"Tabloid Junkie" | ||||
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Song by Michael Jackson | ||||
from the album HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I | ||||
Released | 1995 | |||
Format | CD, digital download | |||
Recorded | 1994 | |||
Genre | Dance-pop, electro, new jack swing | |||
Length | 4:32 | |||
Label | Epic | |||
Songwriter(s) | Michael Jackson, James Harris III, Terry Lewis | |||
Producer(s) | Michael Jackson, Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis | |||
HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I track listing | ||||
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Music video | ||||
"Tabloid Junkie (Audio)" on YouTube | ||||
Audio sample | ||||
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"Tabloid Junkie" is a pop song performed by American recording artist Michael Jackson. The song appeared as the eleventh track on Jackson's ninth studio album, entitled HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I, which was released in 1995 as a two-disc set. The song was written, composed, and produced by Michael Jackson, Jimmy Jam (James Harris III) and Terry Lewis.
The song received generally positive reviews from music critics. "Tabloid Junkie" is a pop-rock song, with lyrics that pertain to media bias and negative coverage of rumors about Jackson and his personal life, similar to previous songs recorded by Jackson. "Tabloid Junkie" is the seventh song on HIStory: Past, Present And Future, Book I to be aimed at the media.
Similarly to "Leave Me Alone" (1987), "Why You Wanna Trip on Me" (1991) and numerous fellow HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I tracks, "Tabloid Junkie", co-written by Jackson, shows Jackson's dissatisfaction with the media, particularly the tabloids, because of the bias and negative media coverage of false rumors and the 1993 child sexual abuse accusations made against him. Ever since the late 1980s, Jackson and the press did not have a good relationship. In 1986, the tabloids ran a story claiming that Jackson slept in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber to slow the aging process, with a picture of him lying down in a glass box; Jackson stated that the story was untrue. When Jackson bought a pet chimpanzee Bubbles, the media viewed it as evidence of Jackson's increasing detachment from reality.
It was reported that Jackson had offered to buy the bones of Joseph "The Elephant Man" Merrick; Jackson stated that the story was false. These stories inspired the nickname "Wacko Jacko", which Jackson acquired the following year, and would come to despise. Jackson stopped leaking untrue stories to the press, so the media began making up their own. In 1989, Jackson released the song and music video "Leave Me Alone", a song about his perceived victimization at the hands of the press. The video shows Jackson poking fun at both the press and himself. In the video, there are newspapers with bizarre headlines, Jackson dancing with the bones of "The Elephant Man", and an animated nose with a scalpel chasing it across the screen.