It isn’t scary, but neither is Thriller. It’s hard to make a song scary in a horror kind of way without a scary video to accommodate it. Michael Jackson has, however, managed to once again create a song that is truly spectacular. It’s actually a musical and conceptual recomposition of Ghosts, evident by the fact that their verses are quite similar and hinted at by the fact that they play-out one after the other on the Blood On The Dance Floor album. It’s an awesome set, but this song is better. There’s just no matching Michael Jackson on the chorus.

“Is it scary for you,” it goes; a question phrased in a way I can’t make grammatical sense of. A “too” before “scary” would fix it. A “to” instead of “for” would be even better. As is, it sounds like a lyrical mistake on what is otherwise a masterpiece. You could say the music, a rhapsody by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, is overproduced, but I think it’s a perfect fit to Michael Jackson’s epic vocal performance. He sings, screams, hoos and makes his signature hiccup noises, projecting his voice to the point of hoarseness, in an amazing showcase of musical magic.

He’s a pop legend with a world of spectators, many of whom view him as not much more than a freak. If he’s been holding his feelings in all these years, he’s finally letting them out. “I’m gonna be exactly what you wanna see,” he says before morphing into an uglier version of the Thriller monster, “And if you want to see eccentric oddities, I’ll be grosteque before your eyes.” If you want a freak show, in other words, you got one. It’s the coda, when a lonely piano plays a haunting melody over enchanting strings, that will put a chill up your spine.

my rating : 5 of 5

1997