MICHAEL JACKSON – “Billie Jean”
Michael Jackson came to the title “King of Pop” in the style of a medieval ruler, carving out his realm piece by piece across a hard year of campaigning. He won some of his new subjects when he performed this song as part of a Motown anniversary special: others when he formed common cause with Eddie Van Halen or Paul McCartney. His fiefdom suddenly extended across my school playground with the release of the “Thriller” video and its body popping zombies. Through it all the album and its spin-offs sold, and sold, and sold. “Billie Jean”, its Wikipedia page claims, has now topped 800,000 sales as a digital download, a format invented close to 20 years after its release.
What few mentioned was how strange Thriller was, how odd and sincere and childlike in some places, and how nightmarish in others. Half the record is heartbreakingly tender, the other half hard-edged and horribly tight-wound. Jackson’s stuck in the middle, and the pain is thunder: uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.
“Billie Jean” itself is the album’s darkest moment, where the goblin babble pressing in on Jackson during “Wanna Be Startin’ Something” goes fully internal and the barely-together bundle of tics that became Jackson’s star persona steps into the spotlight. Jackson’s one-take vocal is a long shudder – the gollum-gulp on “her schemes and plans”, the betrayed moan of “his eyes were like mine” – and the real craziness happens on its fringes. That contradictory “do think twice!”/”don’t think twice!” collision; the constant “ooh”, “oh”, and “no!” echoes; the clucks and gasps; and especially the madman’s comic book laugh punctuating the track, that eerily deliberate “hee hee hee”.
And of course this near-meltdown is the album’s most grippingly commercial moment too. Jackson’s claustrophobic performance is boxed in by stalking bass and arid drums, underlined by clawing and skittering guitars, counterpointed by those sensuous flushes of strings. A song about the fatal irresistibility of a dancer really does need to be irresistible on the dancefloor: at a hundred million weddings and discos since, “Billie Jean” has proved its mettle in that respect. But when you follow Jackson’s performance down and in, none of that matters – “Billie Jean” is a disquieting, troubled record.
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Tom in FT /Popular • featured content/Pop • 6,937 views
lonepilgrim @ 99
I think Jackson’s kingdom was overthrown long ago and replaced with a commonwealth wherein nobody leads for long without being messily assassinated.
I’d have said it yesterday and I’ll say it today – King of Pop, my arse. But yes it’s a very sad story and due respect to his memory. Which is more than you’ll get from some of the papers. The first word in the top left hand corner of the Sun’s front page today was “Overdose”. What was that line, “Even when you died the press still hounded you”…
Yes, RIP MJ
Sorry I haven’t posted around here lately, I’ve been ill and or busy, but I cannot NOT comment on his passing…I wish I had my journal from high school – one of many – where I reacted to the backlash against MJ at a ‘history of rock’ presentation in the school gym, wherein we were all ushered in to see a fairly slick representation of the history of rock & pop up to ’83 that culminated, inevitably, with MJ’s appearance (which caused the girls to scream and boys to boo). I felt, incoherently, that a lot of great music the boys who were booing actually liked was made by people who secretly or not-so-secretly dug MJ & the Jacksons & Motown in general, including 100% of the New Pop crowd, for instance. What do they know, I probably wrote….
I heard the news this morning and felt like a sucking void had happened; I couldn’t say anything. I’ve been reading a lot of Greil Marcus lately on Elvis and what he says about him goes for MJ too, I feel. 50 years old is too young, yet was MJ ever really allowed to be ‘young’? Kanye raps about Michael and his dad on the Keri Hilson single, Jay-Z mentions him first on “Lost!” – somehow I feel they are saying a lot of what needs to be said, how tragic his life was in a way, when it certainly didn’t need to be.
Again, sorry I am a bit incoherent here but as an American abroad I feel *more* connected to my fellow Americans, be they famous or not. I grieve for him and wish I could hug his whole family.
I am 54 and Micheal has been here all my life I was 4 when he was born, and not much older when he performed the first time , I remember that this cute little Affao,d little child with a strong voice, even tho he was on tv and I never met him, he seemed to be looking right at me when he spoke, and I do believe when he said I love you all from the bottom of my heart he ment it. its so sad I offer my condolences to his Mom mostly,his familly, his close fans,and friends, and to his familly thank you for sharing with us. God Bless!
I’ve never felt so shocked by the death of someone famous before – I was walking into a garage in Keighley this morning at just after 7 to pay for my petrol and there were the headlines on the papers I just couldn’t believe it – completely dumfounded.
The eighties were “my” decade and Michael Jackson was such a looming presence throughout those ten years. As one of the papers said today THE entertainer of the past 30-40 years. The world sems a very different place without him.
Everyone here will appreciate this, last night on MSNBC the anchor referred to his collaborations with Paul Mc as being ‘Say Say Say’ and ‘Ebony and Ivory’ – as you can imagine I shouted at the TV.
Also got very peeved about them acting as if his career had started with ‘Thriller’
I have to say I’m not surprised at last night’s news. If ever there was a pop star who was heading for an early death then it was Michael Jackson. It’s hard to believe he managed to make it to 50.
“Psychic Uri Geller, a close friend, said that Jackson had appeared to be in excellent health.”
I just wanted to say thank you for this piece getting me back into MJ recently. Beyond the human sadness, in a selfish way I feel sad that he hasn’t left more music behind – only three-and-a-half albums since this song over 25 years ago. I wish he had put the glitter aside for a time and just recorded himself singing, standards, covers, with a small band, whatever – the soap opera has obscured to a great extent what wonderful the records and performances are, and I just wish there were more of them.
BTW, a filleted version of this entry – and my thoughts on 5 other songs (including a Popular SNEAK PREVIEW for 1995) – are in The Times this morning. Print edition only as far as I can tell. Not worth buying a copy specially, it’s just one little column in their special supplement and I’m not saying anything revelatory. But I thought I’d mention it :)
Oh, it is online – here http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article6586336.ece
I’ve just about know who Chris Moyles is (but never knowingly heard him)and thought he was just some younger slightly updatedversion of your typical dodgy ‘Radio Wonderful’ dj. And he probably is.
But in amongst the tributes to Michael Jackson the day after he died Chris Moyles was quoted as saying words to the effect of “Michael Jackson was our generation’s Elvis Presley and I imagine we feel about him what older generations felt about Elvis”.
I thought that was very true and amongst all the other tributes about the best I heard. Still never thought I’d be biggin up Chris Moyles on here or anyway else for that matter…
PS Since then I’ve heard the same thing said by some celebrity in America (cant think who).
But pretty bang on anyway.
So who’s gonna be the Chuck D and offend everyone with “Michael never meant shit to me?”
Er, I did it whilst dancing to Public Enemy at Poptimism on Friday. A touch disingenuous, he just hasn’t meant anything to me since 1981.
I almost said it on Tumblr before deciding to be more specific.
But I really am interested in how he’ll be seen by upcoming generations, as something to model after or to push against, the way Elvis was for the 60s and 70s. (It’s a perceptive analogy, though certainly not original with Moyles.) The unambiguous love he gets from most (American) pop stars today is a little worrying — don’t they know they’re supposed to kill the buddha? — but it may not have been long enough yet. Chuck D came thirty years after the fact.
don maclean is sharpening his quill as we speak
#114 a few friends have done this over the last few days. i just brush them off as INDIEST PEOPLE EVER BOOOO.
The least enlightening commentary yet came on PM on Radio 4 on Friday, where the opinions were sought of Jeremy Hardy and teenage Glastonbury-goers; “The like Rakes like said like ‘Has everybody heard the good news?’ like?” “I suppose that it might mean more to you if you’re OLD?”
Someone at work the other day said his songs were “drivel” and “not about anything”, when I asked him what he meant by “about” he said “you know, like The Beatles and Stones, come on Lee!” – it was that “come on Lee!” that really wound me up as if no thinking human being could probably think otherwise. So I threw “She Loves You” at him as an example of The Beatles’ deep and meaningful songs.
What was depressing was this was someone younger than me.
I vaguely remember Danny Baker telling a story of him announcing the death of Elvis at a punk club and the crowd cheering which made him realize that punk was over because the scene had become full of sheep-like morons.
LondonLee: the word “rockist” was invented for such people. Deploy with full venom! ;)
popular song
The child is turning into an adult, and doesn’t like it. All the spring and bounce of “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” has solidified into an air of petrified wariness. The ceaseless multirhythmic matrix remains in “Billie Jean” but now the rhythms and guttural punctuation whoops are all tensed, coiled, hunched into its thin, turned-up lapels. Whereas Jackson previously yelled out of exultation, now his gasps tremble in their own dread. Now the jagged guitar lines and cross-cutting percussion are like surfing barbed wire rather than waves of passion.
But it was those waves of passion which led Jackson into his own shadow; here he is being pursued by someone whose child may or may not be his – and the tension is made uncomfortable (and therefore generated) by the knowledge that, despite his would-be assertive denials in the chorus, he suspects that he is likely to be the father; witness the anguished howl of “People always told me, be careful what you do!” or the quivering “oh no” which responds to “his eyes were like mine.” He is shitting himself.
The surface, however, has to stay as smooth as possible; he moonwalks perhaps to avoid his bowels and bile spilling out onto the video’s neon Yellow Brick Road. On a musical level, despite Quincy Jones’ usual, sublime deployment of space and echo – and the string synth exclamation marks in the second and third choruses may betray an early Lexicon Of Love acknowledgement – “Billie Jean” is maybe the blackest of all Jackson’s number ones, and in all senses; its circumferential catwalk of a bassline, its forceful, decisive, dead-on beat, its recoiling handclaps present a new dynamic to pop sonics, but its primeval fear…and that tom-tom beat, buried amid the gloss but still at the song’s centre…connect it directly to “I Heard It Through The Grapevine.” In addition, Jackson’s glaring, epileptic, wracked vocal is an exemplary portrait of someone on the crown point of falling apart.
It’s always easy to get complacent about Thriller, but if you listen through the entire album, even for the three hundredth time, its hidden strengths repeatedly reveal themselves; it did get a bad press at the time of its release, probably because of not being Off The Wall, and because of the admittedly irredeemable “The Girl Is Mine” being its lead single, as well as the various hammy cameos, but go beyond all of that and rediscover the serene silicon bleeps of “Human Nature” or seldom-praised gems like “Baby Be Mine” and “The Lady In My Life”…Jackson at this stage still has a firm, acute and astute grasp on both soul and pop. Likewise, “Billie Jean” climbed relatively slowly up the chart (at least before the video was unveiled and the Motown 25th Anniversary performance witnessed) but it was a grower and is growing and electrifying still.
An aside, and at a respectful time since his passing, I personally feel BJ stands as his greatest achievement in pop. Enough has been said by others that more than adequately sums up my feeling of this record, and the album for that matter.
But back to the aside…it must have been almost a year after BJ’s release that I came across a reggae compilation tape (the title of which escapes me) and on it was a track by Shinehead “Billie Jean/Mamma Used To Say”. It’s a stripped out halfway house between dub and ska. The 2 songs segued together over a simple drum machine and electric piano. Parenthesised by Shinehead whistling “The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly”, he sings a much slowed down version of both songs in a wonderfully haunting, melancholic way. It was the first time that I could distinguish all the lyrics from BJ. I never had that trouble with the lyrics from Junior’s track. For a while I wondered why Shinehead had chosen those 2 tracks, but then it struck me that both songs are based on received wisdom. The listener recieves MJ’s advice, and Junior passing on his own mother’s advice.
Billie Jean, I have heard many times since. Mamma Used To Say, less so.
But it’s the Shinehead version that gives me chills.
As a baby boomer I followed Jackson not much past “Beat It.” I thought he was a genius but just didn’t get too excited about “Thriller” and so lost track of his work. Through the tragic years of disfigurement and scandal I felt always sympathetic and I did not lose sight of what I thought was genius. Still I was not interested, particularly. When he died I was surprised at how little I felt. Then a cousin sent me a video of a live performance of “Billie Jean.” I was stunned; it was so extraordinary the most extraordinary performance it seemed I had ever seen. So began my current obsession. I stayed up night after night watching the proceedings on Larry King and I watched the videos. My sense of tragedy is now unsurpassed by any public figure that has died in my time. There have been great men who have died but genius is genius. Genius is understood by the primitive and emotional centers of the brain to be supernatural and godlike no matter how destroyed is the personal life of the genius. Geniuses do things we could never do, they are above us because they can do more than we can. Michael Jackson is neither the “king of pop” nor “the greatest entertainer that ever lived.” He was a genius. I think that is why prisoners and nuns line up to dance his dance and sing his songs as tribute. If you don’t watch the videos of “Billie Jean,” “Man in the Mirror,” “Dangerous” and “Smooth Criminal” you don’t know what it’s about. But once you see these videos and more you will have to acknowledge, it seems, that this boy who grew up with us is in fact someone to revere for his genius and to grieve for as if a personal loss has occurred.
piratemoggy and i determined by science — the science of watching telly — that the early stuff is quite halt and timid compared to the shock and awe of what was to come: we were insane raving born-agains by the time “earth song” began
Re: 125 – that Shinehead track is fantastic. IIRC it was on one of the mid-80s Greensleeves comps.
Re: MTV colour bar breakthrough, at a respectful distance… before Billie Jean, MTV showed videos by Eddy Grant, Tina Turner, and Donna Summer, with Musical Youth’s Pass the Dutchie on heavy rotation. At least, that’s according to this intriguing if slightly curmudgeonly piece:
http://www.blurt-online.com/blogs/view/2494/
The tragicomedy, the fact the story of his life now begins with demise, the long twilight of the presciption drug hermit… I think Elvis much the greater figure but the Citizen Kane scale of the two lives and deaths are remarkably similar. The classic American pop life. As such, I’m another born again, fiendishly collecting all he post Off The Wall 45s I never bought at the time. .
Well if there’s a heaven,it might sound like this…..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMhnFoq0TpE
Didn’t like this much when I was younger but now see it as the masterpiece that it is.
Would give it 10 only for the annoying way jacko screams “but the kiiiiiiiddddd” during the chorus.9 is about right.
Really belongs on the exquisite Off The Wall – that and this are by miles the best stuff MJ ever did. Thriller was gimmicky and musiclly over-rated ditto Bad and all.
Hey-ho, Liz Taylor’s just gone for a burton. I mention it here because the old gal was quite friendly with Michael and Bubbles, was she not?
RIP.
Totally overshadowing Fred Titmus’ death.
Fuckin’ hell, it’s Liz Taylor (as Half Man Half Bisucit might put it).
What a shame the Biscuits aren’t going to trouble Popular (unless of course they’d care to re-release “Fuckin’ ‘Ell It’s Fred Titmus” as a tribute – there’s plenty of profanity in the top 40 these days after all).
It’s a shame that Nina Simone doesn’t figure in our deliberations. Nina even gave the lass a name-check.
@Rosie, there’s also that Bob Dylan track from Freewheelin’ which kind of dissolves into laughter where he speak/sings:
I catch dinosaurs
I make love to Elizabeth Taylor . . .
Catch hell from Richard Burton!