audience." He added, "Big vocal chorus and string arrangement add to song's appeal." Alan Jones from Music Week gave it four out of five, stating that this "Afrocentric, spiritually uplifting" track "will be a hit." Rolling Stone wrote that "the grandiose 'Will You Be There' never catches fire" and added that "the sequencing of Dangerous often clusters similar songs in bunches", and with that "it's easy to overlook" the following track "Keep The Faith" which, like "Will You Be There", also features the Andrae Crouch Singers. However, according to the article "is looser and sets off fireworks with a call-and-response gospel coda". Accolades Music video Vince Patterson directed two music videos for "Will You Be There". The official video included Jackson performing the song during various stops of the Dangerous World Tour while scenes from Free Willy centering around the friendship of Jesse and Willy are shown. The original VHS copies of Free Willy included the music video prior to the film. The second video from Dangerous: The Short Films contained the full length of MTV's 10th Anniversary special performance intercut with the Dangerous World Tour footage and footage of the fans. Live performances Jackson first performed "Will You Be There" following "Black or White" during MTV's 10th Anniversary special that was taped in the summer of 1991 and later aired on ABC in November that year prior to the release of Dangerous, and would later perform it again throughout the Dangerous World Tour. During the spoken outro, he would sometimes have children in tow while an angel, played by Angela Ice in the 10th Anniversary performance, appears from behind and uses her wings to embrace him at the conclusion of the song. At the 25th NAACP Image Awards in 1993 where Jackson accepted "Entertainer of the Year" that night, Daryl Coley, Patti LaBelle and the Voices of Faith Choir performed the song with Jackson joining in at the end. The song was planned for the HIStory World Tour (1996–1997), but was not included in final set list. A version was released on the 2004 DVD Live in Bucharest: The Dangerous Tour. Jackson would have performed the song for the This Is It concerts which never took place due to his sudden death. The rehearsal for it, which took place on June 23, was not featured in the film This Is It (although it appears briefly on the DVD/Blu-ray bonus