Thinking Twice About Billie Jean

Yet there is more to say about “Billie Jean.” In this book, I look closely at the lyrics, first, to examine their poetic value in a reading that takes Jackson seriously as an artist, and second, to see them as prophetic in that the struggle or contest depicted in Billie Jean prefigures Jackson’s real-life fight against claims of sexual misconduct and the media bias that fed them. Such lyrics as “the lie becomes the truth” and “law was on her side” anticipate tabloid slanders and prosecutorial bias in Jackson’s life.

My goal is to examine the lyrics of Billie Jean as a poem and a prophecy, and further, to see the entire phenomenon of Billie Jean–lyrics, dance, performance, and short film– as revealing central and powerful dynamics that shaped Jackson’s life and art. Billie Jean is an important nexus. The song was born, as Quincy Jones said, from a “deep place” within Michael Jackson, and is a window into the values and beliefs closest to his heart, providing a bridge to his more introspective later work.