The short film for Jackson's Billie Jean is considered the video that brought MTV, a relatively unknown music channel, into mainstream attention.
It was the first video by a black artist to be aired by the channel, as they felt black music wasn't "rock" enough. Directed by Steve Barron, the video shows a paparazzo following Jackson. The paparazzo never catches the singer, and when photographed Jackson fails to materialise on the developed picture. Dancing his way to Billie Jean's hotel room, Jackson walks along a sidewalk, each tile lighting up at his touch. The short film earned Jackson the Billboard Video Award for Best Overall Video and he was inducted into the Music Video Producers Hall of Fame in 1992. In a 2005 poll, the music video was ranked as the fifth greatest music video ever.
In a Rolling Stone review, Christopher Connelly describes Billie Jean as a "lean, insistent funk number whose message couldn't be more blunt: 'She says I am the one/But the kid is not my son'". He adds that the track is a "sad, almost mournful song, but a thumping resolve underlies his [Jackson's] feelings". Blender states that the song is "one of the most sonically eccentric, psychologically fraught, downright bizarre things ever to land on Top 40 radio". Adding that it was "frighteningly stark, with a pulsing, cat-on-the-prowl bass figure, whip-crack downbeat and eerie multi-tracked vocals ricocheting in the vast spaces between keyboards and strings". Overall, the magazine described the track as "a five-minute-long nervous breakdown, set to a beat"
Billie Jean is considered a dance-pop R&B song. It opens with a drum beat: kick, snare and hi-hat, containing hardly any reverberation. The pattern continues unchanged throughout the entire song. According to Jackson's biographer J. Randy Taraborrelli, Billie Jean was derived from a real life experience the singer faced in 1981. She entices the crowd with a seductive come-on before luring Jackson to her bedroom, through the fragrance of her perfume.
When reports of Jackson's death came on June 25, 2009, MTV interrupted its programming and played the video in tribute to him.
Format: WMV
Quality: 640 x 480
Time: 0:4:56
Size: 72 Mb
In a Rolling Stone review, Christopher Connelly describes Billie Jean as a "lean, insistent funk number whose message couldn't be more blunt: 'She says I am the one/But the kid is not my son'". He adds that the track is a "sad, almost mournful song, but a thumping resolve underlies his [Jackson's] feelings". Blender states that the song is "one of the most sonically eccentric, psychologically fraught, downright bizarre things ever to land on Top 40 radio". Adding that it was "frighteningly stark, with a pulsing, cat-on-the-prowl bass figure, whip-crack downbeat and eerie multi-tracked vocals ricocheting in the vast spaces between keyboards and strings". Overall, the magazine described the track as "a five-minute-long nervous breakdown, set to a beat"
Billie Jean is considered a dance-pop R&B song. It opens with a drum beat: kick, snare and hi-hat, containing hardly any reverberation. The pattern continues unchanged throughout the entire song. According to Jackson's biographer J. Randy Taraborrelli, Billie Jean was derived from a real life experience the singer faced in 1981. She entices the crowd with a seductive come-on before luring Jackson to her bedroom, through the fragrance of her perfume.
When reports of Jackson's death came on June 25, 2009, MTV interrupted its programming and played the video in tribute to him.
Format: WMV
Quality: 640 x 480
Time: 0:4:56
Size: 72 Mb
