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Is Billie Jean the best song on Thriller?

There seems to be a consensus among his fans that 'Billie Jean' is the best song (from that album) followed by the 'Beat It' song.

'Billie Jean' is also his most popular song ever, and it has become synonymous with the name Michael Jackson.

'Billie Jean' is also so popular to the point that children who are not yet born are already familiar with it.
 
I find it incredibly hard to pick favourites from MJ's first 4 albums, but Billie Jean is unquestionably one of his best and most iconic songs.
 
While Billie Jean definitely came to be known as Michael's signature song (especially after the Motown 25 show), I think deeming it "the best" is pretty subjective. We all like different songs for our own reasons, and I'm fairly sure there's some people who would call themselves Michael's fans, but don't like the track for whatever reason.
 
For me, yes it is the best song on Thriller. Thats no reflection on the other songs, it's just that Billie Jean is one of the best songs ever made.
 
Mister_Jay_Tee said:
Wanna Be Startin' Somethin is incredibly unique, iconic, and most significantly of all, grooviest of all his songs. It is the most Michael Jackson of all the songs he's put out and it's really straight up funny, the way everybody knows it, but nobody really talks about it.
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Entirely alien and so unique to what anybody would listen to, and yet so familiar and incredibly catchy, that nobody ever questions that they basically know it by heart and have their entire life. Any one part of the song, you can isolate and share with somebody and it's entirely recognizable, entirely catchy. It's got like 6 or 7 hooks. Right down to the Mama Say Mama Saw Mama Ku-Saw.
 
WBSS :D

Mister_Jay_Tee said:
Wanna Be Startin' Somethin is incredibly unique, iconic, and most significantly of all, grooviest of all his songs.
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Funnily enough, I just popped on to nominate it as my fave!

Mister_Jay_Tee said:
It is the most Michael Jackson of all the songs he's put out
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It really is.

Mister_Jay_Tee said:
and it's really straight up funny, the way everybody knows it, but nobody really talks about it.
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Hm. Not so fast, buddy! I just posted this thing last week. Too tired to do the copy&paste thing all over again but this is a good article, imo. Definitely worth reading. And this is a recent article, not something from years back.

www.musicradar.com

"This track is an undeniable banger, but it’s also extremely weird": The borrowed hooks and unstable grooves behind Michael Jackson's Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'

We put one of MJ's best-loved tunes under the musical microscope and explore the unlikely origins of its iconic hook
www.musicradar.com www.musicradar.com
 
zinniabooklover said:
WBSS :D


Funnily enough, I just popped on to nominate it as my fave!


It really is.


Hm. Not so fast, buddy! I just posted this thing last week. Too tired to do the copy&paste thing all over again but this is a good article, imo. Definitely worth reading. And this is a recent article, not something from years back.

www.musicradar.com

"This track is an undeniable banger, but it’s also extremely weird": The borrowed hooks and unstable grooves behind Michael Jackson's Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'

We put one of MJ's best-loved tunes under the musical microscope and explore the unlikely origins of its iconic hook
www.musicradar.com www.musicradar.com
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That is interesting, yeah. A pretty technical analysis with a few interesting perspectives.
 
Mister_Jay_Tee said:
That is interesting, yeah. A pretty technical analysis with a few interesting perspectives.
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Ngl, it did get way too technical for me in the middle. But it's so rare to find any analysis of Michael's music that I didn't mind. I especially liked that he focused on just the one song. Intelligently written and lots to think about. That's all I ask for!
 
zinniabooklover said:
Ngl, it did get way too technical for me in the middle. But it's so rare to find any analysis of Michael's music that I didn't mind. I especially liked that he focused on just the one song. Intelligently written and lots to think about. That's all I ask for!
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You should try and get more into the ""technical"" aspects of MJ's music more, it's an insanely interesting topic imo.
 
Mister_Jay_Tee said:
I love hearing about the way MJ made his music. The music theory is boring though. Boring to read about anyway.
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Didn't actually mean the music theory, i don't know yap about that, more like, the instruments used on his music, which samples, sound effects, etc

That was p much the only "technical" stuff mentioned on that article.
 
NeoGardiV8 said:
Didn't actually mean the music theory, i don't know yap about that, more like, [...]

That was p much the only "technical" stuff mentioned on that article.
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Maybe we're using the word 'technical' to mean different things. This paragraph from the article:

"Harmonically, Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’ could not be simpler. The whole thing is in E Mixolydian mode, which is like E major but with a flatted seventh (D instead of D-sharp.) The bassline consists entirely of the notes D, E and B. The chords, when they are present, are a simple loop: a bar of D alternating with a bar of E ..."

... is at the start of the 'techie' section I was referring to. I understood some of this stuff, instinctively, but some of it was more tricky and/or boring. I don't understand musical notation (and I'm fine with that) or guitar chords - although I understand the basic idea of them.

The info in these paragraphs I understand but I don't know if I'd wanna take it any further. 🤔

"All the excitement of the song comes from the rhythm, which is wildly unstable for a dance pop song ...

Think of a bar of 4/4 time, the “one, two, three, four” count you can do along with most Anglo-American pop songs, including Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’. Each of those numbers is a beat, and each beat is a quarter note long (that is, each one occupies a quarter of the bar.) You can subdivide each of the beats into halves (eighth notes) or quarters (sixteenth notes).

Some of these beats and subdivisions are stronger than others. You naively expect drum hits and other rhythmic accents to fall on the stronger beats or subdivisions. When accents fall on weak beats or subdivisions, it defies your expectation, creating a pleasurably surprising effect called syncopation. The key to creating a good dance beat is to balance predictable and syncopated rhythms

NeoGardiV8 said:
[...] more like, the instruments used on his music, which samples, sound effects, etc
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I can go so far with this stuff. If it's Paulinho da Costa, for example, I'm there. Tell me everything! But samples and synths don't do it for me, tbh. I haven't watched the Stories In The Room vids for ages bc they became too techie for me. I understand the appeal for some people, it just doesn't work for me.

That said, a song like Is It Scary, for example, is endlessly intriguing. Wouldn't mind knowing more about that one. :)
 
NeoGardiV8 said:
Didn't actually mean the music theory, i don't know yap about that, more like, the instruments used on his music, which samples, sound effects, etc

That was p much the only "technical" stuff mentioned on that article.
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Well, we're all about that. Ain't that right Zinnia?
 
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