Adnana Husejnović

Michael Jackson’s ‘Billie Jean’

‘Billie Jean’is a song by American singer Michael Jackson released on

January 2nd, 1983 as the second single from sixth album, Thriller. This song
fast became Jackson’s fastest-rising number one single. We could say that
this is an autobiographical song and the main reason for that is that Jackson
based it on a woman who used to stalk him, writing him letters about a
child she was claiming was his. Jackson rarely talked about this woman, so
one could say that this song represents a result of his hard time he had
while dealing with her unwanted attention. According to Jackson’s producer
Quincy Jones, she accused Jackson of being the father of one of her twins
which he found pretty funny. This woman continued sendin Jackson more
and more letters that contained her expressions of love to this singer. She
pondered how Jackson could ignore his own blood. The letters she wrote
were very disturbing to Michael to the extent that he suffered nightmares,
as he said. When Michael Jackson talked about “Billie Jean” in Moonwalk, he
said: “A musician knows hit material. It has to feel right. Everything has to
feel in place. It fulfills you and it makes you feel good. You know it when you
hear it. That’s how I felt about ‘Billie Jean.’ I knew it was going to be big
while I was writing it. I was really absorbed in that song.“

This song obviously has a very unusual theme for a pop song at the time,
but that is not the reason why it was so groundbreaking. The main reason is
that it introduced the idea that a single must be accompanied by a high-
production video presented by a professional dancer like Jackson himself
was. Billie Jean's greatest importance is that it launched the Michael Jackson
era, a period in which the entire population of the planet made a group
decision to follow the career of one star and one star only.