Jackson and Jones pushed Swedien to produce 91 different mixes, only to choose the second one, which is a classic case study on the respective merits of perspiration and inspiration. The rest of the arrangement suggests mounting agitation, from arranger Jerry Lubbock’s spiralling film noir violins to David Williams’s feverish guitar solo. Tasked by Jones with creating a “unique sonic personality”, engineer Bruce Swedien completely rebuilt Ndugu Chancler’s drum kit to produce that unmistakably dry, deadened sound. Jackson once admitted to Daryl Hall that he’d lifted the bassline from Hall & Oates’ recent hit I Can’t Go for That (No Can Do), and you can hear the resemblance in the demo, but Hall & Oates’ groove is sly and playful while Louis Johnson’s bassline, augmented by growls of distorted synth bass, is a panther.
In LA’s Westlake Recording Studios during 1982, Billie Jean became something unprecedented. When he tried to abbreviate the instrumental intro, Jackson protested, “But that’s the jelly!” – the funk. He wasn’t sure about the bassline either, which proves that even great producers can have moments of idiocy. When he brought it to the Thriller sessions, however, Jones worried that the title might lead people to picture tennis player Billie Jean King and suggested changing it to Not My Lover. Michael was the only Jackson brother to learn the craft of record-making from their producers during the 1970s, and all the basic components are there in his 1981 demo. Everyone is watching but what are they seeing? The dancefloor, an arena of liberation on Off the Wall, becomes a place of peril and exposure.
“Every girl claimed that their son was related to one of my brothers.” Either way, in Billie Jean, sex is a trap, especially if you’re famous. “There were a lot of Billie Jeans out there,” he said in 1996. Jackson, however, traced the song’s theme back to the groupies who pursued his older brothers in the Jackson 5. Taraborrelli claims that she sent the star a package containing a gun and instructions for a suicide pact. According to producer Quincy Jones and biographer J Randy Taraborrelli, Jackson himself was stalked by a disturbed young woman who claimed that he had fathered her child. In the aftermath of John Lennon’s murder and the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan by a Jodie Foster obsessive, celebrities learned to fear their fans. He wrote Billie Jean in 1981, a sweaty year for the famous. Thriller was the first time that Jackson acknowledged his celebrity in his songs, and perhaps the last time that his celebrity didn’t define his music. While Thriller’s title track is cartoonishly scary, Billie Jean is authentically scared. It is a hunted, haunted song about a paternity claim, which forsakes the lushness of his earlier work for stark, neurotic future-funk. Billie Jean, however, reeks with the paranoia that came to dominate Jackson’s career. From the Jackson 5’s first singles through to Off the Wall’s hymns to the weekend, Jackson had a preternatural gift for making people feel good. Yet it remains a thoroughly bizarre record, spawned in the darker precincts of Jackson’s imagination.īillie Jean was his Rubicon. On one level that makes sense: it’s Jackson’s biggest-selling solo single, and one of the biggest hits by anyone ever. In radio stations, gyms, cafes and wedding dancefloors (at least when they were open) certain of his songs have been deemed too good to lose, and Billie Jean tops the list. Whatever personal arrangement you may have come to regarding the life and music of Michael Jackson, the culture at large has made its decision.