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While “Scream” may be my favorite Michael Jackson song, “Stranger in Moscow” is, in my opinion, his best song. Ever. He apparently penned the lyrics after the first accusation-laden scandals began to plague him while on tour in Russia. He wrote the music and then ended up producing the song as part of HIStory. The seminal video for the song, released in 1997, influenced an entire slice of film and television. The imagery looks familiar because so many copied it. He wasn’t just the King of Pop. He was THE peak of artistic creativity of my generation.

Looking back at works like this are intensely bittersweet. The music is so spare and slight, a ballad in a minor key, haunting, evocative of loneliness. The lyrics are, well, they’re beyond description. And the video, depicting a set of strangers that never meet, each lonely, reaches it’s crescendo in the rain, like he’s waiting for it to wash everything away. As he hits his power notes on the passages “we’re talkin’ danger” and “I’m livin’ lonely” you can hear it.

You can feel the hurt. You can sense the loneliness.

Some people think art imitates life or life imitates art. I believe that for Michael Jackson, every moment of his life was art, and every ounce of his art was life. The two were bound, never to be separated. That was his gift.

I cried when I first heard these lyrics. But right now my heart breaks every time I realize how few people actually heard him. Most people don’t even know this song.

Here is the link to the YouTube video because embedding was disabled.

I was wanderin’ in the rain
mask of life feelin’ insane
swift and sudden fall from grace
sunny days seem far away
Kremlin’s shadow belittlin’ me
Stalin’s tomb won’t let me be
on and on and on it came
wish the rain would just let me

how does it feel
when you’re alone
and you’re cold inside

here abandoned in my fame
armageddon of the brain
KGB was doggin’ me
take my name and just let me be
then a begger boy called my name
happy days will drown the pain
on and on and on it came
and again and again and again
take my name and just let me be

how does it feel
when you’re alone
and you’re cold inside

like a stranger in Moscow
Lord I must say
we’re talkin’ danger
I’m livin’ lonely
stranger in Moscow

[the songs closes with an interrogator speaking Russian]
“why have you come from the west? confess!
to steal the great achievments of the people
the accomplishments of the workers”

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