5 Beat it

(Pop/rock)

Words and music by Michael Jackson

4/4 time signature/Key E minor/Tempo moderately fast

Single released February 14^th 1983 (USA 1 UK 3)

(Instrumentation)

Synthesizer/Bass guitar/electric guitars/Drums

Song structure

Verse 1x2/chorus 1/verse 2x2/Chorus 2x9

This song is about gang violence on the streets of the USA at the time at really didn’t affect Michael directly but still showed concern towards the problem by writing a song about it. The line “don’t you ever come around here, don’t want to see your face you better disappear” were talking about gang territory and not go into the rivals areas because there would be trouble. “It doesn’t matter who’s wrong or right just beat it” I think the message there is, when confronted by someone no matter the situation, be the better man and just walk away from the issue. Also the song smashed its way through the racial barriers that were still evident at the time in the 1980s, some radio stations would only play white music, but because Michael and Quincy Jones had Eddie Van-Halen playing the solo on the song a popular New York radio station WPLJ who were a white music station at the time started playing it, there were numerous protests but the song with lots of airtime ended up changing people’s train of thought and appreciate the music rather than the colour of the skin. MTV were playing the music video twice an hour which was 14 minutes long, almost 50% of every hour was for Thriller, everybody knew about Thriller. And the amazing thing is, that it sounds as fresh to this day 28 years after the release, and not aged like most other music videos do as technology progresses through the years.   

Track starts with synthesizer with resonating sound playing long notes swirling left and right for eight bars, then the electric drums come in playing a mix of crochet notes on the beat with bass drum for beats 1/2/3 then snare drum on beat 4, in the second time round of the sequence the drums miss beat four and put it on second quaver on “and” of beat four the hi-hat is playing closed on the beats but sounds distant in the mix, the bass drum has reverb and delay on it and is central but low down in the stereo field and the snare has E.Q on it to sound snappy and bright and is further forward and to the right in the mix  also there is claps at the same time to the left. The bass and electric guitar play the same riff in unison in the chorus ascending then quickly descending at the end of the line, and in the verses play the same rhythm as each other, the synthesizer plays long sustained notes the dynamic is greater in the choruses and higher up in the stereo field, lower in the verses. The main vocals are quite forced to emphasize the message of the song which is about gang violence using call and response style for the especially when singing the title “beat it, beat it” in the choruses. Just before the guitar solo there is a instrumental build up with the guitar building up with short motif’s, then sounds like someone knocking on a door, then guitar solo bursts into life using techniques such as; Tapping/hitting harmonics with distortion so they scream out more forcefully/use of the whammy bar/great use of long and short notes, then repeats chorus a few times and fades out.