Nearly three years, start to finish. ■

The track was recorded across multiple sessions spanning August 1998 to June 2001, with the final mix completed in July 2001 — among the longest gestation periods of any song on the album.

It began as another man's heartbreak. ■

Songwriter ⌜Richard Stites of Huntington Beach wrote it as a “completely autobiographical” song about a woman named Grace Lee from Alaska who broke his heart. He'd already cut it for his own Interscope album, with a 27-piece live orchestra arranged. Writers of record: Jackson, ⌜Riley, Reed Vertelney, Stites.

Riley heard it and phoned Stites directly. ■

⌜Teddy Riley heard Stites' version and called him: “can you get the master tapes and fly out here? I want to record Michael's vocals with you.” Sessions began at Sony Studios, New York; once Jackson's conflict with ⌜Mottola made the Sony building awkward, they moved to Hit Factory.

He kept the writer's own voice on the record. ■

After cutting his own vocals, Jackson asked to keep Stites' original demo vocal on the finished master — it's there, at the very end of the song. He didn't want to erase the voice that wrote it. Jackson called “Don't Walk Away” one of his favorite songs on the album.

WHO ACTUALLY PRODUCED IT? TWO ACCOUNTS, UNRESOLVED. ⚠︎

The official credit: Teddy Riley is credited as producer of this track.
Stites' account: Riley “was not involved in the production of the track whatsoever. I had a 27-piece live orchestra on there.” Per Stites, Riley's actual contribution was an electric-guitar arrangement for the intro. ⌜Bruce Swedien mixed the track the same night.
No Riley-side response to this specific claim has been found. Both are on the page; neither is adjudicated here.

A second Stites/Jackson song exists — unreleased. ■

During this same period Stites and Jackson recorded a second collaboration, “▤Just a Lover in My Life”. It remains unreleased. Filed in the vault; existence only.

The Lisa Marie reading doesn't survive the origin story. /!\

Fan speculation once tied the lyric to Jackson's relationship with Lisa Marie Presley. No primary source supports it, and Stites' documented account — a song about Grace Lee, written before it ever reached Jackson — undercuts it directly. Recorded here only as a debunked myth, not a reading of the song.