Dirty Diana – Michael Jackson

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Dirty Diana – Michael Jackson

I’ve been going for a daily walk during lockdown, it’s been amazing to see the amount of houses with skips outside where the stuck at homers have been having huge clear outs. There’s been all manner of stuff sticking out of these skips, but I’m fascinated by the amount of CDs, cassettes and VHS tapes I’ve seen just slug in with all the other rubbish.

One skip had what must have been someone’s once pride and joy entire CD collection. Floating at the top of a huge pile was Michael Jackson's Bad album. This was an iconic album in 1987 and sort of represents the culture of the time. This was Jackson going Pop, he was moving away from his roots and starting to break musical barriers using the latest technology. There are some amazing songs on Bad, I was never the biggest of Jackson fans, but totally got his genius and innovation, for all the controversy that his legacy created he definitely changed the musical landscape.

I picked this track Dirty Diana just because I recall it’s beat, soaring guitars and tricky vocal. It's intro sounds like something out of Back To The Future, the way the track builds and drops out makes it very dramatic. Suddenly music no longer sounds like R&B or Rock n Roll. Some of the guitar work is insane. Then the trickery with the synth sounds is other worldly. The lyric is still a story but is almost irrelevant, it's all about a groupie that hangs around bands looking for love. The album carried five different number one songs, "I Just Can't Stop Loving You", "Bad", "The Way You Make Me Feel", "Man in the Mirror" and "Dirty Diana".

It just goes to show where music and how people interact with it has changed, it’s no longer a physical product anymore for most people. One of the best selling albums of all time now belongs in a skip, your record collection used to show what type of individual you were, hard to do it now with so much so easily streamed. Personally I think that’s both bad and sad.

Favourite lyric : That you seduce every man / This time you won't seduce me

Location: Rayleigh, UK

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