"Billie Jean" (Michael Jackson)

I was never a huge fan of Michael Jackson.
I had the Thriller album, just like every other living human being on earth in 1983.  But, even at the time, I didn't buy the hype.
Don't get me wrong; the guy was one hell of an entertainer and, by all accounts, a perfectionist who made sure every note, move, etc. was the best it could be before presenting it to his fans.  But calling him "The King of Pop" always made me bristle, especially as his life got weirder and the space between new albums grew ever longer.  Had someone bestowed that title upon Stevie Wonder or Paul McCartney, I would have been more apt to agree—both are prolific songwriters and multi-instrumentalists who somehow found extra time to write massive hits for other people, too.  
But peruse the credits of Thriller sometime if you still have a copy: half of it was written by someone other than Jackson (particularly, Rod Temperton from the band Heatwave).  And it's Quincy Jones's fingerprints that are all over the record (and Off the Wall, too, for that matter).
I mean, if his royal moniker was earned because of record sales alone, would that make The Eagles "The Kings of Rock"?  (If it does, smother me with a pillow in my sleep.)
Anyway, from the get-go, I gravitated to the more R&B-flavored tracks on Thriller (think: "P.Y.T." and "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'") than to the slick, poppy stuff.  (I still think "Beat It" is one of the most asinine songs ever recorded.)
And even though it was the big, mainstream hit from the album, I especially liked "Billie Jean," one of the few tracks on the album credited solely to Jackson.  Whereas the rest of the record felt big for the sake of being BIG, with its endless cameos and cinematic flourishes, "Billie Jean" was lean and mean.  I still prefer it to every other song in Jackson's catalog because of its rawness.
Beneath that pulsing heartbeat rhythm and insistent bassline lies a seedy, semi-autobiographical tale of a delusional fan who had convinced herself that Jackson was the father of her child and kept sending him one disturbing letter after another.  You hear the fear, fire, and anger in his voice as he sings about this woman.  There's no posturing.  There are no delusional pretenses of being a smooth criminal, a horror flick star, or some kind of healer of mankind.  It's just real emotion over a spare groove, and it jams.
Incidentally, even as a little kid, I always associated the song with the Hall & Oates track "I Can't Go for That (No Can Do)."  I could never put my finger on why exactly.  
But, apparently, Jackson told Daryl Hall during the recording of the charity single "We Are the World" (1985) that he used to practice his dance moves to "I Can't Go for That" and admitted to borrowing the bassline for "Billie Jean."
As Hall told Mix Magazine in 2006, "Michael Jackson once said directly to me that he hoped I didn't mind that he copped that groove. That's okay; it's something we all do."