Michael Jackson

St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture, Jan 29, 2002 by Robin Markowitz

It was during this period that Jackson began to display, for the first time, some of the odd personal characteristics for which he would later gain notoriety. During the filming of The Wiz, Jackson gave several promotional interviews. Timothy White of the rock magazine Crawdaddy was assigned to interview Jackson and found him quite amusing. He said Jackson appeared "to be in some sort of daze" as he ate food with his fingers at a glitzy French restaurant in Manhattan. During this transitional time, Jackson began to hone his skills as a songwriter. On the Jacksons' album Triumph, he unveiled the idiosyncratic and disquieting songwriting style that would drive the success of the Thriller album. One song, called "This Place Hotel," "came from a dream I had. I dream a lot," he told a reporter. "Live and sin," the song begins, making the narrator's guilt an overwhelming and permanent condition. Set in a haunted hotel run by "wicked women" who appear suddenly in groups of two or three, the singer is trapped by "faces staring, glaring, tearing through me." Probably inspired by the unstable nature of public fame, Jackson's legendary paranoia makes its first appearance: "Every smile's a trial thought in beguile to hurt me." At one point, the singer declares bluntly, "hope is dead." The singing is pained, open-throated, and raw.

In 1982, Jackson was completing work on his second Quincy Jones collaboration. Determined that the new album must match or exceed Off The Wall's popularity, Jones and Jackson sought more powerful music. When Jackson brought in a tape of a new song, "Beat It," Jones began to realize that Jackson could become a powerful phenomenon--a crossover to the "white rock" market. Jackson's hard rocking song about backing away from a fight fit perfectly in the rock style. Jones brought in metal guitarist Eddie Van Halen to do a solo, and the pounding beat coupled with the song's accompanying visual representation of a rhythm & blues singer performing "white" rock began literally to change the face of the music industry.

As the album neared the end of production, Jones still needed one more solid hit and asked Jackson to write another song. For reasons that are unclear, Jackson wrote a fierce song denying paternity of a little boy whose "eyes were like mine." "Billie Jean" is now considered a rock classic. There are times during the song when it seems that the arrangement just cannot keep up with the singer's passion, and Jackson's frenzy seems barricaded by the cool, solid majesty of the arrangement, singing as if lives really did depend on listeners believing his story. The magic of the song is, of course, that the singer is not really sure if he believes himself.

The new album quickly jumped to number five on its release. This time, reluctantly, Jackson did a great number of promotional interviews. He spoke to reporters from Ebony, Newsweek, Interview, and Rolling Stone and filled out written questionnaires for other publications like Creem. He did television shots for Entertainment Tonight, Ebony/Jet Showcase, and America's Top Ten. The interview that everyone talked about, however, was the February 17, 1983 cover story for Rolling Stone.