"Leave Me Alone" | ||||||||
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Single by Michael Jackson | ||||||||
from the album Bad | ||||||||
Released | February 1989 | |||||||
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Recorded | 1987 | |||||||
Genre | Funk | |||||||
Length | 4:40 | |||||||
Label | Epic | |||||||
Writer(s) | Michael Jackson | |||||||
Producer(s) |
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Michael Jackson singles chronology | ||||||||
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"Leave Me Alone" is a single by American artist Michael Jackson. The song was featured on Jackson's seventh studio album, Bad (1987), and was its eighth single in February 1989, but was released outside of the United States and Canada. "Leave Me Alone" was recorded during the original album sessions but the song only appeared on the CD editions of Bad as a bonus track, as well as on the 2001 cassette edition. The song was written and composed by Jackson and produced by Quincy Jones (with Jackson serving as co-producer).
Internationally, the song was a success, peaking at number one and two in Ireland and the United Kingdom respectively and reaching the top 10 in Belgium, New Zealand and Spain. "Leave Me Alone" was generally well received by contemporary music critics. A short film was released for the song. In the film, Jackson pokes fun at the false rumors about him such as the stories about him purchasing the bones of "The Elephant Man" and his cosmetic surgeries. The short film was the recipient of a Grammy Award in 1990 for Best Short Form Music Video. Despite the success of the single, the song never appeared on any of Jackson's world concert tours.
"Leave Me Alone" was a response to negative and false stories about Jackson that frequently appeared in the media and tabloids post-1986 after the success of Thriller. Beginning in 1986, the tabloids began to publish false stories about Jackson, one of the first being a story claiming that Jackson slept in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber to slow the aging process. A picture leaked out to the media of him lying down in a hyberbaric chamber at a hospital he visited. An unknown person took the picture of Jackson while he was testing out the chamber out of curiosity.
When Jackson bought a pet chimpanzee named Bubbles, the media viewed it as evidence of Jackson's increasing detachment from reality. It was also reported that Jackson had offered to buy the bones of Joseph Merrick, the "Elephant Man"; Jackson stated that the story was "a complete lie." These stories inspired the nickname "Wacko Jacko", which Jackson acquired the following year, and would come to despise. Another frequent response from the media was about Jackson's plastic surgery. Jackson's manager said of the media's criticism towards the topic, "So many terrible things have been written. Okay, so he had his nose fixed, and the cleft — big deal. I got news for you, my nose has broke five times. It's been fixed twice. Who gives a shit? Who cares? Elvis had his nose done. Marilyn Monroe had her nose done, had her breasts done? Everybody's had it done."