Black or White is a single by American singer-songwriter Michael Jackson. The song was released by Epic Records on November 11, 1991 as the first single from Jacksons eighth studio album, Dangerous. It was written, composed and produced by Michael Jackson and Bill Bottrell. Black or White was written, composed and produced by Michael Jackson and Bill Bottrell, and was picked as the first single from the album Dangerous. An alternate version was first heard by Sony executives on a plane trip to Neverland, as the third track of the promotional CD acetate. It began to be promoted on radio stations the first week of November 1991 in New York and Los Angeles. Black or White was officially released one week later, on November 5, 1991. The song has elements of dance, rap and hard rock music such as Bill Bottrells guitars and Jacksons vocal style. This song is played in the key of E major, with Jacksons vocal spanning from E4 to B5, and its tempo is measured at 115 BPM. The songs main riff is often falsely attributed to Guns N Roses guitarist Slash. His guitar work is featured in the opening skit for the songs track on the album. The music video for Black or White was first broadcast on MTV, BET, VH1, and Fox (giving them their highest Nielsen ratings ever) on November 14, 1991. Along with Jackson, it featured Macaulay Culkin, Tess Harper, and George Wendt. The video was directed by John Landis, who previously directed Thriller. It was choreographed by Vincent Paterson. It premiered simultaneously in 27 countries, with an audience of 500 million viewers, the most to ever watch a music video. The first few minutes of the video featured an extended version of the songs intro, during which an 11-year old kid (Macaulay Culkin) is dancing to rock music in his bedroom at night. This attracts the attention of his father (George Wendt), who furiously orders him to stop playing the music and go to bed. After his father storms out and slams the door behind him (causing a Michael Jackson poster on the door to fall off and its glass frame to smash), the boy complies by setting up large speaker cabinets (with levels of LOUD, LOUDER, and ARE YOU NUTS!?!, respectively; with the dial turned up all the way to ARE YOU NUTS!?!) behind his fathers reclining chair, donning leather gloves and sunglasses, strapping on a Wolfgang guitar and playing a power chord, and telling the father to Eat this!. The sound then shatters and destroys the house windows and sends his father (seated in the chair) halfway around the world, where the actual song begins.The kids mother (Tess Harper), comments that his father will be very upset when he gets back. The album version of the song does not feature Culkins nor Wendts voice; they are replaced by voice actors performing a similar intro. The boys father crashes in Africa, and Jackson sings Black or White, surrounded by various cultures scene-by-scene. The video shows scenes in which African hunters begin dancing by using moves from West African dance, with Jackson following their moves and them mirroring his; as do, in sequence, traditional Thai dancers, Plains Native Americans, a woman from India and a group of Russians, (wearing Ukrainian clothing and dancing Hopak). Jackson walks through visual collages of fire (defiantly declaring I aint scared of no sheets; I aint scared of nobody), referring to KKK torch ceremonies before a mock rap scene shared with Culkin and other children. The group collectively states, Im not gonna spend my life being a color. The final verse is performed by Jackson on a large sculpted torch, which the camera pans out to reveal as the Statue of Liberty. Jackson is seen singing on Lady Libertys torch surrounded by other famous world edifices including The Giza Sphinx, Hagia Sophia, Pamukkale, The Parthenon, Taj Mahal, St. Basils Cathedral, Pyramids of Giza, Golden Gate Bridge, Big Ben and the Eiffel Tower. At the end of the song, different people, including model Tyra Banks, dance as they morph into one another (shown as talking heads). This technique, previously executed without digital assistance in the Godley & Creme video for Cry, known as morphing, had been previously used only in films such as Willow and Terminator 2. The morphing visual effects were created by Pacific Data Images.
Posted on: Fri, 28 Mar 2014 20:50:42 +0000
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