Man in the Music

by Joseph Vogel

  To build excitement before the shows, Jackson would enter from the side of stadiums, jogging or marching with a few dozen police officers. The massive audiences, already whipped into feverish anticipation, would be flooded with bright white lights until Jackson appeared onstage, frozen until exploding into the opening number. “The word superstar became meaningless compared with the power and grace pouring from the stage,” wrote Greg Sandow in a review for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner.

  The Bad World Tour ultimately grossed a staggering $125 million (nearly $300 million adjusted for inflation), earning spots in the Guinness Book of World Records for the highest-grossing tour of all time and the highest overall attendance. In spite of the backlash, Jackson remained the biggest recording artist in the world.

  Thanks in part to the clarity of distance and in part to outstanding reevaluations like filmmaker Spike Lee’s award-winning documentary, Bad 25, the album’s legacy has come into much better focus over the past decade. Sonically, it balanced cutting-edge sounds with natural, instinctive vocals. The album also featured many of Jackson’s vocal signatures more prominently than ever before (hee hee, ooooh, owww), and even debuted some new ones (shamon). The latter term—a variation on “Come on!”—may have been drawn from gospel and soul legend Mavis Staples.

  Thematically, Bad was about taking listeners on a journey: from the subway station in Brooklyn (“Bad”), to the open road (“Speed Demon”), to exotic places (“Liberian Girl”); from the tense drama of “Dirty Diana” to the mysterious crime scene in “Smooth Criminal”; from the futuristic idealism of “Another Part of Me” to the soul-moving charge of “Man in the Mirror.” Like Prince’s Purple Rain (to which it can be viewed partially as a response), it is intended to be visual, cinematic. But the narrative is not linear. Bad is not so much a concept album as an eclectic fantasia.

  Bad now stands with Thriller as one of the most influential pop albums of the 1980s. It also competes with Thriller as Jackson’s most widely known LP, containing five #1 hits (“I Just Can’t Stop Loving You,” “Bad,” “The Way You Make Me Feel,” “Man in the Mirror,” and “Dirty Diana”). Three others cracked the Top 15 (“Smooth Criminal,” “Another Part of Me,” and “Leave Me Alone”). These songs remain staples in Jackson’s vast catalog.

  The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame praised Bad as “some of the sharpest black pop ever recorded” with its “canny use of urban beats, smooth jazz-funk and rock guitar.” Rolling Stone ranked it #202 in its list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. Decades later, Jackson’s famous quip on the title track—“Who’s bad?”—is as rhetorical as ever.

  THE SONGS

  1. “BAD”

  Written and composed by Michael Jackson

  Produced by Quincy Jones; Coproduced by Michael Jackson

  Where the opener to Thriller was sonically playful and bright, “Bad” offered something cooler, moodier, edgier. The four-note brass proclamation is followed by the sleek opening hook. That groove snakes forward relentlessly through the track as Jackson delivers a pointed message to those intent on stealing his throne. “ ‘Bad’ needs no defense,” recognized Rolling Stone’s Davitt Sigerson in a 1987 review. “Jackson revives the ‘Hit the Road, Jack’ progression and proves (with a lyric beginning with ‘Your butt is mine’ and ending with ‘Who’s bad?’) that he can outfunk anybody anytime.”

  Jackson started the track in 1985 at his home studio at Hayvenhurst. He developed it primarily with Synclavier programmer Chris Currell. For the hook, in particular, Currell recalled, Jackson was “hearing a very specific bass sound. He was looking for a certain feel.” The artist tried to communicate that feel as precisely as possible and Currell went back to work, modifying and tweaking, before coming back to Jackson with new sounds. Still, the singer wasn’t completely satisfied. “Michael liked them,” said Currell, “but always there was something missing. In the end, the solution was to mix all the sounds Michael liked into one bass sound. To accomplish this took nine different bass sounds, which included synth sounds, organ bass pedal sounds as well as electric bass sounds. The composite worked and it is what you hear today on the song.”

  Jackson’s demo for “Bad” was melodically simple, but rhythmically complex. Complementing the sleek bass line are an array of subtle touches, from the trailing rapid-fire percussion that moves from right to left, chasing the hook, to the textured buildup of hand slaps, jazzy organ fills, and funky “wah wah” guitar licks. Jerry Hey leads a nimble horn section arrangement that dips in and out as Jackson’s singsong harmonies (“bad, bad, really, really bad”) lift the chorus.

  The song is rooted in the black signifying tradition, from its reversal of the word bad to its slang and vocal contortions to its swagger and bravado. These qualities come out even more in the demo, which, like many Jackson demos, had an extended outro, allowing the artist to improvise for a good four minutes over the beat.

  The darker tone of the track is matched by Jackson’s aggressive lyrics. “Your talk is cheap,” he sings. “You’re not a man / You’re throwin’ stones / To hide your hands.” Originally intended as a standoff with Prince, the confrontational lyrics instead offer a combination of social commentary and motivational guidance. In essence, the song interrogates what it means to be a man. As in “Beat It,” Jackson offers an alternative to macho-driven violence and destruction. There’s nothing cool or “bad,” it suggests, about getting locked up or killed. Likewise, it implies there is nothing wrong with being different and confident in who you are.

  Jackson and Jones brought in legendary jazz organist Jimmy Smith to perform the solo for the bridge. Considered the father of acid jazz and a pioneer of the Hammond B3 electric organ, Smith came into Westlake’s Studio D and laid down a few takes as Jackson paced around the studio. Smith, still not quite satisfied, then played a twenty-minute solo and when Jackson heard him grunting and groaning along to the music, he knew they had it and made sure Bruce Swedien got it recorded. Smith’s solo was cut down to a trim thirty seconds and embellished by Greg Phillinganes’s synth work. “Only Quincy would think to bridge two different generations, genres, styles and instruments in the span of eight bars!” said Phillinganes.

  After the bridge, Jackson takes it to the finish line: ad-libbing and soaring triumphantly over a crescendo of background harmonies, saxes, and trumpets, before ending with the famous quip: “Who’s bad?”

  Given the song’s role in announcing Jackson’s long-awaited return, the retort served another purpose: throwing down the gauntlet to his musical rivals. “The whole world has to answer,” he declared, and the track lived up to its word, surpassing Prince’s “U Got the Look” and Madonna’s “Causing a Commotion” on October 24, 1987, to reach the #1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100. It stayed on top for two weeks in the United States, while also reaching the Top 10 in at least fourteen other countries. Asked about the message of the track in a 1988 interview with Ebony, Jackson shrugged and smiled coyly: “It’s a bold statement to make,” he said, laughing. “But I mean it in all good will.”

  2. “THE WAY YOU MAKE ME FEEL”

  Written and composed by Michael Jackson

  Produced by Quincy Jones; Coproduced by Michael Jackson

  Jackson follows “Bad” with one of the most durable dance tracks in his catalog: the high-energy, throwback blockbuster “The Way You Make Me Feel.” After a series of ricocheting drumbeats, the song leaps out of the speakers with a blues shuffle rhythm that is nearly impossible not to move to.

  The shuffle rhythm, which divides the beat on the eighth note, was suggested to Jackson by his mother in 1985. After trying to convey the sound to her son, Michael replied, “I think I know what you mean.” Two weeks later, he had come up with a demo, resulting in his first and only known “collaboration” with his mother. The rough demo was given the title “Hot Fever.”

  It continued to evolv
e over the next two years as he worked over different parts with John Barnes, Bill Bottrell, Greg Phillinganes, and others. Jackson wanted a big sound, similar to Tears for Fears’ 1985 hit “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” but with more of a shuffle. “It’s a really intense shuffle,” recalled keyboardist Greg Phillinganes. “I remember how much fun I had laying down those offbeat parts, the bass line, all that stuff, and watching the expression on Michael’s face—he’d get that big grin that meant you had it.”

  Once it was brought to Westlake, Bruce Swedien remembers Jackson dancing all over the studio as he recorded the song. Rather than take out the sounds of the singer stomping, snapping his fingers, and beatboxing, Swedien decided to leave them in as part of the “overall sonic picture.” “I would hate to record Michael with what I would call the clinical approach,” he explained. “If I were to try to have Michael’s sound antiseptically clean, I think it would lose a lot of its earthy charm.”

  It’s true that much of the song’s appeal resides in such idiosyncrasies—in its raw spontaneity and unbridled exclamations of joy (“hee hee,” “whooo,” and “gawn, girl!”) that capture the thrill of being in love. The lyrics throughout are playful and flirtatious. The bright and grainy vocal, meanwhile—which, according to engineer Brad Sundberg, was sped up about 5 percent—is augmented by the street-corner doo-wop harmonies and emphatic horn punctuations. These natural elements provide textures and colors that complement the machine-driven motion of the bass line and drums.

  The bluesy roots of the song become particularly clear in a slowed-down intro Jackson often used in performances (including in his acclaimed rendition at the 1988 Grammy Awards). The gorgeous string lines paint a city at dawn as the keyboard stabs hit just behind the beat. “It’s like you’re dragging yourself out of bed,” Jackson explained to keyboardist Michael Bearden in rehearsals for This Is It.

  “The Way You Make Me Feel” stayed in the Top 10 for several weeks in late 1987 and early 1988 before finally hitting the top of the chart on January 23. It remains one of Jackson’s most popular songs. In fact, Stevie Wonder cites it as his favorite track in Jackson’s entire catalog.

  3. “SPEED DEMON”

  Written and composed by Michael Jackson

  Produced by Quincy Jones; Coproduced by Michael Jackson

  “Speed Demon” is a kind of vignette or dream capsule—one of several featured on the album. On the surface, the song is about a thrilling car chase in which the protagonist seeks to outpace an officer “hot on his tracks.” Yet it is also clearly about something else: breaking free from restraints and the exhilaration of the open road.

  Often dismissed as filler or an example of Jackson’s supposed penchant for shallow escapism, “Speed Demon” is actually one of the more bold and experimental tracks on the album. Quincy Jones praised it as “amazing”: “I mean, Michael’s imagination is awesome, you know, it really is. He’s really unique, man….He stays out of the box, and I love that.”

  Jackson worked on the demo extensively at Hayvenhurst, beginning in April 1986. In an early version, he blocked out the basic contours of the song with a guide vocal that includes directions for missing parts. This early version had a much different vocal. According to recording engineer Matt Forger, Jackson is singing through a bullhorn, giving it a kind of mediated, telephonic effect. Eventually, he opted for a raspy, tense narration in the verses before exploding in the chorus.

  Jackson referred to “Speed Demon” as a “machine song,” and it was indeed largely created on a machine: the Synclavier. The goal was to make the song itself a vehicle, mimicking the sound and feel of a motorcycle shifting gears as it growls and darts on a high-speed adventure. The idea sounds simple enough, but an entire team of synth programmers and musicians were enlisted to create the intricate rhythms and beat divisions in the song. Listen to the sense of acceleration in the synth runs and the elasticity in the beat. Some of the sounds were actual race-car sound effects put into the Synclavier by Chris Currell and matched with the timing of the groove, as in the break before the saxophone solo (played by Larry Williams).

  Often overlooked is the prominent role of horns on the track—not just in the sax solo, but throughout the song. This was largely the contribution of Jerry Hey, who created a second bass line and added a lively array of accenting trumpets and saxophones. Meanwhile, Jackson’s vocal moves deftly through different moods and textures (listen to the transition in the bridge from plaintive falsetto to the sudden aggressive shouts for acceleration). “There is a great singer at work here,” observed Time’s Jay Cocks, “doing vocal stunts…that are as nimble and fanciful as any of his dance steps.”

  As legend has it, Jackson wrote the song after getting a speeding ticket on the way to the studio. His creative response to that experience offers an exciting high-speed chase as well as a subtle tale about power, control, and escape. When the singer says he is “heading for the border,” he is speaking of crossing a threshold. The vehicle, in a way, becomes a symbol for the mind. He can go anywhere his imagination takes him (“Mind is like a compass, I’m stoppin’ at nothin’ ”).

  The police officer in the song, in turn, represents repressive authority. He repeatedly admonishes the driver to “Pull over, boy, and get your ticket right.” That terminology clearly carries racial connotations. Indeed, the entire scenario not only highlights racial profiling; it also serves as a kind of allegory for larger forces attempting to limit his autonomy and ambition. The world he is fleeing is one in which he feels trapped, constrained, stifled. “You’re preaching ’bout my life like you’re the law,” he asserts, before stepping on the gas and leaving such admonishing voices in the dust, shouting, “Go! Go! Go!” In this way the song is about escaping what is holding us back and—at least temporarily—feeling the exhilarating energy of freedom.

  4. “LIBERIAN GIRL”

  Written and composed by Michael Jackson

  Produced by Quincy Jones; Coproduced by Michael Jackson

  Having successfully fled the scene in the previous track, we find ourselves transported suddenly to a very different space in “Liberian Girl.” The sounds of speeding cars and revving engines dissolve into the tranquil pulse of what sounds like a jungle at sunrise. We hear birds and animals, then the captivating voice of a woman uttering the Swahili lines: “Nakupenda piya, nakutaka piya—mpenziwe” (“I love you too, I want you too—my love”). The lines were performed by South African singer (and anti-apartheid activist) Letta Mbulu.

  Like “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’ ” on Thriller, Jackson draws on an imagined Africa to highlight connection and transcendence—in stark contrast to the noise, pressures, and constraints of the Western world. The Liberian girl of the song embodies the exact opposite of the officer in the previous track: she is gentle and beautiful; she makes life “brand-new.” “Liberian girl,” Jackson gratefully sings to her, “You know that you came and you changed my world.”

  Many Liberians were thrilled when they heard the song. According to one of them, Margaret Carson, she and her fellow Liberian citizens “were so astonished to hear a great musician like Michael Jackson thinking about a little country in Africa. It gave us hope, especially when things went bad….It make us to feel that we are still part of the world.” In a market dominated by Eurocentric notions of beauty, it also celebrated African women.

  Jackson came up with an early version of the song shortly after Thriller. At that point, it was called “Pyramid Girl.” Jackson considered including it on the Jacksons’ 1984 album, Victory, but liked it so much he decided to keep it for his own upcoming record. He began working it over with John Barnes and Bill Bottrell during the early sessions for Bad. “We used the Fairlight CMI,” recalled Barnes, “and no traditional bass at all. Instead we used a bass kalimba, a bass xylophone, and a de-tuned koto [a traditional Japanese harp] and mixed all those together to give it an exotic feel. We a
lso used a human voice sound for the pad and a low string sound doubled with an analog synth to give it presence.”

  When Jackson brought the demo to Westlake in 1986, the A-Team was amazed. “I mean, ‘Liberian Girl,’ who would think of a thing like that?” said Quincy Jones. “It’s amazing. The imagery and everything else. It’s [an] amazing fantasy.” Bruce Swedien later described it as “one of my absolute favorites of all the music I have done with Michael.” They liked it so much, it hardly changed from the version Jackson created with the B-Team. “They used our original tracks,” said Barnes. “The final version was very similar to ours.”

  Like many songs on the album, “Liberian Girl” is cinematic—even in the lyrics Jackson describes the romance as “just like in the movies.” With the exotic instrumentation—including those deep, lush drums, as well as the koto, kalimba, and xylophone—it casts a spell over the singer and audience alike. One is entranced by the paradise-like atmosphere, the mysterious woman, and the dramatic narration of events.

  The Los Angeles Times described “Liberian Girl” as the album’s best ballad, conjuring a “dusky, tropical atmosphere, jazz shadings and less mawkish lyrics [than ‘I Just Can’t Stop Loving You’].” Jackson’s vocals are exquisite, beautifully conveying the song’s enchantment, sensuality, and yearning. “The lead, and the big, block background harmonies…are absolutely stellar,” noted Bruce Swedien.