Man in the Music

by Joseph Vogel

  It was a dark track to be a hit: the song is about deceit and betrayal. Jackson’s clipped, raspy narration evokes a sense of foreboding as the electro-pop canvas propels the listener recklessly forward. The song’s female subject, Susie, had (like Billie Jean) once seduced him but now has turned on him. In this case, however, she is not simply claiming he is the father of her son, but seeking violent retribution. “Blood is on the dance floor / Blood is on the knife,” Jackson sings in the chorus. The beat cracks out of the speakers like a whip, and the hook is irresistible.

  But, ultimately, the song is about regret. Many critics read “Susie” as a metaphor. What she represents, however, is never made explicit. Yet Jackson does reveal that the site of the crime—the dance floor—is what allowed her to catch him off guard. That’s where he turned to “escape the world.” That’s where he assumed he was safe and free. And that’s where she drew blood.

  In this way, it is one of Jackson’s more disturbing tracks, an expression of paranoia and disillusionment: “Susie” lures with promises and pleasure, but ultimately stabs you in the back when you least suspect it.

  2. “MORPHINE”

  Written by Michael Jackson

  Produced by Michael Jackson

  “Morphine” is Jackson at his most raw, honest, and experimental. In both sound and subject matter, the track was different than anything the artist had done before. It was songs like this that drew comparisons to the industrial rock sound and dark psychological content of Nine Inch Nails. The song was also the first (and only) time Jackson openly addressed drug addiction in his music.

  The track begins with what sounds like an electric tattoo needle and a collage of other buzzes, clinks, and bangs that then give way to a massive industrial stomp. The crashing steel is accented with hammer-like pounding and hissing. There are also quick bursts of guitar (performed by Slash). The sound is loud and intense.

  When Jackson arrives, he spits out the lyrics in fragmented shards. The words are difficult to make sense of, but seem to be bursts of pent-up outrage and internalized insults. The actual words are less important than the mood and emotion. The pain and anger are visceral.

  In the chorus, the percussion shifts around rapidly as an eerie, liquid sound emerges like melted steel in a foundry. The “Morphine” shouts, meanwhile, were performed by Jackson along with Brad Buxer and Bill Bottrell. At about the 1:35 mark, a knocking sound leads into an audio clip. That clip, which resurfaces and plays behind the music like a TV left on throughout the song, comes from David Lynch’s classic 1981 movie, The Elephant Man. The film, about a Victorian-era “freak” named Joseph Merrick, had long been deeply important to Jackson.

  After nearly three minutes of relentless noise, pain, and rage, it all suddenly stops. “Relax,” Jackson sings, “this won’t hurt you.” His voice is fragile and tender. He is accompanied by piano (played by Brad Buxer), which opens into a swelling orchestral piece (arranged by George Del Barrio). This interlude captures the pacifying effect of the drug. The struggle subsides, and Jackson sings soothingly from the perspective of the doctor or drug. “Close your eyes and drift away,” he sings, before crying, “Demerol, demerol. Oh god, he’s taking demerol.”

  The interlude is beautiful and heartbreaking, brilliantly capturing the sense of temporary release from physical and psychological pain. Although Jackson alludes to drugs here, the interlude is about any kind of temporary escape. There is a pleading desperation in his voice—as if he were trapped in a dream he knew would soon turn ugly. The contrast to the first part of the song is striking—the sudden lightness, the melody, the symphonic strings. It lasts about a minute and then the grinding, metallic beat returns. We are slammed—along with him—back into the real world of pain, struggle, and anguish.

  Music critic Adam Gilham described this musical sequence as a “moment of absolute genius.” According to Brad Buxer, the song was Jackson’s concept from beginning to end. “Michael knew exactly what he wanted to hear [from] each instrument,” recalled Buxer. “He sang all the parts…the piano in the middle of the song [and] those sheets of synth on the chorus.” Jackson also produced the song and contributed percussion and even guitar.

  It ranks among Jackson’s most powerful artistic achievements. It is a confession, a personal intervention, a description, and a warning.

  3. “SUPERFLY SISTER”

  Written by Michael Jackson and Bryan Loren

  Produced by Michael Jackson

  After “Morphine,” “Superfly Sister” arrives like a breath of fresh air. A piece of airy synth funk, created with Bryan Loren, the track was written during the early Dangerous sessions. In that period Jackson and Loren worked on nearly twenty songs together, none of which made it onto that album. It was nice, then, to see one of those tracks finally get a proper release.

  Jackson reached out to Loren to help complete the track. The producer’s goal had always been to return Jackson to a more organic, bright, funky sound—something with strains of Off the Wall and Thriller. That comes through in “Superfly Sister” (especially as it is couched among a suite of dark songs).

  The production is vibrant and loose. Still, the lyrics, written by Jackson, continue to survey the outside world with disenchantment and unease. The song is ultimately about the demise of love. “Love ain’t what it used to be,” he sings in the chorus refrain. “That is what they’re tellin’ me / Push it in stick it out / That ain’t what it’s all about.” This critique of casual sex certainly went against the grain in pop music. Jackson’s point wasn’t a plea for celibacy—as some critics misread the lyrics—but an expression of concern about sex without commitment or responsibility. The lyrics—at times playful, at times sarcastic, at times pointed—are essentially targeting reckless behavior. Some of the words seem partly based on the experiences of his own family members, as he obliquely references the ill-fated romantic relationships of brothers and sisters. He also mentions a mother preaching the Bible, but her counsel falling on deaf ears. “Brothers, they don’t give a damn,” he sings.

  In an era of hypersexual pop and R&B, Jackson’s funky lamentation, bemoaning the decline of traditional morality, was unusual to say the least. Yet it wasn’t entirely new territory—this was the same artist, after all, who famously admonished, “If you can’t feed the baby, then don’t have the baby,” in “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’.” In “Superfly Sister,” he’s back at the pulpit.

  4. “GHOSTS”

  Written by Michael Jackson and Teddy Riley

  Produced by Michael Jackson and Teddy Riley

  Michael Jackson and Teddy Riley were on fire in the early 1990s. “Ghosts” is more evidence of that fruitful creative partnership.

  The 1991 version of the song was in the running for Dangerous until the final months. That recording, which began with an operatic prelude, had most of the key parts in place. But Jackson hadn’t sung it all the way through. In the demo (called “Ghost”), he hums and improvises lyrics, and sings the chorus in falsetto. Feeling it still needed quite a bit of work, Jackson held it back.

  It resurfaced again in 1996. Michael Jackson’s Ghosts, a forty-minute horror film cowritten with Stephen King and Mick Garris and directed by Stan Winston, was released independently that year. It was Jackson’s most ambitious narrative film since Moonwalker in 1988. Jackson chose to feature “2 Bad” in the main dance, while “Ghosts” played during the end credits (similar to “Another Part of Me” in Captain EO). That version of “Ghosts,” however, was still not the version that appeared on Blood on the Dance Floor. The film cut featured a prominent synth bass, which recalled “Thriller,” and a funky outro.

  For the album version, Jackson mostly stripped out the bass, giving the track a more stark, minimalist feel. The metal-crashing hook and swinging drums drive the song, as haunting operatic vocals float in like mist. Jackson’s voc
als, meanwhile, dramatically describe the surrounding threats—invisible ghouls, creaking floors, blood on the stairs—before giving way to the harmonies in the chorus.

  “Ghosts” is a fascinating return to Jackson’s penchant for the Gothic—one of his most persistent interests. Not only did he enjoy horror films and books, he studied them—from Edgar Allan Poe to Stephen King, Alfred Hitchcock to John Carpenter. Many assumed from “Thriller” that Jackson was simply using the genre for fun and entertainment, but his later work makes clear his deeper intentions. The artist saw horror as a way to explore our most primal fears.

  In “Ghosts,” the surrounding threats are as much internal as external. He can’t see them, but he knows they are there and lashes out. “Who gave you the right to shake my family tree?” he demands. “And who gave you the right to scare my baby? She needs me.” The artist feels under siege, and the terror he describes is palpable. But there are no answers to his questions. Is he just paranoid? Or are the ghosts real?

  He seems to have no doubt, labeling it the “ghost of jealousy.” He believes it wants what he has, that it wants to take that from him, that it wants to destroy him. “Ghosts” finds Jackson carrying a torch down into the dark corridors, to the place of his deepest fears, and swinging at the surrounding threats.

  The song was released as a double A-side single along with “HIStory” in July 1997. It became a Top 5 hit in the United Kingdom, France, and Italy, but unfortunately remained unreleased (and largely unknown) in the United States.

  5. “IS IT SCARY”

  Written by Michael Jackson, Jimmy Jam, and Terry Lewis

  Produced by Michael Jackson, Jimmy Jam, and Terry Lewis

  “Is It Scary” continues the Gothic theme, making the autobiographical implications more explicit. With early songs like “This Place Hotel” and “Thriller,” Jackson essentially invented Gothic pop—a genre that would subsequently be used by a number of other artists, from Marilyn Manson to Lady Gaga. In later tracks, like “Is It Scary,” he complicates the genre, making it psychologically incisive and self-aware. The song allowed him to embody what many people now perceived him to be—a freak, a monster, a danger. As he puts it in the song: “I’m gonna be / Exactly what you wanna see.”

  Jackson first worked on the song with Teddy Riley. It was originally intended for the 1993 film Addams Family Values. Ironically (given the content of the song), when the 1993 allegations hit, director Barry Sonnenfeld and Paramount Pictures decided to replace Jackson’s song with one by MC Hammer. Jackson revived the track during the HIStory sessions, this time developing it with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. He had the lyrics and melody worked out, but needed help with the groove and production. Still not completely satisfied with it, Jackson held it back from HIStory. He finally completed it in 1997 for Blood on the Dance Floor.

  Sonically, the song begins very similarly to “Ghosts”—with lyrical images of encroaching apparitions and ghouls, creaky stairs and confining walls. A door slams shut, the air is compressed, and a heart beats rapidly, evoking a sense of claustrophobia, fear, and panic. It is a symbolic descent into a prison-like chamber. It is here, significantly, that Michael Jackson takes off his proverbial mask and reveals himself. “If you came to see the truth, the purity,” he confesses. “It’s here inside a lonely heart.”

  That loneliness is caused, in part, by the way people see him. He speaks of being taunted and misunderstood, of being ostracized and demonized. “Am I amusing you, or just confusing you?” he asks his audience. “Am I the beast you visualized?”

  These are some loaded lines—particularly from the most famous African American entertainer of a generation. As cultural critic David Yuan notes, “The history of American entertainment (and Jackson’s own place in that history) is never far from Jackson’s mind. He has made it clear that he believes African American music should not be relegated to ‘sideshow’ status in American cultural history….It is important to recognize how the oft-told history of Michael Jackson’s rise to stardom resembles the institutional history of African American entertainment—and the institutional history of the freak show.”

  In “Is It Scary,” Jackson is self-aware enough to recognize that people view him as a “freak” or worse. Yet he asserts that what we see in him might reveal more about the observer than the observed. “If you wanna see eccentric oddities,” he sings, “I’ll be grotesque before your eyes.” He’ll be grotesque, that is, because that is what a prejudiced culture sees and wants to see. It is what they have made him.

  The climax of “Is It Scary” is one of the more powerful moments in Jackson’s catalog, as he channels his anguish over a surging Gothic choir. It feels like an exorcism. “I’m tired of being abused,” he says, “You know you’re scaring me, too!” As the music soars, Jackson repeatedly cries out into the swirling vortex until finally the storm subsides. The song concludes with a melancholy piano coda.

  If “Childhood” is, as Jackson once claimed, his most personal song, “Is it Scary” is the necessary counterpoint. It is perhaps the artist’s best musical response to the public perception of him as some combination of spectacle, villain, and freak. This is what The New York Times’s Neil Strauss was referring to when he spoke of Jackson, “like the elephant man, screaming that he is a human being.”

  7

  INVINCIBLE

  (2001)

  Music is what lives and lasts. Invincible has been a great success. When The Nutcracker Suite was first introduced to the world, it totally bombed. What’s important is how the story ends.

  —MICHAEL JACKSON, USA Today, 2001

  Released at the dawn of a new millennium, Invincible was Michael Jackson’s final studio album. It also was his least commercially successful. The album sold a solid (if not spectacular) 363,000 copies in the United States in its first week. By the end of the year, it had reached more than one million domestically and an estimated three million globally. For most artists, this would be considered a resounding success, and Invincible ranked as the ninth bestselling album of 2001. But this was Michael Jackson. People—including the artist himself—expected more.

  Invincible was also perhaps his most polarizing album among critics—and even fans. Was it a return to his R&B roots? Or was it chasing the trends of the time? Was it unfocused? Or was it another manifestation of Jackson’s versatility?

  Where the album ranks in Jackson’s catalog is, of course, subjective. It is not as ambitious or challenging as Dangerous or HIStory, yet some felt it was his most listener-friendly album since the ’80s. From the retro soul of “Butterflies” to the Latin pulse of “Whatever Happens” to the R&B heartache of “Heaven Can Wait,” Invincible’s track list is packed with strong material.

  Why, then, after years of hype about Michael Jackson’s “big comeback album,” was it viewed as such a disappointment? Some felt the artist had simply lost his audience, and that the record’s commercial performance had more to do with his declining reputation than the music itself. Others felt the album lacked the distinctive sonic personality of earlier albums—that it was pandering and uninspired. Among fans, the biggest culprit was Jackson’s record label, Sony, which suddenly stopped promoting the album after its first single, “You Rock My World.”

  Regardless, Invincible, like Jackson’s other later albums, has benefited from time and distance. Shortly after the artist’s death in 2009, readers of Billboard magazine ranked the album the best of the 2000s. In spite of its flaws, its sixteen songs still showcase the talent, innovation, and style that inspired the very generation Jackson was now competing against. It may not have met expectations in 2001, but it has become a cult favorite for those diving into Jackson’s catalog in search of hidden gems.

  SEPTEMBER 11

  Invincible was released just over a month after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The largest attack ever on American soil, nearly three thous
and people were killed and many thousands more injured as the Twin Towers in the heart of New York City were reduced to rubble. In the ensuing weeks, the country remained shaken, fearing more attacks were imminent. President George W. Bush promised justice to those responsible and urged Americans to go about business as usual. But it was difficult for many people not to feel afraid, particularly as the horrific images continued to replay endlessly on TV.

  Michael Jackson was in Manhattan on the day of the attacks, just blocks from the World Trade Center. The night before, he and hundreds of the biggest stars in the entertainment industry had convened at Madison Square Garden, where Jackson was performing the second night of his highly anticipated Thirtieth Anniversary Celebration, commemorating three decades as a solo artist.

  The next morning, Jackson recalled, “I got a call from friends in Saudi Arabia that America was being attacked. I turned on the news and saw the Twin Towers coming down, and I said, ‘Oh my God.’…It was unbelievable—I was scared to death.”

  Stories have circulated that Jackson fled the city with screen icons Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor (both close friends who had attended his Madison Square Garden concerts) in an epic, near-farcical road trip across America. The truth was he simply got his children packed and ready and then crossed the George Washington Bridge to New Jersey, where he stayed with longtime friends the Cascio family. Jackson also arranged to have dozens of stranded fans relocated and taken care of.

  Within days, the artist was trying to figure out ways to help on a larger scale. “I’m not one to sit back,” he later explained to Rolling Stone. “I want to do something, to give help to those who lost their parents, who lost their mothers and their fathers. Those are our people. Those are our children. Those are our parents.”