Ghosts (Michael Jackson song)
| "HIStory"/"Ghosts" | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
||||||||
| Single by Michael Jackson | ||||||||
| from the album Blood on the Dance Floor: HIStory in the Mix | ||||||||
| Released | July 30, 1997 | |||||||
| Format |
|
|||||||
| Recorded | 1994 | |||||||
| Genre |
Pop, R&B, house ("HIStory" original/remix) New jack swing ("Ghosts") |
|||||||
| Length | 4:01 ("HIStory" radio edit) 6:37 ("HIStory" original album version) 8:00 ("HIStory" remix album version) 3:50 ("Ghosts" radio edit) 5:13 ("Ghosts" album version) |
|||||||
| Label | Epic | |||||||
| Writer(s) | Michael Jackson, James Harris III, Terry Lewis ("HIStory") Michael Jackson, Teddy Riley ("Ghosts") |
|||||||
| Producer(s) |
Michael Jackson, Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis ("HIStory") Michael Jackson, Teddy Riley ("Ghosts") |
|||||||
| Michael Jackson singles chronology | ||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
"HIStory"/"Ghosts" is a double A-side single from Michael Jackson's 1997 remix album Blood on the Dance Floor: HIStory in the Mix. The original version of "HIStory" was released as a track on Jackson's 1995 studio album HIStory, but was never released as a single. "Ghosts" was a brand new recording. "HIStory" was composed by Michael Jackson, James Harris III and Terry Lewis before it was remixed by Tony Moran in 1997. The original version contained many historic audio clips and samples. The remix does not have the audio clips and samples.
"Ghosts" was written, composed and produced by Michael Jackson and Teddy Riley in 1997. Commentators made observations about the paranoid lyrics, a common theme in Jackson's work. The double A-side was promoted with a music video for each song. "HIStory" was set in a nightclub, in a futuristic era, and recalled Jackson's filmography. "Ghosts" was a five-minute clip taken from the much longer film of the same name. The song would become a top five hit in the UK and Italy, but did not chart as highly elsewhere.
"HIStory" was originally written and composed by Michael Jackson, James Harris III and Terry Lewis in 1995. It was the thirteenth track on the studio album HIStory, but was not released as a single. The song sampled multiple musical compositions and historical audio quotes, all of which were dispersed throughout the track. Early in the track, one even included quotes from an interview with a young Michael Jackson from 1970. Musical compositions sampled include "Beethoven Lives Upstairs" and "The Great Gate of Kiev" from Pictures at an Exhibition. In reissues of the album, the Pictures at an Exhibition piece was replaced by a similar improvised orchestra piece, but the original sample was used in Jackson's live performances in the HIStory Tour. Audio quotes sampled were the "Charles Lindbergh Report" by Lowell Thomas, a report on Hank Aaron, "Robert Kennedy Eulogy" by Ted Kennedy, "Farewell to Baseball" by Lou Gehrig, "Greetings to the Children of England" by Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret, quotes from Muhammad Ali, Thomas Edison, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream".
...
Wikipedia