everyday.” In 2004, Josh Groban’s “Believe,” from “The Polar Express,” won a Grammy and was nominated for an Oscar.

All told: six Grammys, more than 300 songs, records that have sold over 150 million copies. Aretha Franklin sang his songs. Barbra Streisand. Aerosmith, Van Halen, No Doubt, Annie Lennox, George Strait, Katy Perry. In 2023 he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and picked for a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Uncovered — the Glen Ballard album cover — **UNCOVERED.** The writer, singing his own songs at last.Album artwork — “Uncovered” (2026)

The Soap Thread

Here’s the part that lands in my world. In 1984, Ballard wrote a song called “All I Need” with Clif Magness and David Pack — and produced it with Magness. A young actor named Jack Wagner — Frisco Jones on “General Hospital” — recorded it, and it went to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 in January 1985, and No. 1 on the adult contemporary chart.

A soap star took a Glen Ballard song to the top of the charts. That’s not a footnote in this story — it’s the bridge. My Soap Songs series closes with “All I Need,” and Jack Wagner gets his own Soap World feature this December. The man who wrote the song and the man who sang it on soap fans’ radios are two ends of the same thread, and Ballard is the end nobody talks about. Until now.

“The man who wrote the song and the man who sang it are two ends of the same thread.”

— Highlights

The Stage

Writers like Ballard don’t stay in one room. He wrote the music and lyrics for “Ghost the Musical” (2011) and, with Alan Silvestri, “Back to the Future: The Musical” — 17 new songs, seven Olivier nominations, Best New Musical, from Manchester to the West End to Broadway. For Netflix’s “The Eddy,” he wrote a whole jazz club’s worth of original songs and executive-produced the series alongside Damien Chazelle.

Glen Ballard with an Augury team member — **THE AUGURY TEAM.** Still in the room, still working.Photo by Erik Melvin

Uncovered

So why, at 73, step out front? Maybe because the math finally argues for it. Or maybe because it was always the point. Ballard started as a kid in Natchez, Mississippi, playing piano and writing songs, in a band by fourth grade, with a solo album out while he was still in college. The voice on “Uncovered” isn’t a producer showing off. It’s the kid from Natchez, fifty years later, still at the piano.

He talks about songwriting the way craftsmen talk: show up every day, protect the spark, let the song tell the truth. On “Uncovered,” the songs finally get to tell it in his voice.

The hits were never the whole story. They were his songs first.

Album artwork — “Uncovered” (2026) · Press photo via @glen.ballard · Team photo by Erik Melvin