(Funk/dance/pop)
Words and music by Michael Jackson
4/4 time signature/Key D major/Tempo moderately bright
Chords C/D-D-C/D-D
Single released May 8th 1983 (USA 5 UK 8)
(Instrumentation)
Electronic drums/Electric guitar/Bass guitar/Brass/synthesizer/Male vocals/Multiple female backing vocals/Sand shaker/Claps
Song structure
Intro (instrumental)/Chorus-Verse 1/Chorus-Verse 2/Chorus-Verse 3/Chorus-Chorus + ad lib/Chorus/Chorus + ad lib repeat and fade
This song was wrote in anger with a attack at the press and other people who gave him a hard time with spreading rumours or people who took advantage of his misunderstood nature, which you can hear with aggressive hypnotic bass line driving the song, the passion and aggression that is put in to the lead vocal is evident throughout the track seem more forceful the way he is projecting the lyric. With lines of “Beat it, beat it” in the chorus telling people in the real world to go away from him and leave him alone and stop putting him down, “They eat you off, “you’re a vegetable” I think he is saying that people i.e. The press can say/print whatever they want about you, but you can’t do anything about it, so makes you feel powerless like a vegetable.
The track starts with a drum fill (pick up) with two quavers and a crochet then moves in to 4-4 time. Bass and snare drum playing a rhythm of crochet + crochet for beats 1 and 2, then semi quaver + quaver + semi quaver + crochet for beats 3 and 4, the hi-hat plays four semi quavers on beats 1, also claps on beats 2 and 4, the drum sound is very electronic and the hi-hat has lots of reverb and E.Q on it.
The bass guitar plays the same riff all the way through keeping the drive of the song along with the drums, apart when it drops out in the second ad-lib near end of the track. Electric guitar plays short lines with call and response technique used in the high then low register of the guitar that cuts out for first half of the verses and choruses uses this all way through the track apart from after the fourth chorus when a eight bar solo repeats a different phrase and is moved further forward in the sonic field. The vocals open up with an ascending melody line singing “got to be starting something” which is also the chorus of the song, lots of backing vocals in the track singing “yeh yeh” in the verses and joining in with the main vocals singing a major fifth above Michaels vocals, at the end of the track in the last chorus + ad-lib part the backing vocals sing nonsensical lyrics in a African chant style singing (ma ma se, ma ma sa, ma ma coo sa) lots of call and response style with the main vocals and backing vocals.
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