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Who is Michael talking about in 'Who is it'

starlight1

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This has been such a big mystery to me, I've asked it around to an engineer that worked on the Dangerous album and couldn't get a straight answer from him. 'MJ rarely spoke about the inspiration to his songs with the production crew.. .'

I'd love to know who Michael was talking about in Who is it. Who did he write it for? Anyone who knows? I believe Teddy Riley was not involved with this song so it couldn't be about any girl he knew like it is in 'She's driving me wild'
 
starlight1 said:
This has been such a big mystery to me, I've asked it around to an engineer that worked on the Dangerous album and couldn't get a straight answer from him. 'MJ rarely spoke about the inspiration to his songs with the production crew.. .'

I'd love to know who Michael was talking about in Who is it. Who did he write it for? Anyone who knows? I believe Teddy Riley was not involved with this song so it couldn't be about any girl he knew like it is in 'She's driving me wild'
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Found this on www.songmeanings.com . There is a discusion about most Michael's songs and you can find some great explanations! Check that site out!


It's pretty obvious that he's singing about the same girl from 'Dirty Diana', and in the music video it was hinted that the girl's name is Diana.

But 'Diana' is not mere metaphor or fiction, he's actually making jabs at Diana Ross, his 'mother-lover-sister' that he claimed her to be in his autobiography. See, in the song, he's singing about a girl who left him to be with someone else, and he's upset that he doesn't even know who is the guy she left him for.

Think back to 1979 - 1985, where Diana just broke off from Silberstein, and she got awfully close with Michael during that period. They went to Oscar dates together, hung out in clubs together, did intimate photoshoots together, and even spent nights together during the filming of the 'Wiz'. Michael wrote a few songs for her albums during this period, too.

In an interview, Michael boldly insinuated that the person he wants to marry is Diana Ross, but nobody took him seriously because they just thought that it was just idolization from Michael's part, sort of a cute crush or something.

Then suddenly, in 1986 Diana announced that she was getting married to Arnes Naess. Michael was upset, he admitted in his Moonwalk autobiography that he was jealous of her new husband because he has never even met the guy before, and he refused to attend her wedding nor wanted her to collaborate on a song called 'I Can't Stop Loving You' and even turned down Diana's invitation to appear on her show. A year later, 'Bad' is released and it featured a song called 'Dirty Diana', most probably 'dedicated' to Diana Ross as a way to get back at her.

In the Glenda tapes, where MJ had his phone conversation with a friend wiretapped without either of them knowing (you can find the audio tracks on Youtube -- called MJ secret phone conversations), he told his friend that an 'older woman' used him and was fooling around with other men behind his back. He also mentioned that it took him years to get over Diana, and this was right before Dangerous was released so the timing for the song 'Who Is It?" (which is featured in this album) makes sense.

Actually, if you match the lyrics of 'Who Is It?' with Michael's rumored affair with Diana, everything fits together. There's no metaphor or groupies or whatever. It's a straightfoward song about 'Diana' (Ross) breaking his heart, that's all.
 
I totally agree with you, I think Who is it is about Diana Ross, Michael loved her very much and felt betrayed and the song remained from Bad period so it fits as period and theme.
 
That makes sense. I always assumed Remember the Time was about her too.
Probably all of his love songs or 'woman done me wrong' songs are about her or sung while thinking about her.
 
Was Michael really in love with her? How is that? I don't understand, why is he in love with a woman who was way older than him which he already knew since he was young? That's some weird stuff right there..
 
That's not weird at all. People fall in love with people they've known forever all the time.

All you have to do is look at him look at her to know how crazy in love he was with her.
 
I agree, he did love her and she pretty much blew him off. A shame really as Ms Ross's own stardom declined in the later 80s while Michael went from peak to peak. The old saying - two stars passing in flight, one on the ascendant and one on the descendant. Kind of like that collaboration between Judy Garland and a new singer/actress called Barbra Streisand in 1963.
 
barbee0715 said:
That's not weird at all. People fall in love with people they've known forever all the time.

All you have to do is look at him look at her to know how crazy in love he was with her.
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No shit, lol! I used to be a little bit jealous of Diana because it was so obvious that he was in love with her, bahahaha! He probably loved her for the rest of his life. I wasn't surprised when it was reported he named her as one of the guardians of his kids, along with his mom.
 
Ok, but how are you so sure he was in love with her and Dirty Diana was written about her when a Quote ok Wikipedia says 'Initial reports at the time suggested the song was a poke at his close friend Diana Ross, however it was later denied.[3] In fact, Ross started using the song as an overture at her concerts shortly before appearing on stage. In an interview from the special edition of Bad, Jones later confirmed that the song's lyrics were about groupies.'
 
^^Dirty Diana is definitely a song about groupies.
It's definitely not about his relationship with Diana. He just used her NAME for the groupie's name.

I guess you could say that a groupie uses rock stars for their own gain and Diana definitely used him to an extent, but that's really stretching it IMO.
 
I don't think song interpretations are necessarily as one-dimensional as fans sometimes seem to believe. "Oh it's about groupies, so it cannot be about Diana." or "Oh it's about Diana Ross." IMO songs can have more than one layers to them and I think DD is one of those songs which has more than one layers. The story on the surface is definitely about a groupie. But I think it could be a metaphor for Diana as well. Is it really? No one knows but MJ.

Same for Who Is It. I don't necessarily think it has to be about a straightforward real life story in MJ's life. Different elements of it can come from different experiences. For example the line "Is it my brother?" can come from MJ observing his brothers taking each other's women. Just an idea. The rest of the song can come from different experiences. Some more personal to MJ, some more from observing others. For example his heartfelt singing about loneliness comes from a very personal place.
 
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^He like to mention his brothers often, like in "Jam" and "Superfly Sister".


I agree with Barbee, let's just ease up on the psychoanalytic talk.
 
Psychoniff;4113798 said:
^He like to mention his brothers often, like in "Jam" and "Superfly Sister".
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I think the word ‘brother’ (in ‘Jam’) is not used in a literal way at all, but it has an abstract meaning.
 
I wasn't jealous of Diana, but I do very much believe that he was crazy in love with her 'for all time,' you could say. I never really thought about Who Is It being about her, but I do think Remember the Time is, like barbee said earlier. I also think he was deeply hurt by her, too.
 
Psychoniff said:
I agree with Barbee, let's just ease up on the psychoanalytic talk.
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Lol. I didn't exactly say that. I just said that the song "Dirty Diana" wasn't written about her and their relationship. Diana definitely wasn't a groupie- Was the character's name a dig at her? Perhaps.

respect77 said:
I don't think song interpretations are necessarily as one-dimensional as fans sometimes seem to believe. "Oh it's about groupies, so it cannot be about Diana." or "Oh it's about Diana Ross." IMO songs can have more than one layers to them and I think DD is one of those songs which has more than one layers. The story on the surface is definitely about a groupie. But I think it could be a metaphor for Diana as well. Is it really? No one knows but MJ.

Same for Who Is It. I don't necessarily think it has to be about a straightforward real life story in MJ's life. Different elements of it can come from different experiences. For example the line "Is it my brother?" can come from MJ observing his brothers taking each other's women. Just an idea. The rest of the song can come from different experiences. Some more personal to MJ, some more from observing others. For example his heartfelt singing about loneliness comes from a very personal place.
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And I agree with that-it's interesting to fantasize and speculate about the meanings of these songs and wonder who they are about. Is "Who Is It" about Diana, is it about the Jermaine/Alejandra/Randy relationship or the Jermaine/Whitney/Michael relationship, an article he read in a magazine, or none of the above.

Not too many people have the imagination to look at a CPR machine and come up with a murder mystery about a slain girl named Annie, and become Annie herself too.

The thing I noticed about Michael's adult singing voice early on-whether he wrote the song or not-is that he made you feel it-sense it-and it became very personal. Whether it was with the notes he hit, or the vibrato, or the phrasing of lyrics, or the mispronunciation of words-you felt the song. You could PICTURE it-VISUALIZE it, and that is true art-and what he wanted to do, when later on he talked about telling stories to people to transport them places.
 
It reflects a spiritual tone. Some of the words reflect Michael's inspiration that he derived from the Holy Bible.

"This Is Injustice
Woe Unto Thee
I Pray This Punishment
Would Have Mercy On Me"

"'Cause The Will Has Brought"

"Don't You Judge"

"Is It My Brother?"

This song has a deep reverence for him.


WII-who-is-it-18816680-336-500.jpg
 
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