Looking Back, Michael Jackson’s Music Has Always Been Filled With Anger And Paranoia
We've always thought of Michael Jackson's music as being full of love and healing, but the reality offers quite a different picture.
When Michael Jackson died, most of the syrupy montages celebrating his life were soundtracked by either ‘Man In The Mirror’ or ‘Heal The World’, two humanitarian anthems that will no doubt live on past the destruction of the planet they both aimed to save.
If you close your eyes I’m sure you can picture it: footage of Jackson hugging third-world children; crowds of delirious fans holding signs that say ‘We Love You Michael’ or ‘King Of Pop’; slow-motion footage of the moonwalk, the fedora toss, Michael standing en pointe with his left arm hugging the horizon, his right hand cupping his crotch.
Baby Michael also gets a look in too, flanked by his elder brothers, all dressed in Cadbury Roses wrappers doing choreographed dance routines beaten into them by a maniacal father. “There’s a place in your heart, and I know that it is love, and this place could be much brighter than tomorrow.”
This was always going to be his musical legacy given his untimely death: sugary uplifting anthems celebrating peace and unity, urging humankind to love more, help more, heal more. It’s a beautiful message, but if you actually study the Michael Jackson canon, it’s a misconception that this was the defining marker of his work. Throughout a lot of his music, Jackson was an angry, paranoid man — teeming with a rage that was funnelled into his most-loved songs, over and over.
Michael didn’t want to heal the world, he wanted to smash it to pieces.
Shades Of Grey
In November 1991, most of the un-healed world sat in front of cube-shaped televisions without remotes to watch the premiere of Michael Jackson’s epic new ‘Black Or White’ video — the first new music from MJ in over four years.
It was a banquet. There’s Macaulay Culkin arguing with Norm from Cheers, traditional dancers from everywhere from Africa to Russia, a baby on the moon, jungle creatures, Michael walking through fire yelling about the KKK, Michael sitting in the Statue of Liberty torch, a rap break that looks like it’s happening on Sesame Street, the Taj Mahal, Eiffel Tower, Giza Sphinx, and Big Ben, and various people (including a young Tyra Banks) face morphing in an effect so groundbreaking it seemed like magic.
Then Bart and Homer show up in their crude season one guise and bring the whole thing to an end. But between The Simpsons and Tyra, a darker scene plays out. A panther casually wandering through the soundstage morphs into Michael Jackson, and he proceeds to rage in back alleys, smashing up cars and windows and blowing up hotels with an untempered mix of sexuality and violence.
This four-minute section received so many complaints that it was edited out of future broadcasts, with racist graffiti CGI’d in the alley so that Michael’s rage could be retrofit to be racially-charged. A title card: ‘Prejudice is Ignorance’ was also added later, to hammer home this new message.
Danger And Distrust
The entire Dangerous album, from which ‘Black Or White’ was plucked, is filled with anger. ‘Why You Wanna Trip On Me’ is one of his many shots at the media’s obsession with him. ‘Who Is It’ is more vicious, about a woman who he gave “money” and “time” only for her to find another.
“Who Is It?” he snarls, “Is it a friend of mine? Is it my brother?” Another woman takes MJ’s money and time in the title track. “You and your manipulation” he spits. “You’re no damn good for me.”
This deep distrust in women first and most prominently appeared on Thriller’s ‘Billie Jean’, a song about a woman who claims he fathered her son, based on real-world scenarios he saw play out with his brothers in the Jackson 5 days. But this 1982 track is positively rosy compared to his later catalogue. It would appear that, as his life went along, Michael became more and more furious at the injustices seemingly doled out to him.
1987’s Bad opens with the line “your butt is mine” which is laughable but leads into four minutes of violent threats. ‘Leave Me Alone’ is about press invasion, couched in a metaphor about a woman who would constantly “take and deceive” him, and ‘Dirty Diana’ is, again, about an untrustworthy manipulative woman. “You’ll never make me stay, so take your weight off of me. I know your every move, so won’t you just let me be?”
History Repeating
By 1995’s HIStory, post sexual assault allegations, Jackson was raging. The opening single ‘Scream’, a duet with his sister Janet, is perhaps the most vitriolic song in his canon. The venom with which he delivers the song remains confronting, and the lyrics are pure aggression: “I’m tired of injustice, I’m tired of the schemes, the lies are disgusting”; “the whole system sucks”; and the first F-bomb in MJ’s canon: “Stop fucking with me, it makes me want to scream.”
‘They Don’t Care About Us’ exhumes Martin Luther King Jr. to rally against racial hate but unfortunately dabbles in a little itself, with the incendiary lines “Jew me, sue me, everybody do me / Kick me, kike me, don’t you black or white me” causing controversy upon release. Jackson released a confused counter, stating that “I am the voice of the accused and the attacked. I am the voice of everyone. I am the skinhead, I am the Jew, I am the black man, I am the white man. I am not the one who was attacking … I am angry and outraged that I could be so misinterpreted.”
As his life went along, Michael became more and more furious at the injustices seemingly doled out to him.
‘This Time Around’ is paranoia writ large. “This time around I’m taking no shit, though you really want to get me”; “You really wanna use me, and falsely accuse me”; this time around don’t treat me like spit.”
‘D.S.’ is the most pointed song on the album. “Dom Sheldon is a cold man” is written in the lyric sheet, but Jackson is actually singing ‘Tom Sneddon’, the name of the district attorney who prosecuted child molestation charges against Michael Jackson.
“They wanna get my ass dead or alive. You know he really tried to take me down by surprise. I bet he missioned with the CIA” Jackson spits, before accusing Sneddon of using Jackson for political purposes, conspiring with the FBI and having KKK links. Also, Slash plays the guitar solo, which is pretty cool.
Sneddon said of the song, “I have not — shall we say — done him the honour of listening to it, but I’ve been told that it ends with the sound of a gunshot.”
‘Tabloid Junkie’ is his most angry attack on the media, with lines such as “You say it’s not a sword, but with your pen you torture men. You’d crucify the Lord” and “circulate the lie you confiscate. Assassinate and mutilate.”
He was rather prescient about the reaction to his own death with “if he dies sympathise, such false witnesses, damn self-righteousness.” The following track ‘2 Bad’ continues this theme, taking aim with lines like “you are disgusting me, just want your cut from me.”
Even ‘Earth Song’, this album’s ‘Heal The World’, has moved past tolerance towards fury (although it contains one of the unwittingly funny moments of his career when he yells “what about elephants?”). The most tender song on the entire album — aside from ‘Childhood’, Jackson’s deep excavation of his own stolen youth — is You Are Not Alone, a song written by R. Kelly about a teenage girl who had an abortion after he got her pregnant.
“What you have just witnessed could be the end of a particularly terrifying nightmare. It isn’t. It’s the beginning.”
In 2001’s ‘Privacy’, again with Slash on guitar, he attacks the media for its treatment of Princess Diana: “Still wonder why, one of my friends had to die…My friend was chased and confused like many others I knew.” It’s dark stuff.
The final song on his final album, 2001’s Invincible, is called ‘Threatened’ and offers a bleak bookend to his strange life.
Presented in the same manner as Thriller, with a horror-film narrator interjecting throughout, the song clearly touches on his own public perception. “Never Never land, that’s the place. This particular monster can read minds, be in two places at the same time.” It’s impossible not to read into these lines, or into Michael spitting: “You should be watching me, you should feel threatened.”
As the final studio album Michael Jackson would ever record winds to a close, a narrator speaks words that now take on a far more similar implication.
“What you have just witnessed could be the end of a particularly terrifying nightmare. It isn’t. It’s the beginning.”
Nathan Jolly is a freelance writer based in Sydney, and was formerly the Editor of The Music Network. He tweets from @NathanJolly.