2 weeks Ago By Emma McKee
In 1983, Michael Jackson released “Billie Jean,” the second single from Thriller . Jackson said that he always had a sense that the song would be a hit and he was correct. It peaked at No.
1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was part of the reason that Thriller became the best-selling album of all time. When Jackson and producer Quincy Jones first listened to the album, though, they realized they had to make some changes. Jones said that one change they made to “Billie Jean” devastated Jackson.
Michael Jackson didn’t want to have to cut out part of ‘Billie Jean’ When Jones and Jackson listened to Thriller for the first time, they thought it sounded terrible. They realized they had to make changes before they put it out. One of these changes was cutting the lengthy intro to “Billie Jean.
” Jackson didn’t agree with this move. “That’s the juice,” he said, per the Houston Chronicle . “That’s what makes me want to dance.
” According to Jones, they didn’t argue with Jackson. “When Michael Jackson tells you that’s what makes me want to dance,” Jones said, “well, the rest of us just have to shut up.” Still, he said that they eventually cut it down a bit.
“We took two days off, and in the next eight days, we set about reshaping the album, mixing just one song a day,” he wrote in the LA Times after Jackson’s death. “Rod cut a verse from ‘The Lady in My Life,’ and we shortened the long, long intro to ‘Billie Jean,’ something Michael hated to do because he said the intro ‘made him want to dance.’” The song’s intro is still long, stretching 29 seconds.
Michael Jackson said he could always tell ‘Billie Jean’ would be a hit Jackson said that he knew “Billie Jean” would be a hit from the moment he began working on it. “A musician knows hit material. Everything has to feel in place.
It fulfills you and it makes you feel good,” Jackson said, per Blender . “That’s how I felt about ‘Billie Jean.’ I knew it was going to be big when I was writing it.
” He found the song so captivating that he didn’t notice that his car was on fire when he first thought of it. “We were getting off the freeway when a kid on a motorcycle pulls up to us and says, ‘Your car’s on fire.’ Suddenly we noticed the smoke and pulled over and the whole bottom of the Rolls-Royce was on fire.
That kid probably saved our lives,” he said. “Even while we were getting help and finding an alternate way to get where we were going, I was silently composing additional material.” Quincy Jones said the song will always be a part of the singer’s legacy Jones saw “Billie Jean” as one of the reasons Thriller was a smash hit .
“We delivered the album and watched ‘Billie Jean’ — thanks to Michael’s debut performance of the moonwalk on the 25th anniversary of Motown special — ‘Beat It’ and ‘Thriller’ just explode, fueled in part by heavy video rotation on MTV,” Jones wrote. “Prior to ‘Billie Jean,’ MTV wasn’t playing videos with black artists. After those three videos, virtually every video on MTV was trying to emulate their style.
” He believed this was one of the songs that would always be a part of Jackson’s legacy. “I promise you in 50, 75, 100 years, what will be remembered is the music,” he wrote. “It’s no accident that almost three decades later, no matter where I go in the world, in every club and karaoke bar, like clockwork, you hear ‘Billie Jean,’ ‘Beat It,’ ‘Wanna Be Starting Something,’ ‘Rock With You,’ and ‘Thriller.
’ In every language on the planet, from prison yards in the Philippines to Thrilltheworld.com, that will be the beautiful, grand legacy of Michael Jackson.”.
