Behind The Music | ‘Billie Jean’ by Michael Jackson

the detail.
8 min readJan 5, 2021

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Sinuous, paranoid and omnipresent: The single that made Michael Jackson the biggest star since Elvis spent seven weeks at number one and was a denial of a paternity suit. Jackson came up with the irresistible rhythm track on his home drum machine, he nailed the vocals in one take and the result, shattered records and solidified Jackson’s superstar status for generations to come.

During an interview, Jackson was asked about the inspiration behind the song. He replied: “There is a girl named Billie Jean, but it’s not about that Billie Jean. Billie Jean is kind of anonymous. It represents a lot of girls. There were a lot of Billie Jeans out there. Every girl claimed that their son was related to one of my brothers.”

Although, In The Magic & The Crazy, The Whole Story, Michael Jackson’s biographer J. Randy Taraborrelli promoted the theory that “Billie Jean” was derived from a real life experience that Michael faced in 1981. He documents that a girl had written Michael Jackson a letter claiming that he was the father of her child. Michael used to receive letters of this kind regularly and he would just ignore them. But this woman continued to send Jackson more and more letters, she also stated that she loved him and they will make a happy couple together raising the claimed child. The letters she wrote were very disturbing to Michael to the extent that he suffered nightmares.

One day Michael received a parcel from her containing her picture, a gun and a letter. In the letter she asked that Michael kill himself on a certain day and at a specific time and that she would do the same once she had killed their baby. Michael was horrified and he rarely spoke about this woman, but he had a very hard time dealing with this unwanted attention, the song was his way of expressing his feelings without addressing her directly.

While Jackson didn’t give many details about the real Billie Jean, his producer Quincy Jones said that Jackson found the woman one day lounging by his pool with a bathing suit and sunglasses on. According to Jones, she accused Jackson of being the father of one of her twins, which Jones thought was pretty funny.

In his autobiography Moonwalk, Jackson said that Quincy Jones wanted to change the title to “Not My Lover” because he thought it would be confused with the tennis star Billie Jean King. But Jackson ended up winning that battle.

Quincy Jones discussed the song recalling: “The intro to ‘Billie Jean’ was so long you could shave during it. I said we had to get to the melody sooner…but Michael said that was what made him want to dance. And when Michael Jackson says something makes him want to dance, you don’t argue, so he won.”

Michael Jackson says about this song in Moonwalk, “A musician knows hit material. It has to feel right. You know it when you hear it. That’s how I felt about ‘Billie Jean.’ I knew it was going to be big while I was writing it”.

He also recalled that one day during a break in a recording session, he was driving, and ‘Billie Jean’ kept going through his head. He was getting off the freeway when a kid on a motorcycle pulls up to him and said, ‘Your car’s on fire.’ Suddenly he noticed the smoke and pulled over and the whole bottom of the Rolls-Royce was on fire. That kid probably saved his life, because he was so absorbed by this tune floating in his head.

The whole album was recorded with the latest studio equipment, but was done very quickly, with most of the work done over an eight-week period to meet a deadline. These time constraints forced Jackson and his team to be resourceful; on “Billie Jean,” they came up with a lo-tech method for getting a distinct sound on some of the vocals: Jackson sang through cardboard tubes.

When engineer Bruce Swedien was putting together the string section, he was aiming for a classical feel instead of a pop sound. He said: “I don’t think there are any basses on those strings but it was violin, viola and cellos and it was absolutely classical in the approach.”

In 2018, Quincy Jones told Vulture that parts of this song were lifted from the 1982 Donna Summer song “State of Independence,” which Jones produced and Jackson sang on. “Michael stole a lot of stuff,” said Jones. “He stole a lot of songs. ‘State of Independence’ and ‘Billie Jean.’ The notes don’t lie, man. He was as Machiavellian as they come.”

The music video was directed by Steve Barron, who was chosen because Jackson and Quincy Jones liked his work on the Human League video for “Don’t You Want Me.” Barron’s original idea was more complex and involved a group of dancers. With budget a factor, they simplified the concept and went with the idea of Jackson having a Midas Touch, with the squares he stepped on lighting up. To save on set design, they used a technique where painted glass was placed in front of the camera to fill in the wide shots without building actual set pieces. You can see this on some shots where Jackson is on a sidewalk with a city landscape behind him.

Barron remembered being in awe of the King of Pop: “We shot that first take, got to the end, and everyone — up in the gantries, eating their sandwiches, reading the paper, painters working on another set — just burst into applause. We all just knew we’d seen another era of superstar.”

The video for this song is often credited with breaking the color barrier on MTV. The video for “Pass The Dutchie” by Musical Youth was the first video by a black act to make regular rotation on the network, but they were considered a novelty, with no member older than 16.

Jackson’s “Billie Jean” video was the first to make heavy rotation, and more black faces started appearing on the network soon after. MTV was accused of racism in this era, notably by Rick James, whose “Super Freak” video was rejected by the network. MTV was programmed by guys with radio backgrounds who tried to program it like a radio station with a rock format.

Record companies wouldn’t budget for videos by their black artists since they didn’t think MTV would play them, so the network could make the argument that they simply didn’t have any good videos by black artists that were worthy. That argument went out the window when Jackson made the “Billie Jean” video.

Despite the production value and Jackson’s star quality, MTV didn’t play the video until the song was already a #1 hit. Les Garland, who ran the network at the time, claims that they loved the video and played it as soon as they could, but interviews with executives at Jackson’s record company and with others familiar with the matter suggest otherwise.

In the book I Want My MTV, multiple sources who worked at MTV claimed that the network wanted to air the “Beat It” video first, because Eddie Van Halen played on it and the song fit their format better. Walter Yetnikoff, who was head of CBS Records (who Jackson was signed to its subsidiary, Epic), recalls threatening to pull all CBS videos from MTV if they didn’t play “Billie Jean.”

He says he threatened to bring Jackson’s producer Quincy Jones in on it as well, and the network acquiesced. When MTV started playing the clip, it was first put in medium rotation, then promoted to heavy rotation when viewers loved it. When the video for “Beat It” was delivered, that one also went into hot rotation. For a two-month stretch in the summer of 1983, both videos were getting constant airplay, establishing Jackson as a video star and his next video effort, “Thriller,” revolutionized the art form.

Jackson performed “Billie Jean” on the television special Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever, broadcasted on May 15, 1983. Jackson wowed audiences with his Moonwalk for the first time, wearing black pants, leather penny loafers, a black sequined jacket, and also for the first time his single white rhinestone glove — which at the time was a modified golf glove. In subsequent performances of the song, Jackson used similar choreography and the Moonwalk became his signature dance move.

Motown 25 was watched by 50 million people and Jackson’s routine earned him an Emmy nomination. With the performance, Jackson reached a new audience and increased the sales of Thriller, which eventually became the best-selling album of all-time. The day after the show aired, Jackson was called by his childhood idol Fred Astaire, who commended him. Another childhood idol, Sammy Davis, Jr., had admired Jackson’s black sequined jacket during the performance and later received it as a gift.

“Billie Jean” has been recognized with numerous awards and honors. At the 1984 Grammy Awards the song earned Jackson two of a record eight awards; Best R&B Song and Best R&B Male Vocal Performance. It won the Billboard Music Award for favorite dance / disco LP, and the magazine’s 1980’s poll named “Billie Jean” as the “Black Single of the Decade”. The song and accompanying performances contributed to Jackson’s legendary pop icon status.

To date, “Billie Jean” is still in heavy rotation; it receives more than 250,000 spins per week and the song often seen as being most synonymous with the King of Pop.

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the detail.
the detail.

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Cut through the headlines and understand the man, the music and the magic behind Michael Jackson.

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