“Billie Jean” by Michael Jackson

"Billie Jean" was the second single from Michael Jackson's Thriller, out on Epic at the start of 1983, and it's as lean and menacing as pop gets. Jackson wrote it and produced it with Quincy Jones, and the arrangement is all bones: Leon Ndugu Chancler's drums ticking like a stopwatch, Louis Johnson's bass line stalking underneath, Greg Phillinganes' Rhodes and synths and Bill Wolfer's synth glinting in the dark, David Williams' guitar scratching at the edges, all captured and mixed by Bruce Swedien. Over the top Jackson plays a man denying that a young woman's baby is his, a story he said grew out of groupies' claims about his older brothers in the Jackson 5 days.

It went to number one on the Hot 100 and around the world, won 2 Grammys, and when he moonwalked through it on the Motown 25 TV special, everybody started copying him.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.