MICHAEL JACKSON – "Billie Jean"

Plus for me, unlike Come On Eileen, it’s not tarnished by past affection. This attitude isn’t necessarily the right one to take but I feel that Billie Jean is not JUST “cooler” than COE. Its (or at least MJ’s) exoticity as an event, its modern sound (no less ‘thrilling’ than the nostalgic euphoria of COE)…I mentioned it before but the sense of Jackson initiating his transformation process(es) and the resulting excitement. ‘Planet Rock’ portrayed the future but maybe MJ was more directly honouring Kraftwerk, desperate to escape his human form, but here so as to deal better with unparalleled global fame and fortune (and tragically the perceived imperfection he felt and blamed on his father’s brutal disciplinarism iirc)…at least for an entertainer. Maybe that’s all bunk but these ideas and associations seem to dominate his career from hereon, setting up a nightmarish descent – so for now marvel at the highest heights. Looking back it does seem extraordinary that he was not able to score as many #1s as his imminently emerging female counterpart (the Queen of Pop).

I can see that aside from all that Billie Jean IS troublesome. WHY tailor a song so traumatic and thematically specific for the dancefloor anyway? Where’s the creepy line? Isn’t this only problematic in theory tho? It’s never stopped people having as a good a time to this as any song. ‘Thriller’ itself would’ve made probably just as great a #1 and probable 10 from my pov.

Well I realised recently you wouldn’t be giving this a 10 but for me it’s one of the most deserving tens for mostly obvious reasons. Pop genius at the top of his game. Possibly the most popular (yet “credible”) floor filler of the last 26 years? Iconic both sonically (the deep warm nocturnal enigmatic two note synth hook chiefly) and visually (pavement as disco dancefloor). That’s quite enough reasons for me personally. Untouchable (and yet he touched too much, ahem).

Ten ten ten! I had this marked down a long time ago as the last ten I would award before my retirement, which can’t be far off now. It is indeed dark, and paranoid, a thorough exploration of a tortured soul (just how tortured we had yet to find out). And it is outside its time: it has all the hallmarks of a pop monument for all seasons.

I come to this conclusion, by the way, knowing the song only as a song. It was only a few months ago that I actually saw Mr Jackson doing his dance routine to it, nor have I ever seen more than brief fragments of the Thriller video.

And not for the first time, its mood resonated with my own at the time. The dark clouds had been gathering on the horizon for a while, and it was in March 1983 that the storm broke. I don’t really want to go into details – save that for my autobiography if it ever gets written – but lets just say that unemployment and profound depression were building up to a point where something had to give, and an explosion in my private life triggered a breakdown which left me homeless and helplessly drifting. I remember a long trek up to Durham, and being attacked with a hockey stick, and eventually landing, drained and exhausted and broke, at my mother’s house in Hitchin. There I shut myself in my mother’s back bedroom and sat up all night ever night, listening to Chiltern Radio and bashing out my first novel on my mother’s battered old manual typewriter (it was crap, and the manuscript no longer exists, but at least it was a formative experience.) All the time, Billie Jean could be heard somewhere or other.

I had nowhere else to go but up, you might think. But life had a few more kicks to give me to the accompaniment of the next few number ones.

At least you’re consistent 🙂

I’d probably give twice as many tens as you will during the 80s (one of many good reasons I’m just a commenter), but this really is ‘first name on the teamsheet’ stuff.

er, *ten*year old, that is

lex – replace “sinister/creepy” with “heartbreaking/wretched” and you’re talking about ‘dancing queen’!

Just had a look at the song’s chart positions achieved in various countries. Curiously it only made #45 in France while making top 10 if not #1 in most other Western European countries. This column’s author is himself quoted on the BJean wikipedia page regarding reactions to Kanye West’s 2008 remix (which I have still never knowingly heard).

There’s a polished coldness in the production of the “Thriller” album which, together with its all embracing ubiquity among friends, peers, family (uncool cousins and uncles and aunts esp) that sort of scared me off MJ at this point. Latterly, I am often very mildly irritated that DJs plays this as an easy ‘score’ in a set, and wonder why they can’t be more imaginative.

But why shouldn’t it be played? It is a monstrously infectious groove, and the rhythm of MJ’s singing – esp his tics and yelps – lift it to another dimension altogether (to people who think MJ overrated I play The Jacksons’ “Can You Feel It” and the difference when MJ is on the mic as compared to his more pedestrian, tho highly competent brothers, is night and day).

His vocals at this point in his career are a rhythm instrument in themselves.

Still, whether its over familiarity, the too-boxy drum sound, or just not being able to connect with it emotionally (in a way I can with “I Feel Love”), I can’t say I care greatly for “Billie Jean”.

Much prefer the “Off The Wall” production than any subsequent MJ. So it follows that “Thriller” was the start of the artistic decline.

Hm, this is a recording which I admire and can fully hear everything amazing thats going on, but I can’t say that it ever makes my heart leap. Actually, that’s my problem with Thriller as a whole – apart from perhaps Human Nature – that it sounds like a thrilling exercise to make a great album, but there’s some level of empathetic human engagement that I can’t find in there.

You could say that this says more about me than it does about Michael Jackson and you might even be right, but I don’t have this problem at all with Off The Wall – I just feel that something got lost between 1979 and 1982. An instinctive gaiety of spirit, perhaps.

Also, whenever I hear the bump! click! intro to this I start to imagine either Thieves Like Us by New Order or The Whole Of The Moon by The Waterboys playing instead.

A likely cause of personal antipathy towards eighties Michael Jackson is also that as a weakling first former with a high-pitched voice, whenever other boys would hit me and I, not unreasonably, exclaimed “Ow!” my peers would shout that Michael Jackson was in the classroom, an unfailing source of amusement.

Key to this creepy/wedding party dichotomy can be found in a hit by one of MJ’s heroes – Smokey Robinson’s I Gotta Dance To Keep From Crying.* As a non-clubber at the time, I only heard Billie Jean coming out of a car radio or in the kitchen, or in a cafe, so the song’s atmosphere of dank claustrophobia and paranoia (Tom, I love your description of the “stalking” bassline) were what struck me during its chart run. The lyric was strong enough to earn an “answer” song in Lydia Murdock’s Superstar.

I don’t want to fixate on the mark, but this betters Beat It on every level for me – lyric, production, groove, vocal performance.

Oh, and Elvis was the King, wasn’t he? Which is why MJ had to make do with the lesser King of Pop, and later (I recall Radio 1 getting a memo from CBS about this) King of Rock Pop and Soul. Wasn’t this all his idea, or at least his people’s? Like the sad kid at school who awards himself a “tough” nickname, it never really works, hence he got what he deserved when the public christened him Wacko Jacko.

*Any number of exceptionally bleak Motown hits, usually Holland Dozier Holland, that are irresistible dancefloor items: My World Is Empty Without You, Seven Rooms Of Gloom, Behind A Painted Smile.

Just want to say that I thought this was a very good bit of writing. Particularly “the goblin babble pressing in on Jackson during “Wanna Be Startin’ Something” goes fully internal” Great!

I would like to have seen more pop stars make claims based more on chess pieces as equivalent to Jacko’s King. Outhere Brothers as cavorting knights, PSBs as the dutiful bishops and PJ & Duncan as yer canny rooks.

loved the ‘mash-up’ (can you call it that in 1983? can you call it that in 2009 come to think), or was it two actual re-recordings (probably the latter) brought to us by Clubhouse in the Summer of 83 (Billie Jean vs Steely Dan’s Do It Again).

Isn’t this only problematic in theory tho? It’s never stopped people having as a good a time to this as any song.

I agree. Michael pours forth his dilemmas but he doesn’t endeavor to make you feel them. Whereas groups like the Stones and Public Enemy want to hurt you and trip you up, and bank on your getting off on it.

Surely it IS his best #1, looking at the alternatives. I’m not sure what you have in mind as superior.

Re 30: Well, that’s his nickname, it wasn’t my opinion. But I’ll resist rising to the bait, I will…

This could be one for Lord Sukrat – is MJ calling himself King of Pop in the spirit of King Oliver and Duke Ellington?

As for Queen Aretha, it’s a sad reaction but you can kind of understand. Tina Turner?! A bit like The Hollies being introduced as the Fab Four.

Re 31: Or types of penguin? Elvis as King, MJ as Emperor, Adam Ant as Macaroni… not sure who’d be Erect Crested.

We will be playing the original demo of Billie Jean on Lollards, this Saturday (the 23rd) – you can hear MJ kind of making up the words!

Good song, probably great song, but have never really felt a personal love for it myself. You definitely [i]can[/i] dance to it but somehow I’m not drawn to – whereas “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin'” for example is just utterly irresistible on all levels – that would be a 9 or 10 from me depending on my mood. “PYT” would be way up there also.

Steve at #31 – do you think anyone’s likely to declare themselves as pawns?

Woah Tom, I’m amazed you’ve not given this a ten, I thought it was a given! I’m in complete agreement though. The thing that marks this song down for me is the voice. Not the tics, the inflections or the mannerisms that MJ came to rely on, but the voice itself.

Blunty speaking, it’s not very good! Paper thin, reedy, produced-to-the-max-at-all-times and weak as piss. And that was in 1982, imagine what the paying public at the O2 are going to get? As it goes, mainly miming, just as they did in the BAD tour in the late eighties.

Still, it’s a tune and a half, and is a terrific representation of Jackson as the all conquering mega-star, before he disappeared down the road of exaggeration, self parody and then artistic death. Shame. 9.