’93-’13: They Don’t Care About Us, Michael Jackson

A series highlighting great (but critically-ignored) songs from the past twenty years.

Enough is enough of this garbage. For a man who was perceived as a sickly-sweet, loving soul, Michael Jackson sure had some vicious, paranoid songs: for every Heal the World there were four others calling for insurrection.

Jackson certainly had his finger on the pulse when it came to racial inequality and social injustice, especially for a man who had also supposedly drifted off to a fantasy Neverland years ago. They Don’t Care About Us is the best-known example of Jackson’s righteous fury. The lyrics caused major controversy at the time of release (March 1996), mainly due to cries of anti-Semitism regarding the couplet: “Jew me, sue me, everybody do me/ Kick me, kike me, don’t you black-or-white me.” Obviously Jackson went overboard in defending these charges, stating: “I am the voice of the accused and the attacked. I am the voice of everyone. I am the skinhead, I am the Jew, I am the black man, I am the white man. I am not the one who was attacking.” While a black man yelling “I am the skinhead, I am the Jew” might not be a PR dream, he is correct to defend himself so vehemently – a cursory glance at the lyrics shows this to be an angry impassioned song about injustice.

Controversy aside, even if this was a track about putting Micro Machines at the bottom of your stairs to foil invaders, it’d still be an amazing track, due to Jackson’s minimalism, rhythm-driven production, which actually sounds more cutting-edge in 2013 then it did in 1996.