Songoftheday 1/17/16 - You never make me stay so take your weight off of me, I know your every move so won't you just let me be...

"Dirty Diana" - Michael Jackson
from the album Bad (1987)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #1 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 11

Today's song of the day comes from Michael Jackson, whose Bad album had carried through on all the hype surrounding the follow-up to the biggest album of all time, Thriller. The first four singles, "I Just Can't Stop Loving You", "The Way You Make Me Feel", "Man In The Mirror", and the title track, all went to #1 in quick succession. The fifth single from the record, "Dirty Diana", took the promise of the rock/R&B fusion of "Beat It" from Thriller and took it farther, replacing Eddie Van Halen with the edgier Steve Stevens (Billy Idol's right-hand man). With Michael putting his angry face on about a psychotic groupie, the song comes across scary and cocky at the same time...

"Dirty Diana" became the fifth straight number-one pop hit from Bad in July of 1988, setting a record not even tied until Katy Perry's Teenage Dream album (and that one has the asterisk of having an expanded re-release). The song also crossed over to Billboard's R&B chart, peaking at #5. Internationally, the single topped the chart in Spain (though on its re-release in 2006), and made the top ten in the Netherlands (#2), Germany (#3), Ireland (#3), Switzerland (#3), Great Britain (#4), Canada (#5), New Zealand (#5), Austria (#7), and France (#9). After Jackson's death in 2009, the song came back to the charts all over the world, landing in the top 20 in the UK.

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Although the music video used Jackson's studio track, there was an extended video that had his actual live performance from the Bad tour...

In 2010, Bruno Mars performed the song live for the fashion-art party Project Ethos...

A year later, current alt-soul superstar the Weeknd covered "Dirty Diana"...

Up tomorrow: Power pop heroes burn up to the top.