Songoftheday 10/27/12 - She was more like a beauty queen from a movie scene...

Michael Jackson - "Billie Jean"
from the album Thriller (1982)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #1 (seven weeks)
Weeks in the top-40: 17

Today's Song of the Day is the game-changing hit from former child prodigy singer cum pop/R&B superstar Michael Jackson. At the end of 1982, Michael released Thriller, with a rather bland and sing-song track "The Girl is Mine" with Paul McCartney in tow as the first single. The song did really well even still due to their A-list status without a video, and the album was doing OK in the top-10. Then came "Billie Jean".

A dark, sparse shuffling track about a rabid fan who claimed that Jackson was the father of one of her twins (um, what?) and sent him a gun to commit suicide together, Michael took that plus the experiences he saw of his brothers on the road and the hordes of groupies following them. And while the true facts would absolve Michael of the paternity, the song's lyrics twist around in a way that makes you not so sure. And at this time, his newly adult presence and sexual posturing wasn't a joke that it had become later down the road. The video was just as iconic as the song, not only upping the production values ante (though still primitive by today's standards), but breaking the color barrier at MTV to playing black artists' music videos.

"Billie Jean" raced to #1 in just seven weeks on the pop chart, and only three on the R&B list. It also made the top-10 of the Adult-Contemporary (soft-rock) chart, and went to either #1 or #2 in almost every country around the world (it topped the charts in the UK). It remains his finest achievement in pop music, and one of the biggest moments of music of the 80s. It also started the album on its record-breaking stint at #1.

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In March of 1983, during the single's stay at #1, Jackson performed the song at the Motown 25th anniversary telecast, where he brought out his trademark "moonwalk" (actually taught to him by Jeffrey Daniels of Shalamar)...

In 1996 Teddy Riley's new-jack group Blackstreet mixed the classic with their #1 hit "No Diggity" on the CD single they had out (remember those?)...

That same year, German punk band the Bates had a minor hit in England with a version of the song...

A year later, British hip-hop group Linx did a funky interpolation of the song called "Billie Jean Got Soul"...

 
In 2000, former Stone Roses frontman Ian Brown released his cover as the B-side to the top-5 hit "If Dolphins Were Monkeys"...

...and in 2007 Soundgarden's Chris Cornell recorded a great rock-styled version...

...that American Idol winner David Cook cribbed the arrangement for in his performance on the show in 2008...

Finally, the indie-folk duo Civil Wars took "Billie Jean" to the country this year...

Up tomorrow: the 70s "queen of rock" remembers her some Billy Joe Royal...