It was the summer of 1982. Jackson is on the Los Angeles Expressway 10 1. When he and producer Quincy Jones worked in the recording studio for a few days for the sequel of Beyond the Wall, he drove home. According to the memory in Jackson's autobiography of 1988, he was "deeply immersed in a melody lingering in his mind", so he didn't realize that the chassis of his luxury car began to smoke.

"When we drove off the highway, a young man rode a motorcycle and said to us,' You are on fire'! So we suddenly noticed the smoke and stopped the car quickly. The whole bottom of Rolls-Royce is on fire. That child really saved our lives. " However, even passing by death can't shake Jackson's obsession with what he is doing. "Even when we ask for help and find a new way to get to our destination, I am quietly writing more materials."

This song is probably the most self-centered work Jackson has ever written. This drama about the fear and anxiety of parent-child relationship is inspired by the experiences of singers and paranoid female fans. Jackson spent months on this song, and he was sure that he had something unusual in his hand.

"Musicians know what is the best-selling material. Everything needs to be in place. It makes you feel complete and feels good. " Jackson recalled, "This is how I felt about billie jean. I knew it would be a blockbuster when I wrote it. "

Jackson was right: At least, billie jean is a best seller. It was released in 1983 and 1 month, and won the first place in the billboard list for seven weeks, and was in R& D; List B won the championship for nine weeks in a row, selling 6.5438+0 million single records, which made Thriller, the most successful commercial masterpiece in the history of pop music, soar to the sky, and sold more than 47 million copies worldwide, surpassing any album, whether before or after.

But the position of this song in history is far more than just a few numbers. Billie Jean broke the racial boundaries of MTV and destroyed the racial segregation of commercial radio stations for generations. When the modern music video era came, this single led the trendy pop music in the post-soul music era, and it still has far-reaching influence today. First of all, "Billie Jane" marks his coming of age. A former child star became a new generation of Elvis Presley and the Beatles, and became a super pop idol in the second half of the 20th century.

Such a song, which is still the strangest, can be ranked in the top 40 of the singles list, which is absolutely remarkable. Jackson's previous personal works were all luxurious discos, but Billie Jane was creepy, jumping between keyboard sounds and chord music with a pulsating bass, whip-like remake and grotesque multi-channel singing. Over the years, the audience has become accustomed to Jackson's special singing style-falsetto screaming, "gnome male-female" and james brown-style growling and wording-but in 1982, no one heard a Song Like, which only upgraded its uneasy influence and felt that "billie jean" actually collapsed in five minutes, in terms of rhythm.

This quirk is no accident. Bruce Switon, a recording engineer who worked in Quincy Jones for many years, recalled: "When we recorded Billie Jean, ... Quincy told me,' Well, this piece must have the most unique sound characteristics, if we had never recorded it.' Jones asked Jackson to put the recording of singing on the original tape through a six-foot cardboard tube; He also brought tom scott, a jazz saxophone player, to play a rare instrument-Lyricon, a wind instrument synthesizer. This instrument is sour, like a trumpet, and skillfully weaves the whole piece. Bassist Louis Johnson tried all kinds of guitars he owned, until Jackson decided to use Yamaha guitar as an instrument, which can play the ideal heavy and buzzing music. "

At the same time, Sveton also looks for the perfect beat through craft projects. He hired a carpenter to build a special drum stand, and ordered a special bass drum to design an isolated drum to capture the correct images of snare drum Jr. and the drum stand. "See if you can think of any other music so that you can know what it is when the first three drums sound?" Switon said, "This is what I call sound quality."