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A woman mailed Michael Jackson a gun, her photo, and a letter telling him to kill himself at a specific time. The song he wrote about her is sitting at #1 on Spotify right now, 43 years later.
It started in 1981. She began sending Michael letters claiming he was the father of one of her twins. He had never met her, so he ignored the whole thing. The letters kept coming anyway. Then one day, a package showed up. Inside was her photograph, a gun, and a note instructing him to kill himself at a particular date and time. She planned to kill “their” baby afterward, so they could be together in the next life. The Jacksons later found out she had been admitted to a psychiatric hospital. That is where the line “the kid is not my son” came from.
The bass line you hear in the first eight seconds is one of the most famous in pop history. They almost didn’t find it. The bassist Quincy hired, a guy named Louis Johnson, walked into the studio carrying every bass guitar he owned. Michael made him play the same line on each one until they settled on a Yamaha. Then they layered a synthesizer playing the exact same notes on top, which is why the bass has that thick, almost glowing sound.
The drum sound took even more obsession. Quincy Jones told his engineer Bruce Swedien he wanted a sound so distinct you’d know the song from the first three drum hits. So Bruce actually built a wooden platform for the entire drum kit. He put a flat piece of wood between the snare drum and the hi-hat cymbal to keep them from interfering with each other. He also built a custom cover for the kick drum, with a small slot for the microphone. Michael had programmed the beat on a drum machine when he wrote the demo at home. When it came time to record the album, drummer Ndugu Chancler walked in and played the same pattern on a real kit. He nailed it in three takes.
Then came the vocal. Michael sang the entire main vocal in one continuous take. For the extra harmonies and adlibs on top, Quincy made him sing through a six-foot cardboard tube rigged up in the booth. Michael was also getting vocal training every single morning while they were making the album.
The song hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in March 1983 and stayed there for seven weeks. Yesterday it hit #1 on Spotify Global with 6.02 million streams in a single day, the highest the song has ever climbed on the platform.
Pop Base@PopBase
‘Billie Jean’ by Michael Jackson hits #1 on the Global Spotify chart for the first time with 6.02 million streams. It was released over 40 years ago.
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