Dissect DJs - Rockwell - Somebody's Watching Me

Episode Date: October 24, 2023

It's Halloween season so we gotta break down one of the all time throwback spooky jams, with Rockwell's "Somebody's Watching Me". We dissect why Michael Jackson was queitly brought into to absolutely slay the chorus, who's watching you, and why Rockwell's music video appears to be a home video with McPoyle-like zombies just kinda standing around. See the full video podcast here: https://youtu.be/w7Ou1HsDhrY Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Set DJ DJ. In the build, build. It's watching me. Oh, yeah. What's going on, everybody? It is me and Castle's favorite time of the year. It is Halloween 2023. And it's your boy, DJ MCJ.

What up, Steve? Happy Halloween. Happy birthday, man. Yeah, it's also our birthday season. Yeah, every year. And Scorpios unite. Anytime me and Castle ever see people start dressing up, we're like, oh, wait a minute. Is it our birthday?

It might be our birthday coming up soon. I know people dress up at other times of the year, but for the most part, when you start seeing costumes coming out, that mid-October to late October, where, you know, everybody can have a Halloween party, pretty much any time in October,

just gets more substantially closer you get to Halloween, the more the actual Halloween party is established. But you made this on one of your videos years ago where you could pretty much have a party any day in October and have a Halloween party. Right. And can I just say, I don't know how it happened in society,

but I love, The fact that Halloween has just created this culture where it doesn't matter who you are, where you are. It's just okay for anybody to just dress up and walk around. I remember a couple years ago I was just like going for a run on the beach. And there was like these two people in like squirrel costumes like full on like squirrels. Yeah, just in outfits. And it's just fine. Like they walk around and you're like, oh yeah, it's Halloween.

Yeah. And like workplaces, TV shows. They all like adhere to it. They make a Halloween episode. Everybody's just like cool. You can just walk around ordinary public and be like, yeah, I'm dressing up crazy because, like, we as a society has decided this is what we do this time of year. It's great. That's awesome.

I just love it when everybody just like all plays along. Like, go ahead. Do we get it? We get it. No side eyes. No judgment. We're here for Halloween, baby. And the amount and the array of different costumes that people are pull out sometimes.

That is my favorite. You got the basic ones, obviously. And then you got the like, wait, what did you just do? You combined who? I love the combination costumes And James Bond One of my all-time favorites LeBron James Bond

I walked around Vegas With a little basketball in my hand All night And I still have that ball somewhere And I spoke with a British accent It was a pretty shitty British accent But I remember this whole group of people I actually believed I was British

And I just went with it Because I was just like yeah, close I'm from London What do you think? From London Bond, LeBron James Bond. I just kept doing these poses online. The array of costumes. Yeah, yeah, I love it.

That's one of the things I actually love about Halloween is just the creativity. Like you walk into a party and you immediately be like, oh, I never thought of that. That's great. I love that. Oh, I'm like, oh, this guy did. Oh. Oh, you were gang green man? Gang green man?

Gang member dressed as green man, gang green. I had to match Justin loves his body suits of like single colors. Yeah, he's a big bodysuit guy. guy because when he runs around and he dances his Justin moves it looks really funny when he's like got one of those suits on so we thought when we were in Vegas one time like we I got a green man suit too but I was like I don't want us just to be too green man I have to put my own spin on it so I threw like a wife beater and like some baggy shorts and had a bunch of chains and had like a red bandana I was gang green man gang green man yeah so that being Halloween we have to go to one of our

favorite songs that played during Halloween. Yep. And do you know why? Why? Because we are the DJs. I like to spin it, mix it, and throw it back, and dissect it. This is what we do, y'all. And we hear with one of our favorites, somebody's watching me by Rockwell.

But the key to this song is that in the background, throughout the song, you hear a little clip of Michael Jackson. Whose voice is that? Whose voice is that? Screaming his head off with the same lyrics. Not even featured on the track. Not featured, not nothing. He's not credited, but you know that voice.

Yeah, there's no way it's not. And do you know why Michael's on this? Why is that? Because Rockwell is the son of Barry Gordy, I believe. Right? Pretty sure I remember seeing that. I don't know. Are you just coming up the top of your head with this?

No, no. I swear I remember reading this summer. Look at up while I'm talking about it. See if I'm wrong. No. Rockwell was Barry Gordy's son, and Michael Jackson and Barry Gordy had a real tight relationship.

They almost had like a father-son thing where he was like the producer that like kind of found the Jackson 5 and he of course like saw that Michael was a star, made him a star. So then we wanted his son. Did you ever notice that this guy kind of sucks at singing? And he was like, we need to get him a hit. How do we make this song a hit? And it's literally the one thing that everybody remembers is let's get Mike. You get Mike on the track to sing the hook.

See the hook. That Michael sing the hook. Pretty good way to get it out there. Especially at the one. this time when this song came out, yeah, you should have a hit on your hands. What year did it come out? Do you have that? I don't have that here.

I have it right here because you can use the lyrics tells all. What is it then? It is January 14th, 1984, produced by Rockwell and Curtis, Anthony Nolan, featuring Jermaine Jackson and Michael Jackson. So apparently Jermaine's in there. Germain somewhere in the background. Okay. Yeah. Well, let's get into it.

Let's hear what they have to say. This amateur video. What is that? This feels like a video I would have made when I was like... High school. Like, everybody's high school. Like 12 years old and I just borrowed my mom's camera. I'm like, mom, I'm going to make a music video.

It's just like, it's like terrible lighting. It's just literally a guy with a camera walking around his house. Like, uh, you get the shower shot. Yeah, like, uh, they're like a, like a random crow flies by all of a sudden. He's like going up the stairs. Yeah, this is very shoddy worksman's chair. Remember, though, this is 1984 where like music video. hadn't really like set a president yet it was like they were out there but at that time it was

like you have a song just like yeah whatever video you can put out you know i don't know make something go make something at home rockwell so by the way rockwell's real name looked it up Kenny gorty wonder who his dad was yeah literally says i got that Kenny Gary gorgie so that's why he got hooked up with the michael jackson treatment on this like michael go through the uh Cool if you get on this. Yeah, can we get Michael on the background? Michael literally had to show up to kill this. This just shows the powers and talent of Michael.

He literally had to show up to the studio and probably record for a solid like 30 minutes, maybe, probably 20. And be like, yeah. I'm sorry, you need my help. Okay, let me get in there. I always feel like somebody's watching me and have no privacy. Oh, that's probably Jermaine. That's it. That's probably Jermaine.

Oh, he's saying. I have no privacy. Okay, maybe. And that's it. Thank you so much, Mike. All right. See you, the Christmas party. All right, thank you so much, Barry, you're a legend.

And then you just, like, walked out, you know. That's it. All right, so what the hell is Rockwell saying? What's you talking about, man? Give us to run down. Who's watching me? I don't know anymore. Oh, wait, that's verse three.

I started a verse three. I already got it. It's a little, it's like Windows movies, like give you like the scene at the end you're like what how'd that happen and then they cut all the way to where he's the movie starting yeah yeah then you forget about that part of the scene you're like oh until oh yeah I did see that again yeah I saw that yeah I just watched a movie like that the other day called the escape room and I called it out I was like as soon as they went back to all the characters and you're meeting them I was like I feel like that's the

guy that was just like struggling in the room that they showed and um and then like uh yeah I was like but it wasn't sure because like now he's all cleaned up and then at the end you're like I was like, I know it. Boom! Ah! And there's something about a, like, a victory like that where you're like, I called it at the beginning. And now, full circle.

I won this movie. I feel like they knew you were going to know that. Yeah. They should have. They should have. All right. Rockwell, what are you trying to say? Yeah, actually, it wasn't.

It made me think, like, maybe I was just supposed to know that all along. Maybe it was obvious. It was like in Home Alone when the burglar was the, just the cop at the beginning, you know, but it took until like the third time I watched it to be like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that was, he was that the whole time, you know? It was a clear plot point that I was like, this guy realized. Yeah, you kept missing somehow.

He realized that the whole family was leaving, so he knew what the deal was. Yeah, that's why the wet bandits decided to strike. That was massive, you know. We'll do a home alone bit. We already did Home Alone on the three things. So I'll rerun it on the Dysect DJ's podcast. It lost in our old podcasts. Fuck.

Rockwell, what are you trying to say? Doesn't allow by this point. Tell me what Rockwell says. Let me do it? Oh, yeah, I don't have it up. Oh, geez, okay. I'm just an average man. I'm just an average man.

With an average life. With an average life. We're from 9 to 5. Hey, hell, I pay the price. All I want to be is left alone in my average home. That is a very, that's what we're seeing in this video. It's a very average home that's just sort of like walking around. I mean, it's got a staircase.

It's not bad. But yeah, it's not Barry's home. I'll say that. But why do I always feel like I'm in the twilight zone? I'm in the twilight zone, and I always feel like somebody's watching me. And I have no privacy. Oh, I always feel like somebody's watching me. Tell me, is it just the dream?

So why is somebody's watching him? Apparently, why does he feel that way? But, like, a subject. Sometimes you could pop out of a dream that seems so real. And you're like, I hate it. Sometimes I'm like mad at somebody because of what happened in the dream. And I shouldn't be mad at them because nothing actually happened. You ever have this shit?

Oh, no, that's some bullshit. I've definitely had girlfriends in the past be like, you were a jerk in my dream last night. I'm like, I'm not fucking accepting blame for that. Fuck that. Your dreams are fucking, you check with your security. psychiatrist about why you're having fucked up dreams I don't know like I'm not going to be I will not be held liable for like dream

Ryan being like yeah I don't care about you whatever I'm gonna go play kickbowl my friends fuck your birthday no no scare that yeah man sometimes they're so real man I wake up so pissed off or like or I legit think like I did a crime like there was one time Travis Scott handed me a gun and I did a drive by and I was like

well Travis Scott said so we should do this And I did it. And then we were driving home. And I was like, dude, what are we going to do now? And he almost was like, don't worry about it. And at that point, I was like, no, we did a drive-by. They're going to have cameras around. They're going to catch us.

You were Travis Scott so they know your face and like. Yeah. No, Travis Scott hands you a gun in your dream. You just start shooting and ask questions later. We all know that. That's how society works. This is a true story. Yeah.

I literally woke up, swiried like, dude, they're going to be after me. For about five minutes. And then I realized. Trust that Travis. I've got that shit locked. He knows what's up. It made sense. It all,

it all works out. I just felt like somebody was watching me. You know what I mean? I thought they were going to throw it in there. That's good. You do have somebody watching you. There was a straight up.

Maked dude and straight up Calvin Klein's just standing there. He looked like one of the McPoyles from always sunny. Just straight up. Looking up, just zoned up. He wasn't even really watching him. He was just kind of zoned up. out staring off into the dist. No hurry to put on any kind of wardrobe of any kind.

Not even a robe. And even like a pair of shorts just in his white skin, he's just being like. You do have somebody watching you. I got to be honest. This is one of those cases where the music video is actually moving backwards from like what I thought this song was about. I had a feeling.

I always took it as sort of like a, maybe it was because I heard Michael Jackson's voice. but I always thought it was maybe like a paparazzi thing where I was like, I'm so famous now. Everybody wants to see what I'm doing all the time and they're following me everywhere. And that would make sense. I'm watching this video and I'm like,

I don't know what the fuck this guy. This guy has some random individuals in his house that should not be there. Made a home, like at home video where he's just walking around with a camcorder in his house and it was a camcorder in 1984. And there's just random naked dudes standing there. while he's taking a shower.

I don't know why he said he was afraid to put shampoo in his hair because if he closed, what did it say right there? Because he might open his eyes and find someone standing there. People say I'm crazy, just a little touched. But maybe showers remind me of psycho too much. That's why. Is that what he says? Yeah, I never knew that either.

The movie's Psycho where, I feel like, I actually remember hearing when I'm again, That movie fucked up people with the showers for a long time. I bet, yeah. You know, you're all vulnerable. You could, like, somebody could just come in there and attack you, you know. And this is, what, 1984? Actually, it was still going on. The movie had been around for, like, solid 20, 30 years at that point, so.

Yeah, I guess so. Mm-hmm. I wonder if that served as the inspiration for this entire track. Otherwise, I don't know what the fuck did if it wasn't that. It's weird. You know what? Honestly, okay, there's two things that make this song a jam, all right? It's definitely not Rockwell's.

lyrics or vocal ability. Although there's a comedy element of that, which I appreciate. I'll say that. It's obviously the Michael Jackson hook. And then the dope keyboard, man. The keyboard fucking slays in this video. A little... And I just imagine one of those 80s keyboards where they had it.

And some guy in the studio was just, like, laying down. I believe he had shades on. Maybe kind of one of those 80s beanies. And he just like hit the, you know... And then, and then we get to the part where he, they're like, hey, Rogan, I just decided that was the artist who did the keyboard slaying's name. Rogan, we're going to give you a solo on this track. You ready to slay? Tickle them keys, bad bitch.

Let me hear it. Rock roll's not really doing a lot, but like a lot of standing around and looking at shit. Like, he's not even like mouthing any of the lyrics in this song. This whole video, every time I show him, he's walking around like shirtless for some reason. like a towel on and you just got like No they just did one night of shots Like okay I was gonna follow you around No this this this they seriously

Barry's like All right we got you a camera crew For an hour and 15 minutes And you have to shoot at the house Go And you don't get any lighting And you also got to use a Sony cam corner To fill 1886

You're welcome I got you Michael Shut up You got Michael I want to hear any shit You're gonna be a legend forever with his song So he's literally just like walking around like that's the whole thing you

a bunch of random dudes I can't tell if they're going for a zombie thing because there's like a guy like ringing the doorbell and he looks like a zombie the McPoyle dude earlier he looked like a zombie but

yeah let's just say that he didn't have Michael's thriller budget because he did zombies a little better which came out the same year yeah did it really yeah that's why

that's why this song probably went off even more You pair that with thriller and the thrillers in the back and like, oh wait. What a Halloween. Dude, 1984 Halloween must have been off the charts. Yeah, man. With this jam? Tell me.

That's how it ended. And they go out on that. Shout of the weird, maybe zombie postman, just looking up at the camera. Going to give him a hug at the end? I thought he was like giving him his mail. He didn't see it. He was about to give him a hug at the very end. He stuck on ads.

Fucking ads. That's fucking ads. up everything. They do. The point I would like to shout out our sponsors. Speaking of ads. I'm forgetting to shout them out. Yeah.

All right. Well, happy Halloween, guys. What is everybody wearing? By the way, there's a video of Castle and I doing Green Man and gang Green Man that we had a footage from the top of our hotel room. Oh, yeah. Where we shot it down. It was like a Facebook live.

That was the only time in my life I've ever done a live. And it was on your live. My live. I didn't do too many lives. That was like the beginning. Like I had a couple little stint there. And then, yeah, I was able to point the camera and I knew where the front and the back where we're going to be. And we just danced.

And then we actually almost got in a fight with the other mascot people that are there because we were honing in on their turf. I don't remember this. We were getting tips because we wanted to start tipping us. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I remember, they were like, yo, this is our corner. You guys get clearance to work this corner, and we're like, we're literally just dancing around. Like, there's no tip.

We don't have a hat out for tip. Yeah, we don't want tips. We're just dancing. Yeah. Is that, it's Halloween. What the hell are you doing dressed up anyway? Like, acting like a special. Get out of here.

No, that was classic because we had the camera from the room, like, aimed down. And it was just like, we'd, like, go in that spot. And then we, like, yeah, we'd, like, dance for it. And then we'd just be, like, and then just chill. Talk a little bit. And then get up and just start dancing. I put it just got to be out there somewhere. It's there.

It's on my Facebook somewhere. Oh, all they got to do is dig back on your Facebook page, about nine years. Yeah, yeah. You'll find it. All right there. Enjoy. No, that was actually 2016, because that was the year that the Cubs and the Indians were playing in the World Series. Is that the same too?

I pretty sure it was. It was an epic one. And we were both there, rep in the tribe, and they were playing game six, and we were all ready to watch the Indians win the World Series. Oh, that's right, yeah. I was dressed and ready, right? And we all, yeah, we were both dressed in our full on Indian gear. He was walking around with a straight-up Cove mask.

Cove and Cove head, I did. On the hatchet. And she would never fly nowadays, you know. It was the end of an area of time. And we watched it. It probably didn't fly then, man. It did. No, people were probably.

But it was Halloween. Are you dressed up as whatever the fucking want? And then by, like, the second inning, the Cubs were up like 7-1, and it was like, it never got better from there. Yeah. Push to a game seven. Epic World Series, though. Like, honestly, one, like, top three epic championship series in my lifetime.

Partly because we got the experience it there, and we were ready to watch Tribe finally winning world series in Vegas. Do you ever feel like somebody's ever watching you? No. You never have that one? I actually realize, I think about this a lot after the fact, where when I'm walking, because I do a lot of, like, you know, running around, skating around my neck of the woods around here.

Yeah. I always just assume like nobody's looking at me, really. I'm like, why people will be staring at me? They're probably not. Because they're usually not. So at any given point, I don't really ever think like, oh, man, I should worry about what I'm doing. Everybody's, like, looking at me.

That's why sometimes I'll be, like, on my skateboard, playing James with my headphones. So I'm, like, starting to groove with it. Same thing sometimes when I'm just on my feet, whatever. And I'm not really worried about it. And then sometimes people will be like, oh, yeah, I saw you skating around. And I shod of your name, but you didn't say anything because, like, I had like headphones on. And it's those moments that make me be like,

what if people are actually like watching me from a distance? And they're like, oh, that's a castle. And I just had no idea. I'm sure it happens sometimes. Yeah. But it literally never occurs to me at any given moment that somebody might be watching me right now. So it could happen. But yeah, it doesn't really get in my head.

You feel like the type because you're paranoid as shit. You probably think like people are watching you from like outside your house and like spying through your window sometimes. times or something like that gets in your head after like the fourth BT or something it will be like the government the IRS depends I don't know anymore the IRS which line did he say that in you never know it this world nowadays I mean that's probably not that hard if somebody wanted to like spy on me you shouldn't put that out there you can Delick, you know, you can probably camp out.

I don't leave my house that much. And I don't feel safe anymore. Oh, what a mess. I wonder who's watching me now? Who? The IRS? The IRS. That is the first, like, reasonable point he's made in his entire thing.

Yeah, it's not like ghost or anything. It's like, no, maybe the IRS is after me. The IRS actually could fuck with you a little bit. They wanted to, like, keep their eyes on you. Don't just stay off the radar, you know? I shouldn't have even brought him up on this podcast. My taxes are in line. Yeah.

Exactly. I'm straight. All right. Well, let's go ahead and close this out by slapping this one out. On the one to five scale, how many slaps is Rockwell? Low-key featured Michael Jackson. Who's watching me? What are we getting to?

Somebody's watching me. Nice. Three slaps, a snap, and somebody's watching me. It's a good. Oh, it's good. It's good. It does that. It's good, man.

You know what? It actually brings back that 80s feel. When you hear it, you're like, oh, yeah, I remember this song. That's right. And then you never actually pay attention to the lyrics, and the lyrics don't have really much to say about it anyway. We went over them. There's not much to what he's saying.

He's just paranoid. Somebody's watching him, maybe the IRS, somebody like that, and that's pretty much it. And I agree with Castle, where I thought it was somebody's watching me because he was popular and everybody's watching him. But, no, it's just some random white guy that randomly is at his house. He's very good.

No, I'm talking about the guy that's in his house that's watching it. Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, I was wondering if being Barry Gordy's son played into this a little bit as to why he thought, like, maybe there's some kind of backstory there. Maybe there's, like, maybe somebody that was like a client of Barry's that he kind of screwed over, that he was like a little bit like, oh, he's coming to the house and he's going to, like, you know. I was actually watching him. Yeah, I can see that.

But not a McPoyle who's just sitting around, standing around outside your shower, and it's going to be staring at nothing. I don't know about that, but, um. They were working with a $30 budget on this video So he made it work Made a dude If that Slaps and snaps

All right Out of five slaps I'm going with No privacy Oh Oh Yeah So you said

Somebody's watching me Right And I have no privacy All right I meant to say Somebody's playing tricks on me Because that was more Halloween Does that

Do you want to Do you want to redo it? I would like to Can I rebuttal Yeah Who's playing tricks on me Oh, oh. Yeah.

No, it's a legend, I honestly feel like part of its replayability over the years is that it has that sort of haunting Halloween beat that just, it works so much better in October. It's a time to fucking throw that on. Everybody likes singing to the, Somebody's watching me. Oh, yeah, this song would not work if Michael wasn't on there. If it was like Rockwell trying to do the hook,

I'll bet you what he started by trying to do it. And then Barry got to the studio, he's like, yeah, that shit ain't got to fly. Go ahead and use a phone. favor that Michael owes me. Michael. Yeah, what's having a man? It's Barry.

Listen, my son, he's terrible at singing. He's terrible. We're in the studio right now. Can you get down here in about 15 and I'll owe you one? Fantastic. All right, Michael's going to clean this up real quick. Bing, bang, boom. He got up.

He showed into the studio. He showed up with Jermaine randomly. Yeah, yeah. He was like, I brought Jermaine. He could use the rub. and then like 15 minutes later they're out of the studio and Rockville's got a hit for the ages

you know and play it definitely that's why I got three plus a little bit like it's it lasts everybody knows this song it's like it recognizability is there where everybody nobody knows the words

other than but a lot of songs are like that and don't sleep on the little keyboard organ thing like that thing that thing that thing is right up there with Michael and making this a gym because it has that haunting feel to it And that little Halloween sounds. Love it.

October vibes are in the air. Halloween. Let's get psycho. Somebody's watching me. Next!