One Song - Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean"

Episode Date: January 14, 2026

What makes “Billie Jean” one of the most timeless pop songs ever? Diallo Riddle and LUXXURY dive into Michael Jackson’s masterpiece, unpacking its iconic (and borrowed) bassline, the innovative engineering that shaped its unmistakable sound, and how the song transformed MJ from superstar into a singular cultural force. Songs Discussed: “Billie Jean” - Michael Jackson (01:17) “C Is For Cookie (Funky Version)” - Cookie Monster (04:05) “Take On Me” - a-ha (06:34) “Pass the Dutchie” - Musical Youth (07:20) “Nightline” - Pointer Sisters (12:03) “Nightline” - Ellen Foley (12:10) “Should I Stay or Should I Go” - The Clash (12:40) “The Lady In My Life” - Michael Jackson (13:45) “The Girl Is Mine” - Michael Jackson & Paul McCartney (14:54) “Say Say Say” - Paul McCartney & Michael Jackson (15:13) “Hey Lover” - LL Cool J feat. Boyz II Men (15:57) “Wake Up” - Bill Wolfer (21:08) “State Of Independence” - Jon & Vangelis (25:52) “State Of Independence” - Donna Summer (28:01) “Only You” - Steve Monite (57:42) “Desperate Journalist In Ongoing Meaningful Review Situation” - The Cure (58:37) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I said, don't mind, but what do you mean? I'm the one. Are the snaps? Do you would dance on the floor, in the round. Why is it in the round? The internet and other people are convinced that this is a euphemism for sex, on the floor, in the round. What?

Yeah. In the round means knocking boots? Yeah, I mean, like, you know, squeaky clean Michael Jackson can't say that, but it would tie into the song a little bit better than just saying, like, hey, do you want to dance as opposed to, like, you know, she is accusing him.

paternity here. Sure, and that is a requirement for that to. That's what I've been told. Okay. Now, my wife and I, we've only danced, and I've told these are my kids. Especially today's artist needs no introduction. He's literally the king of pop. That's right, Diallo.

Today we are talking about the song that cemented this gentleman, not only as a musical powerhouse, but as a defining performance icon. I mean, we are talking about the fourth biggest selling single of all time. Of all time, all artists. The top three, by the way, just in case you didn't know, all I want for Christmas is you, No, number one. Candle in the Wind. And don't stop believing is number three.

Don't, please stop buying. Listen, I know you may have heard this song a million times. You will never hear it the same after we give it the one song treatment. That's why we're so excited that today we're talking one song. And that song is Billy Jean by Michael Jackson. That kick and that snare, man. I'm actor-writer-director. I'm actor-writer-director and sometimes DJ Diallo Riddle.

And I'm producer DJ songwriter at musicologist luxury, aka the guy who whispers. And this is one song. The show where we break down the stems and stories behind iconic songs across genres tell you why they deserve one more listen. You will hear these songs like you've never heard them before and you can watch one song on YouTube and Spotify while you're there. Please like and subscribe. We always say that we want people to hear these songs like they've never heard them before. I think we said it at the beginning of Superstition by Stevie Wonder. I'm sure there are people out there like, do I really need to hear Billy Jean anymore?

but I'm serious, there's a reason why you hear a little extra kick in our voice today because we have so much to explore about this song. I've heard this song maybe more than any song we've ever done on the show, but I have never heard even going through the stems, not even for the first time myself. There's so much that I was rediscovering, so many sounds that I maybe noticed peripherally as you hear the song over the years. I'm like, what is that?

Finally, we can decipher what some of these little moments are. Sure. And a lot of them are really surprising. And you discovered stuff in the stems that we've never heard before, truly never heard before because it happens after the fade out. That's right. So there's so much fun stuff to get to. You will hear this song.

Yes, you will hear Billy Jean like it's the first time after this episode. Luxury, do you remember the first time you heard Billy Jean? Oh, absolutely. It would have been on MTV watching that iconic video, which we'll be talking about later in the episode. But it made a huge impression on me just as it did Planet Earth. Yeah. And introduced me to the song in kind of that iconic 80s way where you're hearing it and seeing it, which was a brand new idea at the time.

Somebody else is marrying images to the song for you. I mean, we take it for granted now, but that was revolutionary in the moment that it was happening. It's interesting. We've kind of gone back to that. There's so many songs that I like today that I've never thought, oh, what if there's a music video for that? In the 80s, and even in the 90s,

there was an image-making machine that came out with the image for you to associate with the song. 100%. And that was relatively new, and boy, was it impactful. It really, really worked. What about you, Diallo? When was the first time you heard Billy Jean? Let me start by saying, Thriller was one of the first albums that I own right alongside a hard day's night by the Beatles and the best of the Muppets.

I had my little animal drum set and I just, those were my three, you know, album. Wait, what are some Muppet songs that I should? Oh, gosh, come on. See, is for Cookie the Disco version? You know, he sounds like a, it sounds like Shaft. No, I see it's for Cookie. It's like, who is the man who's eating on a desserts he can? Cookie!

It's Cookie. That's another episode. Cookie Monster is basically Isaac Hayes. I thought Cookie Monster was black growing up. I was like he's got colored fur. He's definitely very white. And he's wearing a leather vest with no shirt underneath. I never thought about it.

He is like an R&B singer from the early scene. He's like Philly International in blue. You put Gabel and Huff in a studio with Cookie. You get magic. But Thriller was one of the first records I listened to in the basement. I used to practice the drums by Paris basement. And you know, I still remember the first time I heard it. I still remember where I was the first time me and my family would sit down and watch video hits one.

BH1. Because they were playing black music videos all. And I don't think it was called VH1 yet. You're right. It was video hits one. Right. And I remembered they played that clip. We're talking a lot about this clip a lot.

Let's go on it. Let's show a clip from that iconic music video for Billy Jean, Michael Jackson. Sweet perfume. So for those of you not watching us on YouTube. Fools. All of you. see the video. Michael, a very young Michael is dancing on these squares that light up. It's weird because, you know, he and Quincy met on The Wiz, which is an interpretation of the Wizard of Oz.

And looking at it now, like, it looks like he's sort of like on a silver brick road that leads to this city, this very emerald city. Except it looks like New York. I remember as a kid thinking like, what city is that? But it's like dirty. Isn't it like garbagey and dirty though? Oh, yeah, dude. It's like, I'm not sure. I'm not sure what city that's supposed to be, but they need better.

you know, garbage maintenance. It feels like Michael Jackson's vision of what a city looks like because he's never actually been to one. Hey, so I think there should be tubble weeds of trash just blowing across my path. No, it's a great music video. We're going to use the word iconic so many times that you should probably just play a drinking game

as long as you're not driving, where you just take a sip every time we use the word iconic. But what can you tell us about this amazing video? So the video was directed by Steve Barron, who had previously directed Human Leagues, don't you want me baby, which was apparently the source of interest. It's why they wanted to,

to hire him for Michael Jackson's video because they love that video so much. And then he went on later to direct AHA's equally iconic take on me video. I did not know that. He did take on me and Billy Jean? That is the old... That video makes me cry.

Dude. It's so emotional at the end when he's bumping against the wall trying to get out, becoming human again. It's so, it really gets me. I think we've all been that person banging against the wall.

It really gets me. At some point in our lives. It's so pointed. Wow, Steve really set the standard for amazing music videos. I don't think that video's been topped in terms of emotional, like, resonance for me.

It also has to be said that when Billy Jean first dropped, MTV didn't want to play it. MTV didn't want to play it. For those of you don't know, MTV had mainly a rock vibe at the time, but like, don't get me wrong. Black artists wanted to be on MTV. They wouldn't play a lot of black artists

famously. I think the only one that they were playing in a heavy rotation were the kids from musical youth with Pass the Duchy. Amazing song. Pass the Dutchie out of the Lentz. It's probably the first reggae 12-inch eye remember having. But remember,

the Dutchie on the left and side, pass the duchy pan the left and side the tag up on. Give me the music, make me jump around. Remember, Michael Jackson was already a solo superstar.

His last album off the wall was, at the time, the best-selling album by a black artist and the best-selling R&B album of all time. So eventually, CBS record's president,

Walter Yetnikoff, basically he calls him to VET and he says, if you don't put Billy Jean in rotation, we're pulling all of our artists. And that threat has some weight at the time. Like the other CBS records artists are huge on MTV. We're talking Cindy Lauper and Journey and Billy Joel.

These are people that MTV is regularly playing. Yeah, to his credit, Yetnikov, kind of a notorious industry figure. In this case, sort of did the right thing and did right by his artists and changed the course of music history in the making. Absolutely. At the time, MTV was really just focused on white artists, let's call it like it is, rock artists. They were essentially the biggest, most powerful radio station,

just happened to be a video radio station. But it was national. it sold units and they were sort of staying in their lane until they got called out for it. And Walter used some of those old school mob tactics. Essentially, hey, you're going to put them on and eventually MTV 4. Pretty much, yeah. So you mentioned Off the Wall, another incredible Michael Jackson record, the previous one, that had done Gangbusters numbers.

You almost say Ghostbusters numbers. Ray Parker Jr. fans, you all hear me. And by the way, I'm going to try to use Michael Jackson language as much as possible. Doggone it on this episode. Musically Off the Wall was still very much an R&B and disco record. But for Thriller, they broke out of that box, which we should say is the black music box. It was a very conscious effort to cross over into pop, into rock, into other areas outside of the funk and R&B lane that they had been previously. You know, we said on a previous episode, but this helps make everything that happens after this so clear.

Michael Jackson, after leaving the Jackson's, was consumed with this idea being the biggest star of all time. That wasn't just music star. That was movies. That was everything. He said he was going to be like Gene Kelly. He was going to be like Elvis. He had like a bunch of people who was like, I'm going to be the best dancer. I'm going to be the best singer.

I'm going to be the best singer. You know, he'd just done the whiz. You know, he had a vision board up at that ranch in Encino. Yeah, with all these people's photos on them. He knew he had a very clear vision. He thought that Quincy was the person who was going to help get him there. What can you tell us about when they were pulling together the album that would become Thriller?

So according to the story, they had something like 700 demos that they were pulling from to find the songs for the record. This is classic A&R, artists and repertoire. You got to find what the songs are. So they took contributions from all over. Famously, it's the same toto team that we talked about in the thriller episode. Go back and listen to that sister companion to this particular episode. We get into

a lot of detail about all of these players, because there are a lot of the same performers on this song. I got to say, how do you even keep track of so many songs? Spreadsheets, I don't know. Well, Michael Jackson, like myself, is a Virgo, so I kind of understand. I think we share a birthday, actually. Wait. You're more like the Duke of Pop. His birthday is August 20 night. So we're both Virgo's. It makes a lot of sense to me. It's

MJ. It's Beyonce. We all, we share a kind of mindset that the rest of you can't possibly understand. Organization is important if you've got to set that goal and then you can achieve that goal of world domination. These guys, those two happen to get a little farther along than I did personally. But let's face it, we are all up one mind. We're just working out our issues in real time here at the pod. But out of that 700 demos, they settled on an initial nine track. But Quincy and Michael still felt like the record wasn't balanced enough in terms of genre. So they took out four of those existing tracks and replaced them with The Lady in My Life, P-Y-T, Human Nature, and beat it. That's right.

And one of the songs they were plays, this was going to be the ninth song on the record. And I love this story because it's Glenn Ballard, who went on to co-write You O'Don with Alanis Morissette. And Hold on, Wilson Phillips. He put together a song called Nightline. I've got the demo. This was going to be the ninth song until Billy. Gene replaced it. Here it is. Would have been on the album. Let's hear it.

I think they made the right call. Yeah. I don't know how I've... Wait, you like this one better than the girl is mine? I mean, personally... Well, we're going to talk about that. I will say that this does remind me of Starlight, which was the original version of Thriller. And I feel like they just knew somewhere in the mix,

they had to put like a double eye in there. Like, it's like Starlight, bang, line. Like, yeah, it makes you do certain things with your mouth. Like, you know, it's fun to sing. Starlight. But I don't know about nightline I don't know about nightline. I kind of like that song,

but listen, it didn't make the cut for this record, but he ended up cutting it with the Pointer Sisters. And last but not least, there's a version by Ellen Foley. You may know from being on Nightcourt. And she was also Meatloaf's co-vocalist on Paradise by the Dashboard Light. Oh, my gosh.

But last but at least, she was Mick Jones's girlfriend, and she is the girl about whom he wrote, should I stay or should I go? I stay or should I go now? Should I stay or should I go? I did not know that. Crazy rabbit hole there about this song.

If you ever were playing 7 degrees, there's an MJ clash connection that you never knew about. That's right. And Glenn Ballard finally did get a cut with Michael Jackson because he later wrote Man in the Mirror. Which was not a small hit.

Not a small hit. So he got dropped from Thriller, but he got picked up for Man in the Mirror. Well, so I have a question for your luxury. What's one song? And you sort of hinted it as, this, but what's one song that you would cut from Thriller? And why?

Over the year, I kind of love the fact that we've done 150 episodes in the show. This has actually come up kind of annually. We kind of play this. So if you go back 100 episodes, you asked me that and my answer, you didn't like so much. You were really, you convinced me, I should say. It's not that you didn't like it. But my answer was, I think, at the time, Lady in My Life. Yes.

And then you're like, no, you don't understand Lady in my life. And I listen to you. For those who don't know it, here's a little bit of a true slow jam on Thriller. Thriller is not full of slow jams. Here is the lady in my life. There'll be no darkness tonight. Your love will shine. We're allowed to have disagreements, discrepancies.

And I think my new choice would be, as I just alluded to, I don't think we really need The Girl Is Mind. I don't think we need it. So to those who don't know, The Girl Is Mine is actually the first single off of this album. Which is crazy. It does pretty good. Yeah, but it's the most forgettable out of the whole thing.

But nobody's like, hey, put on Thrillard. Put on The Girl Is Mine. That almost never happens. The doggone girl is mine. That's where that word comes from. What doggone girl is mine? What the hell? God, girl is mine.

They should have taken it. We talked about this. They should have taken because, you know, Mike recorded Say, say, say. That's the one. An amazing song for Paul's album. That's the Michael Paul collab. That kills it every time.

Imagine a thriller replaced the girl is mine with say, say. It'd be pretty much a perfect album. It'd be a much better. And then I don't know what song I would take off. That would make Thriller better. It would actually make Thriller better. It could actually have more success. Michael Jackson's thing.

That is 50 million. Note to self. I bet you some of our younger listeners don't even know about The Girl is Mine. Here's a clip of Paul McCartney, Michael Jackson. First single off a thriller,

The Girl is Mine. And here is the far superior, I think. We think. We agree on this. Boogie song. I mean, it's kind of like a boogie 80s funk song.

Like, here's Say, say, say. All alone. I said, I said, love to go. It's so good. It's like an explosion of falsetto.

I'm just looking at the data. Like, the girl's mind is the third least stream song on the record. I mean, it just didn't pass the test of time. And by the way, I love the lady's mind, but it also got a second life when hip-hop started. Oh, and the lady in my life is the least streamed. I know, but you know what? I think that, especially for R&B and hip-hop fans,

the lady in my life is not only beloved, but it did get sampled quite a bit in the 90s on some great songs. The one I think of the most is, from our friend Sean Stockman and Boys to Men, featured on the L.L. Cool J.'s song, Hey, Love. So today we're talking Billy Jean, which I think most people know, is basically a song about an obsessive, delusional fan who's claiming Michael Jackson as the father of her child.

It's one of those songs where you know every word, but if you actually stop and think about what you're singing, and what he's saying, it's kind of wild how dark this is for a pop song, for a Quincy Jones song. Quincy Jones wasn't over, like, you know, deep, like dark songs like this, and definitely not MJ at this period of his career. Yeah, I think the darkness was, part of, now you're saying it, you're making me think about when I first heard it. That's part of

what resonated for me. Because pop radio at the time, I mean, sure, you've got an eclectic range of songs in the 80s. Great, great time to be growing up and listening to music. But something about these lyrics cut through to my, like, nine-year-old brain, because there was so much mystery to them. What is he talking about? It sounds really dark. It sounds really adult. It sounds like kind of issues that I don't fully understand yet because I'm still a child, but I kind of know that they're coming soon. But you know, I also... Paternity suits and such, not for me personally. It's hard for me to think about this song without thinking about driving.

And I was not surprised to learn that Michael Jackson claims that he came up with this baseline and just this general sound in his head while driving down Ventura Boulevard one time. Like, I think there's something that sounds like a revved up Maserati in this Miami Vice world.

And then that baseline, that do do do do do do. It's got one of those infinite baseline kind of feeling. Yes. It never resolves. It's always going in a cycle. Lyrically, it never resolves. Lyrically, it's never like, and then she went. away. You know, like, that doesn't happen.

Everything's fine. Everything's fine. We settled out of court. That doesn't happen in this song. Michael talks about the origins of the song coming from his real life experience as a kid in the Jackson Five with his older brothers. And apparently they had these situations happen to them. But he's also talked about it multiple times across multiple interviews and books.

Yeah. And so there's not a singular story that may be the answer. It seems like the character in the story, Billy Jean, is a composite of different other people. And I'm going to be team Quincy Jones here. There's no way when this song came out that people didn't think that he wasn't talking about Billy Jean King. Oh, yeah. Strange choice of names there. She was very famous at the time.

The only other Billy Jean in people's consciousness. It's like the weekend had a song called I didn't sleep with you, Miley. And it's like, well, there's really only one Miley. It's very specific. There are more Miley's in the world, but that's like a little sucks. That's the one. Yeah. For those who don't know, Billy Jean Keen is like one of the most famous female athletes.

She was hugely important to women's tennis. She spelled her name, Billy Jean, like L-L-I-E. Right. It's very specific spelling. Yeah, it's very specific spelling. Yeah, and she's iconic, as you mentioned, tennis player. She had this legendary, like, feminist icon because she played this very sexist tennis player called Bobby Riggs, and it was called the Battle of the Sexes.

Right. He said any man could beat the current female's man. Exactly, exactly, which kind of resonates today. That same stupid argument is going through our culture even now. But she beat him, and she beat him cold. Beat him hard. Yeah. To much satisfaction.

Yeah. All right, we're going to take a quick break, but when we get back, we're going to tell you who wrote this song. Who Michael might have borrowed the baseline from, and yes, we've got his isolated vocals. You don't want to miss that. Also, no matter how many times you've heard, Billy Jean, we've got some stuff that you've never heard

because it came after the fade out. That's right. You've never heard this part of the session. Stick around. Okay. When I sell my business, I want the best tax and investment advice. I want to help my kids. and I want to give back to the community.

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Go back and listen to it if you want. Today we're going to be talking about a lot of the same people, producer, Quincy Jones, and engineer Bruce Swarden. That's right, D'allel. But this time we won't be talking about songwriter Rod Temperton, who was an unsung hero of thriller, because he did not participate in this song at all. There you go. That's right. It was Michael himself who wrote the song and actually demoed it up on his own 16 track, and we have that demo.

I love this. I love the fact that we have this artifact. Yeah, let's check it out. He changed that from Says to claim. I mean, yeah. You got to give Michael credit. That's almost the damn weird. That's a fully formed song.

It is a fully formed song. Now, just to be clear, you had an idea in his head. I believe he programmed the l'n drum, L.N one, because he owned one. And he brought in his session musicians. I think it's Greg Philan Gaines. And another unsung hero will be talking about who played Bill Welfler, who play the keyboards. Woffer, who I absolutely love.

He writes a lot of songs. I think he did a lot of work with Stevie Wonder in the 70s. That's right. Yeah. The secret life of plants. Yes. And sound shaping, too. That's a big part of the scene.

story. When we isolate the stems in just a moment for the keyboards, we'll be talking about it. But it's not just the parts, it's also the exact sounds that he's dialing. Big part of this song and his contribution to it. Yeah. I think Wolfer is a really talented songwriter. He wrote one song in particular called Wake Up that I think the song is great as it is. But I can only imagine if Michael Jackson or Stevie Wonder has saying it. Is this on his solo record? It's on an album called Wolf. And this is a little snippet. And here's a little snippet of Wake Up. All right, let's get into the stems.

Let's start with the drums, played by famously in Dugu Chancellor. That's the beat, my friends. And what's crazy is I know what song this is. You know what song it is. How many songs could you just hear? A kick and a snare. Just the first kick and snare was all I needed. And it's not like an elaborate array of drums.

It's really just the kick. It's just the snare. And the symbol, right? So there's playing the hi-hat. Yeah. And what is about to come in after that first couple of bars is this sound. Cabasa, which I think might come from the Lindra. So when you add that in, I'll do it before and afterwards.

So here's without the cabasa, and then I'll add the cabasa. It's in the right speaker when you listen to the song. So the cabasa adds this. So we have this grounding, which is just foundational kick and snare groove. And it's one of the greatest kicks and snares ever recorded. We'll talk about another unsung hero of this episode and the recording of it in just a moment. But that cabasa starts to add what the rest of the layers are going to add, which is one piece at a time, a little bit of syncopation, a little bit of accenting.

I'm so glad you bring this up because if you remember on our episode about the roots, the next movement, they said that they had a little bit of cabasa in there because it was the bad boy record's philosophy that you needed a little bit of that to make the girls move their hips. To make the back to make the spines go crazy. That little bit of syncopation that makes a big difference. And it prevents it from being ironically just like the kick that you know. here at the beginning of bounce rock skate famously sampled by dab punk for defunct. That's interesting.

Which is a more stripped down version of this. You know, I'm glad you said that because one thing about this kick and snare with my producer ears on, like something, one reason why I have among, I'm not the only one, I'm one of many who have sampled that isolated kick and snare because that break is right there for you to use. And as a producer, you can just grab the kick and grab the snare and use it for your own productions, maybe layer it, add another things to it. But one reason for that. It's so distinct.

It's so distinct. The sound is so distinct in part because of Bruce Sweeneehan, who you mentioned earlier. Yeah. He's on this entire record. He's one of the unsung heroes of all things, Michael Jackson. But specifically, he built a plywood drum riser. I actually did it for a rock with you. It was used on off the wall.

Totally. I can see the similarity. But part of how he got that sound was because it's this eight-foot square plywood platform that's 10 inches off the ground, which means that when you play the drums, there isn't bleed in the low frequencies. This is super in the weed stuff. No, no, no, go there, man. But it's a huge part of the contribution

to why it is so distinct sounding. Because the drummer is on an almost foot tall, wouldn't stand. And he also isolated the hi-hat. He did something with a kick drum where he took the front head off and put a cinder block in. And then there was a furniture blanket.

There's all of these very specific sort of engineering science decisions that Bruce Soudian came up with, like invented, to make the beat sound like it did. And of course, there's Chancellor himself, who's performing it spot on perfectly. And one last thing I'll say, he's playing to the demo.

So he's locked into the LN1's rhythmic perfection, robotic perfection. So you have this combination of factors that make this beat so iconic. And look, it's nothing fancy, but it's just what this song needed. And I was talking with friend of the show, Patrice Russian, and I love what she said about in Dugu's style. said, quote, Indugu deserves props for his steady, contributive musicality. Not many people played for Frank Sinatra, Miles Davis, Santana, George Duke, and Michael Jackson.

He did. His playing was tasteful and unselfish in finding the right thing to play. That's why he could make music with anybody. Okay, so before we get to the base, we got to talk about this baseline. It really does make the song to hear Michael tell it. And from listening to the demo, you would think the baseline was all him. But Quincy Jones says Michael stole it from the song

State of Independence. Quincy said, quote, The notes don't lie, man. He was as megabillion as they come. That's by Quincy Jones. That's right. So the song, State of Independence was actually written by John Anderson from, yes,

the Prague rock group, when he did a collaborative record with Vangelis, or Vangelis. I come to understand it's pronounced by actual Greek people. The guy who did the soundtrack for Blade Runner. Blade Runner, chariots of fire. That's right.

So in 1981, they recorded this song for the record, Friends of Mr. Cairo. see if it sounds familiar. Does that sound familiar? You know what's interesting? What's so interesting to me is that, of course, we're about to reveal to you if you haven't already noticed that the similarities that are so striking

that to call them similarities is to insult the word same. Because this is sameness, not similarities. But I've definitely noticed how tempo can make such a huge difference. We've talked about evocation combinations. Because once you slow it down or speed it up a certain amount, the similarity starts, I think, get erased. I think our brains can't really process that. I also want to jump it on this because nowadays,

when you speed something up or slow something down, there's that button you can push in most of our applications like Serrano. Half-time, double-time? They keep the key of the music the same. But when you used to slow it down, it used to change the key. Right, right, right. Pitch and tempo were locked together. Exactly.

So state of independence that you just played it is both faster, but also higher. Like, it's lighter. And I bet you if you were to slow it down, it would sound more like Billy Jean. Lucky for you. You're saying we have the technology? But there's one more step in the process.

You already mentioned it. In 1982, Donna Summer covered this song, again, written by John Anderson from Yes and Van Gellas. And who produced it? It was produced by Mr. Quincy Jones. A lot of the same players were in the room as on the Thriller record in Dugu, Greg Philan Gaines,

who will be mentioning in a moment on keyboards, and Lewis Johnson on bass as well. And the background vocals were, the idea was, let's bring all of our celebrity friends in the room and do a big background vocal singing along. An idea that he would later bring into We Are the World.

We are the world. Right. But in this case, it was Stevie Wonder, Lionel Richie, Christopher Cross, Kenny Loggins, Dionne Warwick, Diane Cannon, the actress for some reason was there.

I wish she could blow. And Michael Jackson. I wish I could be in that freaking green room. That would be a fun green room. Michael McDonald was also there. Here's what that... Oh, you can't also Michael McDonald, bro. Michael McDonnell should have been the first name he said.

I erred. I apologize for my er. Oh, and also Michael McDonough. The err of my ways. And it sounded like this. That's Mr. Sweet Freedom. And here's the cover. It's identical. It's a cover, though.

That's not unexpected. So here is the Donna Summer version. I'm going to pitch it down five half steps. So we're going to go from the key of B to the key of F sharp. And now let's take that. And we're going to slow it down. and now layering it with Billy Jean. Indistinguishable because it is the same.

The same notes, the same rhythm. As Quincy himself said, the notes don't lie. Michael is as Machiavellian as they come. So what's the guitar doing on this song? Because just sitting right here, right now, thinking about it, I can't tell you what the guitar part even is. I'm sure you'll play it and I'll be like, oh, yes, that. So the guitar only comes in on the choruses.

So you first hear it on chorus one, and it plays this part. I'll give you some context with the baseline. Yeah, I might need context. It's just there when it goes to the four. And by the way, this is David Williams, and the part, he played on the demo, and then when it came time to re-record it

for the final version, they just couldn't quite capture the magic from the demo. So this guitar part, again, according to Anthony Marinelli, is from the original demo. So this is one of those pieces that carried it all the way through to the final. It's about to happen. Here it comes.

Wow. It's just one note. It's way down in the mix. Yep. It's one note. It's building its tension. Because it's just one note, dun, dun, dun,

it's insistent, kind of like a psycho stabbing. I was going to use the word paranoia, but we're on the same page. There's something terrifying. There's a paranoid song. There's something threatening about that. It's kind of slicing through like,

oh, mm-hmm, mm-mm. Wow, that's crazy. this very so deep in the mix and also, this is a song that got mixed something like 90 times before they went back to the second mix because

they were like, oh, you know what? We can't recapture what was there. It's almost like sometimes it happens in my profession. You'll do a draft and a revision and a revision and then at some point you're like, wow, we've gotten so far away from what made us laugh in the first draft and then you go back to like the second or third draft of it. There's a second part that he plays

in the second chorus. That's famous. We know that one. We love that part. We know that one. That's got more, it's more melodic. It's more of a riff. And it stands out more because everything else is, like he's just going, whoo! Yeah.

And you can kind of sing along to it, whereas the first one, you can't go, dun, dun, dun, done, done, done. Remember that part of Michael Jackson's. Oh, man, I want to hear that. But I will say, because we're famous for this on the show, if you just have the drums of that, you can't do you can actually make this a French touch song. All right, here we go.

Does that not kind of sound like Stardust, Cassius, Dun, dun, dun, da-da-da-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d. Junior Sanchez, hit us up. We will make that remix with you. I know I'm going to enjoy this next little part. We're talking about the synths. There are actually four different layers of the iconic intro synth part. So I'll play them for you one by one and build it all up.

It starts with this. This is the CS80. And here's the second one. More of a brass sound. Here's the third one. And there's one more. It's Michael Jackson himself. I'll just play Michael so you can hear just his part.

He is singing that interval. So it's two takes. He's layering his own stack. And it sounds like this. Then I'll bring back the synths. And then when we get to this part, it's a little bit imperfect and human. Why do we call that imperfect? I call it imperfect because I want to make sure on this show that we point out in these iconic songs that we have a lack of auto tune.

We have hitting the notes close enough. and by the way, in the mix, it gives it a little bit of wobble. Are you saying that these are... He's not quite hitting the note? Because to me, they sound good. But you might have a more trained ear than mine. So listen to the first two. You can hear him getting it slightly wrong the first time, the harmony,

and correcting himself on the second one. It's very subtle. Do you hear how those are different? Who? Who? Who? He goes up a half step. Uh-huh.

It's so subtle. But those are not the same. I do hear it. You're right. I hear that. And it's like he didn't get it. the first one, but he got the second one. And then the rest of them, he found it and he stays there. But they didn't go back and redo the first one because it wasn't the kind of clam or mistake

that caused the problem, if anything, in the mix layered with three other scents, four other synths on top. What's weird is I heard the difference, but that I thought that it was intentional. Yeah. And you thought it was not intentional. I wouldn't call that intentional. No, that sounds to my ear, I'm not Michael Jackson. But to my ear, I've been in the vocal booth millions of times and I've failed to get it and then gotten it. And that's what it sounds like. You know, and then you go back and you might redo or copy and paste. Yeah.

The good one over the bad one. I was going to say, I think that the level of nuance and subtlety between those are such that you would probably not have it in there if you just did it once and then just, you know, ran it across your screen. Yeah. You know, cut and pasting the whole way across. But with tape. That change wouldn't be there. With tape in the mix and time, you know, not really to burn. That's right.

with deadlines approaching for delivering a final record, they just decided, you hear now, do. Oh, I, yes. And then the rest of them, he stays up on the, I'll play it again. It's very small and subtle. Again, the only difference I think was that I thought that was all intentional.

So I was listening for a mistake, so to speak. Yeah. And I think you heard the difference and thought, not intentional. And by the way, you're probably right. And by the way, maybe we need a better word than mistake. Because what this is is a thing that happens in recording that you decide is contributing something that's worth keeping.

It's kind of like a not judgmental category. It's not good or bad. It's just like that happens. It's different. It's a difference. Across this repetitive section, because this goes through the whole song. It gives it a little variety maybe that has something subtle. Who's to say?

By the way, I didn't know that there were synthesizers underneath. I thought it was just him going, who, who. Like, I thought that was all him. and now I know that there's later... I think I thought the opposite. I think I was surprised... You thought it was all seen. Yeah.

I don't think I noticed he was there. Yeah. The story behind the sound you're hearing, this is really important. We mentioned both Anthony Marinelli and Bill Wolfe, or part of their contribution to the song is not simply coming up with

finding the right parts, the right notes to play, but he also, apparently, the story behind why he's even on this song, is that he was the Jackson's touring keyboard player. And one time at rehearsal, Michael had heard him dial in a specific sound on his Yamaha CS80 synthesizer,

which is a giant keyboard, very expensive keyboard. And dialing in a sound's a big deal, because in this era, you have these specialists that know how to get in, there are some machines have presets, but a lot of them don't have presets. You don't just buy the machine and have authorak sounds necessarily that you want to use. So he's dialing it in.

So he finds this patch, Michael Jackson remembers this sound. And then months go by, and he calls him in and says, I'm working on this new song that I'm working on, Billy Jean is not my lover. I guess that's the only lyric he had. And he asked Bill Wolfer to find that sound that he had done that one time sound check. Yeah.

It like, whatever. Minneapolis, who the hell knows where it was Houston. So Bill's like, I don't know what sign he's talking about. So he finds, he takes time, you know, whatever hours, finds something close. And he's like, is this it? Is this is it? And he finally lands on what we just heard. What can you tell us about the pre-chorus?

In the pre-chorus, we have a visit from our old friend from the Steely Dan episode. So that's right. Tom Scott is here with his Lyricon. And he is playing yet another example of an iconic part that you may have noticed, but wasn't sure what it was. It's Tom Scott on the Lyricon, and he's playing this. That's the people always told me. Yeah. I'll give you some whirly underneath it and add some other layers so you know context. I'll bring in some vocals. I always told me, I'll be careful who you love.

And be careful what to do. I could the lie become the truth. Great use the attention in a song. Wait, I think we've got to hit the meme here a little bit. What are those keyboards that are on the part before Tom jumps in there? So that's a Wurley. I believe that that is another unsung hero of all things Michael Jackson, which is Greg Philan Gaines.

His long music director, I believe, live, and he's on almost every song on Thriller and most of his records, in fact. Just a wonderful keyboard player, incredibly talented musician. famously taken off of writing credits for Don't Stop to You Get Enough. He wrote the entire bridge, Dun, dun, dun, done, done, done, done. Early versions of the 7-inch, you see his name in the publishing, and then they took it off.

Who did? Quincy. I think it was Michael who decided, yeah, I don't want to give them 10% anymore. Talk about Machiavellian. Speaking of tension, there's some great strings in the song, and I feel like that they definitely make it feel cinematic, almost unresolved in a good way. What's going on with the strings on, Billy Jean?

So the strings consist of violins, violas, and celli. That's right, I said it, chely. You're a way to say chelai. And I'll play them for you individually and then build the layer. Here are the violins. The violas, which is a harmonized line. And then underneath all of that is the one note, chelai, just doing the octave. Octave, octave.

And together they sound like this. We're going to go. Chalo, chel-o. Chalo. Leave that going. Smooth. Wow. Smooth as silk. But also, like, tortured.

It's like a tortured string moment. It feels like film noir. And it still bugs me to this day. Like, on every episode with strings, I don't think I've ever named a string player. They're never credited. We get string arrangement by Jerry Hay, Jeremy Lubbock. But those are performers whose names are lost to time. No one wrote them down.

Maybe the people who played on them have like social media out there somewhere we're like, I've never got credit for this. Yes, yes. But it's also pop. This is one time where we are begging you to reach out to the comments and say, hey, you left out this factoid. We'd love to know your names. And super importantly, there is this moment when the keyboards do what I call the scary part.

You know what? I'll show them isolated and then I'll give you the context. I wrote down the word scary. It's so beautiful and it's in dialogue with the Lyracons. So let me put those back together. And this is important to kind of call out because Quincy Jones and Michael Jackson were both arrangers.

And this is called either arrangement or orchestration. I just had an argument with my friend Brad about this because traditionally arrangement is deciding what instrument plays what part. But in the modern era, it's kind of, kind of, that's now a little bit called orchestration. And arrangement is like, what do you do across the song?

I'm much more linear. So different people use different words to mean these things. but Quincy Jones came up as an arranger and he has this genius for deciding what instrument should play what part in dialogue with something else maybe further along in the song we need to add a new idea

so by the second chorus we have a lot going on I'll play them for you now so just to point out in that section there's kind of five different things that come and go in dialogue interlocking we have the lyric on we have the string section with celli and viola and violins,

there's two or three different synths in there kind of coming and going like a Jupiter or a CS80, and that's just like eight seconds of music. And that's just because we're in the middle of the second chorus, which is two minutes long and takes us all the way to the end. And that's how you break it up and create this sort of audio interest when our backbone is this unchanging bass line and drumbeat.

Insane. Well, we've come to a part where I'm sure a lot of you have been waiting for we're going to listen to some isolated Michael Jackson vocals, and I think let's just start with verse number one. From a movie scene, I said, don't mind, but what do you mean? I'm the one. Here the snaps? Who would dance on the floor and around.

I'll play you the falsetto for that one line we just heard. Who would dance on the floor and around. About how many parts do you think that he would put in there? I've seen some things on some of these songs. It looks like eight or nine parts. This is not, this is the opposite of thriller. Go back and check out our thriller episode if you want big jazzy stacks. In this one, we have not only is that not double-tracked to my ears, at least.

I believe that that is single-tracked. I also have come to understand that to be a single take. So he had built this song in his head. He had done the demo. He knew it so well. Legendarily, he'd been driving around listening to it or maybe driven around. And someone, a motorist passing by pointed out that his car was on fire. I heard that story.

Yeah. So he definitely had put this song into a place when he hit the microphone for the take, for the real deal. He knew the song inside it out. He knew exactly what he wanted to do. I believe the whole thing is one take. I'm only hearing for moments like I just played with the falsetto, moments where they're layered in the verses, but a single take, I think. I don't think it's double-tracked. You know, let's talk about this lyric because this has been bugging me since I was a kid.

The lyric is, I am the one who will dance on the floor in the round. Why is it in the round? Now, when I hear it in the round, you know, my actor brain kicks in it. It's like, oh, this is theater in the room. Exactly. But the internet and other people are convinced that this is a euphemism for sex on the floor, in the round. What? Yeah.

In the round means, am I the only person who wrote that? Yeah, I mean, like, you know, squeaky clean Michael Jackson can't say that. But it would tie into the song a little bit better than just saying like, hey, do you want to dance as opposed to like, you know, she is accusing him of paternity here. Sure, and that is a requirement for that to. That's what I've been told. Okay. Now, my wife and I've only danced, and I told these are my kids, but I hear. I mean, listen, the round, I'd never thought of that explanation.

It would make sense. On the floor, in the round. But, I mean, I was always like, is he saying the word room weird? Yeah, I think when I was a kid, I didn't know what I would say. On the floor, in the realm. That's what I thought it was. But your explanation makes more sense. This may be one of those times where we'll continue to debate what the lyrics actually

mean. And it makes sense because this is a song that was clearly, as we heard in the demo, in his head before the lyrics were in his head. I'm going to keep going. As she calls to sing, then heavy hair turned with the ice that dreamed of being the one who would dance on the floor and around. Those snaps, too. It's so cool that they left those in. He decided to use them. Questlove said, anytime you listen to Michael Jackson, especially when you are lucky enough to have the stems, you will notice that he's got really loud snaps and really loud hand clas. He had big hands, apparently.

And that's not the only way he's indicating rhythm. All of the breaths and all of the like stutters. It's all rhythmic. It's sort of like James Brown-esque with melody. And I'm so glad you breathe this up because I feel like this is the beginning of really that style of singing for Michael. And I think that if we ever do another Michael episode,

we should probably go into like, you know, remember the time or smooth criminal when the, like that becomes like even more and more a part of his. his signature, but he's not there yet. Like at this point, he's just like, it's still got that staccatoed hit. Yeah. But it's not full on, you know, what it's going to become.

But some high percentage of sound we're hearing coming from Michael Jackson isn't like melodic, lyrical, like phonemes, you know, we're hearing an awful lot of just rhythmic stuff going on, which is a huge part of his sound. Something else we'll hear for the first time on this song, I believe, or one of the first times. We hear the he-he-he-he-he, which, you know, obviously becomes sort of a signature thing. It comes up in the pre-course. Can we hear a little bit of the pre-course?

And mother always told me, a big care for who you love, and be careful what to do. I just need to call attention to those O's because they're really strange when you isolate them. They're really more gas, right? And they're kind of all over the place. It's a cool choice.

Yeah, no, it is. It's building the tension, and it should be pointed out, by the way, that the song is in basically F-sharp, minor, perhaps Dorean mode. But in this moment, we have a, borrowed note. Here's where we are in the song. We're in the pre-chorus. We're taking a break from that 1-4 of the F-sharp the whole time. The rest of the song, the entire chorus, but we have these

two pre-chorus that go to six. They give us a change of pace. Change a pace from the one-four. And then at the very end, it goes to the five, which is that big tension moment, right? It's the dominant. Dun-dun-da-dun-dun-the-truth. In the Tom's, we were hearing the dumb-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun. And he hits one note that's not in the mode. The scale that we're supposed to be in. And what does that note? It's the la da da da da da da da that's an e. It's technically an e sharp, which any piano player can tell you

or any musician can tell you is not an existent note. There's no such thing as E goes directly to F. It's a half step in between. There's no black key. But that is technically a borrowed note from another chord. I'll play it for you again and point it out. And that contributes hugely to why this moment is so special and it jumps out of the song.

Because this note isn't anywhere else in the song. And be careful what to do. I become the truth. Hey, eh. It's the word lie. Yeah. Be careful what to do. Could the lie become the truth?

Hey, eh. So that just gives us this massive moment of tension. Yeah. And then we come back to the regular kind of riff, the one for, in the chorus. Like I said, it's cinematic. The whole thing is like, this is that point where it's like, and then into the chorus. You're breathless.

Yeah, I am. I'm totally breathless. Let's hear the chorus, my man. Billy Jean is not my love. She's just sick. who claimed that I'm the one But the kid is not my son And now I'll play the isolated harmony

And then I'll layer them The Billy James not my lover She's just a girl Who claims that I The kid is not my son It's interesting There's only harmony in the first part of that chorus And then when it repeats there is no harmony

I never noticed that before It's an interesting choice But what are some of the wonderful stuff that you hear in these stems that we'd ever heard because the song faded out? Yeah, the song fades out, but we've got another two minutes or so of content. We're not going to play all of it. But here are some of the fun moments after the fade. Sure. Let's hear him.

You know you ain't not my love. You know. That sounds like stuff he'd later use in bad. Yeah, that feels. You know. I was listening to that again. I never noticed that. You know you ain't.

You're like, he's like, I'm going to use that. You know you can't. He got cut out of this song. I'm going to use it for another song. He said, you know, Annie? And like, Annie. Annie, are you okay? Annie, are you okay?

Yeah, exactly. There's a little more. She is just a. She is just a. Here, I'll put that in the mix. She's just a. So it's kind of a call and response. his angry, Billy Jean is not my, she's just a, yeah.

And maybe he's not even sure if she's just a girl anymore because she might be, she might be taking them down. It's filling in all these gaps. This is that arrangement orchestration brain yet again. All right, luxury, now that we've heard the song, tell us how the splits break down. This should be interesting. 100% Michael Joe Jackson. Really?

Oh, yeah. He got Quincy off the song. He is 100% the songwriter of Billy Jean by Michael Jackson. A song by Michael Jackson, performed by Michael Jackson. One of four songs on the record that he wrote, that he gets soul songwriting credit for. Along with The Girl is Mine, beat it, and want to be starting something.

Oh, wow. Yeah. Want to be starting something. Amazing. It's easy to forget how many bangers are on this album. We can't talk about Billy Jane without getting into that historic Motown 25 performance. Motown 25 was this huge NBC special in 1983,

celebrating 25 years of the label with performances by legends like Smokey Robinson, Stevie Wonder, and Marvin Gay. Michael was asked to perform with the Jackson 5 and agreed to do it under the condition that he could perform Billy Jean. Let's watch this clip, but one of the things I love the most is that it begins with one of the most subtle yet hard disses in sibling history. Check this out. I love those songs. Those were magic moments with all my brothers, including Jermaine.

But, you know, those were good songs. I like those songs a lot, but especially I like. The new songs. For those who aren't watching, all of the other Jackson's walk away, they're waving, and then Michael delivers that infamous line, you know, like, I like the old times, I like the old songs, but especially I like the new songs.

And the audience goes crazy. I play a little bit of him doing the moonwalk at Motown 25. When people try to imitate Michael Jackson, this is the version that they're usually channeling. The fedora, the sequin jacket, the single white glove, the moonwalk, all of it. It's wild to think about how many artists and fans have tried to recreate this exact performance. But in some ways, Michael was himself trying to recreate a specific performance.

There are a couple of things that get brought up at this time. I'm going to bring up one of them. Watch this clip of Bob Fossey in the movie The Little Prince. This is Snake in the Grass. If you would like to take a trip to a star, the quickest transportation yet known to man is none other than us. naked the grass. I mean, we're sitting here watching the studio. You really owe to yourself to watch that clip alone on YouTube during our show

because you will see so many little things that I thought Michael had basically invented. But he's even dressed like what Michael is dressed like. Oh, absolutely. It's insane. The word inspired does not do justice to the level of influence that this particular scene and this particular dance had on specifically the Motown 25 performance. for the rest of his career. Yeah.

And it wasn't the only one because the other part of that performance that was so legendary is it was the public introduction, the larger public introduction of the famous moonwalk. Yeah. Which many people had never seen before. But Michael had himself seen when Jeffrey Daniel from Shalimar had done it on top of the pops earlier that same year. He called it the backslide. That was one of his signature moves.

Michael was apparently watching and hired Daniel to teach him to move. And gave him a lot of props over the years, hired him for many. other things, including to teach him his routine from smooth criminal, which Jeffrey Daniels credited as the choreographer for. That's amazing. Michael, as an artist, got lots of influence and inspiration from many sources. He's a sponge. And by the way, there are clips, because I can hear the comments revving up right now. There are clips of everybody from Lewis Jordan to some other famous black entertainers from like the 50s doing something that very much looks like the moonwalk. The dance goes back at least as far back to 1932 when Cab Calloway did The Buzz. And here's Bill Bailey

doing the backslide in 1955. So these dances have origins that go back probably before that. These are just early recordings on video. So Diallo, what would you say the legacy of Billy Jean is? Look, I mean, it's hard to understate the legacy of Billy

Gene. It gave us, in some ways, it gave us Michael. It gave us MTV. It broke down cultural barriers, color barriers. And I'll just go ahead and say it. One thing that doesn't get discussed much is the fact that it was actually Michael reworking Billy Jean for Pepsi

and that commercial campaign The We are the Pepsi generation. The one where his hair caught on fire? That's the one where his hair caught on fire. And that's the first time that you really hear to hear his biographers say that's his first real exposure to painkillers. That's his first exposure to plastic

reconstructive surgery and stuff. So it's weird that the song that ushered him in would also sort of lead directly to some of the things that ended up making, you know, fame a cage for him. I'm struck by the idea that, like, you can become so famous that it's, like, horrible and kind of like a detriment. It definitely allowed him to, you know, dive fully into art and never have to worry

about money again. But now that we know sort of like the whole story, you know, it does help launch some of the more tragic aspects of his life. And that's a little bit of a bummer of its legacy. But I will say, I feel like, for real, this is one of the most perfect pop songs. of all time. Yeah. Not to be duplicated, not to be replicated.

You know, Billy Jean, it's not just iconic. It sort of set the bar, I think, for what a pop song can be. And when you name what the top four pop songs of all time were, there's no question in my mind of all four of those. There's only really one that I want to continue listening to. I would completely agree. And listen, also what's interesting thinking about the legacy is how it transcends our personal experiences with the song are so specific, you know.

We talked about watching the video and being whatever age we were. But what's interesting to me is watching my son grow up. There's a handful of artists that he's found, not necessarily because I am playing record for him. He found Devo. He found Weird Al and he found Michael Jackson. And he found Billy Jean. And that was his favorite for like a year.

Each of those was like for a year the favorite. And it's just something that touches, it's so deep and resonates so deeply with the human psyche, the sounds of this song, the way he sings. There's an achingness to his vocal. which is so human and so raw. And it also harkens back to what I said earlier about, I didn't understand fully what he was singing about,

but I knew there was something emotional and human that I was really connecting to. And I think that's the case clearly globally. I think it transcends race, creed, religion, age, and serial number. I think it's one of those few artists that's going to be here pretty much as long as there are humans with ears listening. And it's shocking to know that he left us only, you know, at age 50.

I know. That shocks me. That's incredible. He would be pushing 70 if he were still alive. Can I say real quick? It's funny, because we're both dads. My son had his Michael Jackson face, and he actually wrote a Michael Jackson song. He did.

Called You're Scared of Me? Which I definitely have on videos. Oh, right. And maybe one day we'll make that song. Bad, dangerous. You're scared of me. Yeah. It was funny that he figured out that was a natural.

You scared of me. You scared of me. I think Michael's here to stay. All right, luxury. It's time for one more song. This is the segment where we share a deep cut. or Hidden Jim with you, the One Song Nation, and with each other. All right, y'all, let's start with you.

What is your one more song this week? Man, well, maybe because I'm feeling 80s, you know, boogie for the lack of a better term. I'm comfortable with the term boogie. I think that boogie goes back to the 20s. It just means a place for you to dance. But ever since the 70s, it was adopted as like this, you know, term for like sort of late 70s funk into the early 80s.

A lot of songs would apply. Some of the songs we talked about today. One of my favorite is by a Nigerian artist named Steve Monite. I think I pronounced it that right. Mo Knight, yeah. Steve Mo Knight. And this song is, yeah, you guessed it. It's only you.

And I wanted to have this be my one more song today. And here's a snippet. I mean, I think, you know, whenever I hear this song, I always, for a split second, I have to think, oh, what song is this? Because I think Taman Powell has done a cover of it and Frank Ocean did a cover of it. But this song always comes back around. That's only you. All right, Luxury, what is your one more song this week?

Well, listen, this one just popped in my head because I played it on my radio show, KCRW, every Friday night from 10 to midnight right after Henry Rollins. This is The Cure doing a version of their song, jumping someone else's train. But it's called Desperate Journalist in ongoing meaningful review situation. Robert Smith from The Cure wrote this after Paul Morley wrote a scathing review of an early Cure single.

So he wrote a song that changed all the lyrics to the scathing reviews lyrics. Word salad. So I love it. That's a Cure song called Everything's Coming to a Grinding Hall. But he replaced all the lyrics with the words from this skating review about the QR, written by Paul Morley of the enemy. That backstory is awesome.

As always, if you have an idea for one more song, you can find us on Instagram and TikTok. You can find me on Instagram at Diallo, D-I-A-L-L-O, and on TikTok at Diallo-L-L-O-R-R-L-R-Y. And you can find me on Instagram at L-U-X-X-U-X. And on TikTok at Luxury X-X. And you can follow our podcast on Instagram and TikTok at at One-Song podcast. For exclusive content, you can also watch full episodes of One-S-S-U-S-R-E-S-R-E. on YouTube and Spotify, just search for One Song Podcasts, and we'd love it if you like and subscribe. Also, be sure to check out the One Song Spotify playlist for all the songs we discuss in our episodes.

You can find the link in our episode description. And if you've made it this far, you're officially part of the One Song Nation. Show us some love, give us five stars, leave a review, and send this episode to a fellow music fan. It really helps keep this show going. All right, luxury, help me in this thing. I'm producer, DJ, songwriter, musicologist, and every Friday night from 10 to midnight, KCRW DJ, luxury. And I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes DJ, Della Riddell. And this is one song. We'll see you next time. This episode is produced by Melissa Duanyas. Our video editor

is Casey Simonson, mixing by Michael Hart and engineering by Eric Hicks. This show is executive produced by Kevin Hart, Mike Stein, Brian Smiley, Eric Eddings, Eric Eddings, Eric Wilde, and Leslie Guant.