"Maybe that was too personal for a party – it was for me," Jackson said of "She's Out of My Life," the moment of ballad heartbreak amid Off the Wall's disco celebration. The last of a mind-boggling seven singles from Thriller, it hit Number Four on the charts. The weirdness of "Thriller" didn't end there: While the song was being mixed, Jackson's eight-foot-long boa constrictor, Muscles, slithered across the console. The track took the percolating-funk feel of Off the Wall to a grander, more theatrical level, with its supernatural sound effects – howling werewolves and creaking coffins – and the creepy-crawly narration of actor Vincent Price, a friend of Jones' then-wife, Peggy Lipton, who nailed his part in two takes. "Something in my head just said, 'This is the title.' You could visualize it at the top of the Billboard charts." Temperton also revised the lyrics to take in Jackson's love of horror movies. "The next morning I woke up and I just said this word ," Temperton says. Written by Rod Temperton, the song was first called "Starlight" until Quincy Jones asked Temperton for another title. The epic video for the title track of Jackson's bestselling album has become so iconic that it's easy to underestimate the song itself, one of the strangest pieces of music he ever released. The song was also strangely prophetic: In the decades after its release, the world saw how truly off the wall Jackson's life could become. Temperton, who arranged the rhythm and vocal tracks, re-created the dance-floor vibe of his disco band Heatwave, and the song's growling funk synths were partly played by jazz and fusion keyboardist George Duke. "Off the Wall" was an ode to "party people night and day." It invited listeners to "hide your inhibitions/Gotta let that fool loose deep inside your soul" by hitting the dance clubs and "livin' crazy, that's the only way." But its succulent groove, swathed in Jackson's sumptuous overdubbed harmonies, was as smoothly seductive as the vision of dance music in his head. He didn't even say the word 'funky,' he said 'smelly.' So that was Quincy's nickname for him: Smelly." His loose, playful side is on display during the title track, written by Temperton. "In the studio, Michael was silly and fun-loving," recalled Rod Temperton, who began working with Jackson during the late Seventies. But as Jermaine Jackson recalled in his book You Are Not Alone, neither his dad, Joseph Jackson, "nor Mr. He shrugged his shoulders and just sang the line 'There's that anguish and there's that doubt.' And I believed him." The single, buoyed by a dreamily baroque arrangement gilded with flute and chimes, reached Number Two on the Billboard chart instead of the Jackson 5's by-then-customary Number One. " 'What's this word mean, "anguish"?' he asked me. "I recall him asking about one of the lines," Davis said. Davis was worried that 11-year-old Michael might not understand the pain in the lyrics.
Written by Clifton Davis, who would perform it at Jackson's funeral in 2009, "Never" set heartbroken lyrics to a sparkling melody. Looking back at the Jackson 5 era years later, Jackson said that his "three favorite songs from those days are 'Never Can Say Goodbye,' 'I'll Be There' and 'ABC.' " The man had good ears for the boy's best work. Said Riley, "We don't just add music or instruments just to be adding."
I guess we gotta use what we love.' " The resulting tune mixes bright strings (a Jackson favorite) with one of the starkest beats he had ever sung over, a sharp contrast to Quincy Jones' rich, colorful orchestration.
Let me change that whole bottom and put a new floor in there.' He said, 'Try it. If this is the right tune, I can utilize what you have in your singing. "The music didn't move Michael," co-producer Teddy Riley recalled. " Dangerous and HIStory were more Michael's life story." A product of Jackson switching up his sound to keep up with the R&B of the Nineties, the title track to Dangerous is stark and driving, with vocals that tilt between anger and terror, and lyrics about lust passing over into a "web of sin." The track evolved out of a Bad-era outtake called "Streetwalker" that he revisited and retitled during the Dangerous sessions with co-writer Bill Bottrell. Off the Wall and Thriller and Bad were more entertainment," recalls longtime Jackson engineer Bruce Swedien.
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