![]() ![]() So producer/co-writer Hal Davis took the risk of pulling them away from kid-centered pop and giving them a full-on disco song with a burbling synthesizer. The Jackson 5's star had dimmed a bit by 1974: It had been three years since their last Top 10 hit. I'm closest to Janet of all the family members. "I have had so much fun working with my sister," he said in 1995. But while it was a hard period for Jackson, it wasn't all bad times. The result was "Scream," one of his most confrontational songs, and his first ever to use the word "fuck." Written with his sister Janet, it reached Number Five on the Hot 100, thanks to an extravagant video that has often been credited as the most expensive music clip ever made. Jackson had reached a breaking point after being accused of sexual molestation. If Michael Jackson says warm up, you warm up – even if you are Mick Jagger." By then, everyone knew how good Michael was. ![]() " had Mick doing scales for over an hour to warm up before he would even start," said sound engineer Bruce Swedien. The song was originally intended to be a collaboration with Queen's Freddie Mercury but fell into Jagger's hands due to scheduling difficulties. The biggest victory of the Jacksons' lackluster Victory era was "State of Shock," a Number Three-charting duet between Jackson and Mick Jagger, fluidly working a middle ground between guitar rock and pop. Initially conceived as a duet with Madonna, "In the Closet" features a couple of spoken passages by a "Mystery Girl" – Princess Stéphanie of Monaco – on the recording, and Naomi Campbell in the racy video. Producer Teddy Riley constructed a dissonant, off-kilter beat that made Jackson's hormone-soaked whispers and wails fit right in with the tone of R&B radio ("It was just incredible," recalled keyboardist Brad Buxer, "almost atonal"). Writing the steamiest, most unambiguously sexual song he'd ever sung, and calling it "In the Closet"? Early-Nineties Michael Jackson was a master of mixed signals. It's a gospel song that continues a theme of his career: from "I'll Be There" to "Got to Be There" to "Will You Be There," summing up a journey from boundless confidence to fear and solitude. Written while sitting in his "Giving Tree" at Neverland Ranch, "Will You Be There" begins with a long orchestral prelude from Beethoven, performed by the Cleveland Orchestra, interweaving hosannas from the Andraé Crouch Singers and climaxing with a tearful spoken monologue. Jackson sings about a stalker with a seven-inch knife – another in his line of femmes fatales for whom sex and murder are one and the same.Įven by Jackson's wildly ambitious standards, the theme song for the 1993 movie Free Willy, and the eighth single from Dangerous, was one of his most grandiose recordings. He hadn't mentioned the tragedy to Jackson and was shocked when the singer suggested "Blood on the Dance Floor" as a title. Teddy Riley had blown off a party to work on it – and someone had been shot on the party's dance floor. The ominously slinking song has a fittingly creepy origin story. Backed by Motown house band the Funk Brothers, Michael pushes himself to the top of his range, ripping into every word of Robinson's heartbroken lyrics.īlood on the Dance Floor: HIStory in the Mix, 1997Ī "Dangerous"-era outtake, this was revived as the title track of Jackson's 1997 remix album. A cover of a Smokey Robinson torch song (it first appeared as the B side of the Miracles' "Shop Around" in 1960), it was the sweetest fruit of the Jackson 5's collaboration with R&B singer Bobby Taylor, who brought them to Motown and produced some of their early songs. "I Want You Back" was a glimpse of Motown's future its B side gazed at the label's past. "Heartbreak Hotel" became a Number Two R&B hit then somebody at the Jacksons' label, perhaps sensing legal complications, changed it to the nonsensical "This Place Hotel." The future King of Pop took on the legacy of the King of Rock & Roll on the Jacksons' 1980 take on "Heartbreak Hotel." Written by Michael, it has little in common with Elvis Presley's 1956 classic it's a lithe disco-pop tune that takes the original's theme in a darker direction with lyrics about a hotel where relationships break up. ![]()
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