People always be messin' with me, and just keep pushing and pushing and not taking it seriously that I will mess you up! Well, now you've done it. Ladies and gentlemen, please witness BEAT IT 2008 WITH FERGIE.

That's the name of this song! BEAT IT 2008 WITH FERGIE. It's not "Beat It (2008 Remix featuring Fergie)" or "Beat It (Completely Beaten Mix with Fergie)". It's all right there, 2008 With Fergie.And my hope for the new year had been 2008 With No Fergie.

I had mentioned that they were doing a 25-anniversary re-release of the album in my last post on the subject, and sure, one expects the requisite Kanye West remix of Billie Jean, but who knew that things would get this dire? I did. I knew. And now I have to share my pain with you.

I will spare you all the reasons Fergie is horrible. It's not just the man-hands or the meth problem or the (admitted!) incontinence on stage or the fact that she turned what had formerly been at least a semi-credible hip hop group into a laughing stock. It's not merely her stint in Wild Orchid. There are so many things wrong with Fergie. But the latest indignity is that she's completely excised any trace of Eddie Van Halen from Beat It, and for what. For what?

(Update: That's not actually true. Eddie is still in there. I just hadn't been able to listen far enough along to hear his guitar solo.)

It doesn't matter who's wrong or right.

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...over on MetaFilter, they have never heard of New Jack Swing, and think Living Colour was an R&B group. Now I can understand why they flamed the shit out of me for suggesting the site should have a white background. It would have been too redundant. (In the interim, that thread on MetaTalk has officially become an in-joke.)

Here, then, a list of things that are indistinguishable:

Poison

Stain

No Diggity: The Very Best of Blackstreet

The Best of Parliament: Give Up the Funk

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I was surprised how much reaction I got to Twittering yesterday about the 25th anniversary of the release of Michael Jackson's "Thriller". (The actual anniversary was December 2, if I remember correctly.)

Thriller

One of the best ways I've seen to show people how much Michael was on fire during the creation of that album is to play the demo version of Billie Jean, which he made in his home studio.

Billie Jean (home demo from 1981)

There's also been some pretty good articles written lately. The requisite press release about an upcoming re-release of the album, and then a great Telegraph story about its recording.

I've been following the stories about the making of this record for decades now (it was a famously tortured process, during which Michael actually decided to completely restart the effort while halfway through), and I am surprised at how deliberate so many of the decisions about the record were. Granted, some of this is revisionist, like George Lucas asserting that he had a great mystical plan for Star Wars when it was created, but a lot of it is obviously not just a simple retcon, because the proof is in the music itself. That clip of Billie Jean is the best example.

Oh, and I would be remiss if I didn't mention this quote, about Quincy Jones coming up with the really loud synth fanfare at the beginning of the song "Thriller":

It was late in the evening one night when we were working, and Quincy came to us. We all knew how Thriller was going, they were trying to get Vincent Price, they were doing all this stuff, but he wanted this huge chord sequence - he said, 'There's this sound that I've got in my head, there's this underground, this new artist, that nobody's ever really heard of but he's great, he's hot, he's got this great song.' And he pulled out the album and it was Prince, '1999'. And you know the opening sound on that? Duh-da da, Dur-duh-duh? Well that was the sound - that big, bitey chord sound at the opening of '1999' - he wanted that, but bigger, for Thriller.

Uh huh.

Update: Since Garth hadn't heard it in a while, I added in the album version of Billie Jean, as well as the instrumental. The part that still kicks my ass is the amount of space in the drums at the opening. Genius.

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What video game is your personal Game of the Year? 
Submitted by SimpleNate.

I'm pretty sure it's either Super Mario Galaxy or Portal, even though I've never played Galaxy and only played Portal for five minutes. Hard to believe Wii Sports was a year ago.

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Absolutely astounding how much Alicia Keys has matured as a songwriter on her latest album, "As I Am". Of course this is the one that was custom0made for me -- it's got a great lift of the piano part from the outro to "Purple Rain", along with the classic Purple Rain chord transition, and it's produced by Timbaland. And the video's got Common as Alicia's boyfriend. What's not to love?

Music from the Motion Picture "Purple Rain"

Prince & the Revolution

As I Am

Alicia Keys

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The Donors Choose Bloggers Challenge that I wrote about a few weeks ago is almost over, and that means you only have a few days to help support the Notes for Class Challenge, an effort to help fund music education programs that have been proposed by the teachers who will be overseeing them.

As I mentioned earlier, I'll be personally matching 10% of all donations -- the incredibly generous readers of my site have already contributed over two thousand dollars, supporting music education programs for nearly 1700 kids. It's pretty astounding, but we're not that far away from nearly doubling the number of students we can help. Take a look at efforts like the Music Bingo proposal in North Carolina: If just a few more of you donate, my matching donation for the Challenge will help us sponsor a project that helps 1000 more students.

I've been blogging over 8 years now, and in all that time, I've never personally endorsed a campaign like this or committed to matching donations in this way. So I hope any of you who've found the writing I've done on my blog over the years to be useful or valuable will take a few minutes to make a donation. For reference, the over 6,700 posts on this blog (and my old Daily Links blog), along with the comments that have responded to them, add up to over 1.2 million words. That's the equivalent of 20 or so printed books, so if you wanted to pay just $1 per book-length section of blog inanity, you could easily justify a $20 donation.

And, if four more of you donate to the Notes for Class Challenge before October 31, I'll also create some new sections on my site to make it easier to find the stuff you'd actually want to read. Make me proud, people!

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These are my two favorite renditions of the Star Spangled Banner.

YouTube - Marvin Gaye sings American National Anthem

YouTube - R. Kelly National Anthem

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As I've been trying to educate people via Twitter: THE FIST BUMP IS DEAD. (White people, I'm looking at you.) Please stop doing this now. It's over. The time has gone. As a public service, let me offer an illustration of what you will look like when I leave you hanging. (Thanks to Abe for the pic.)

Dick-cheney-fist-bump

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I've gotten a lot of really good questions (and some fantastically generous donations!) about the Donors Choose blogger challenge I wrote about yesterday, but by far the most common is "what should I do?" There are a lot of options, so let me make it easy: Let's help kids on the South Side of Chicago.

Help Us Listen to the Music is a great example of how you can participate. A teacher at Cassell Elementary school writes:

In the upcoming year I would like to have a music listening center in the classroom where students could go and listen to music of various genres, styles, and composers. Eventually this music listening center will include classical music, Jazz, world music, early childhood music, and electronic music. While at the music listening center, students would analyze and describe music, identify instruments, recognize musical elements in music, and complete other listening activities.

All you've gotta do is chip in a few bucks. Throw in the five bucks you were going to spend at Starbucks today, or chip in $25 bucks to buy a couple of CDs. And as I mentioned yesterday, I'll personally match 10% of whatever you donate -- if ten of you pony up $30, we'll have this proposal covered and kids from kindergarten up to 8th grade will be making their first steps towards learning music appreciation and music theory.

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