"Tabloid Junkie" is a song by Michael Jackson released as the eleventh track on the second disc of the HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I album. The song contains funk rock sounds while the lyrics express Jackson's frustration with how tabloids have treated him over the last decade.
Background[]
"Tabloid Junkie" was co-written and produced with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis and recorded between December 1994-March 1995. The song shows Jackson's dissatisfaction with the media (like many other songs), particularly the tabloids, because of the biased 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 had a sour 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. In response to this claim, Jackson stated that the story was false. When Jackson bought the pet chimpanzee Bubbles, the media viewed it as evidence of Jackson's increasing detachment from reality.
According to then-assistant engineer Ryan Arnold, an early version of the song existed under the title "Tabloid Jungle" from the post-Bad era. Little else is currently known however, other than it being very different, less harmonic and textured than what ended up on the finished album.[1]
Audio[]
Lyrics[]
[Verse 1]
Speculate to break the one you hate
Circulate the lie you confiscate
Assassinate and mutilate
As the hounding media in hysteria
Who's the next, for you to resurrect?
JFK exposed the CIA
Truth be told the grassy knoll
As the blackmail story in all your glory
[Pre-Chorus]
It's slander
You say it's not a sword
But with your pen, you torture men
You'd crucify the Lord
And you don't have to read it (Read it)
And you don't have to eat it (Eat it)
To buy it is to feed it (Feed it)
Then why do we keep foolin' ourselves?
[Chorus]
Just because you read it in a magazine
Or see it on the TV screen
Don't make it factual
Though everybody wants to read all about it
Just because you read it in a magazine
Or see it on the TV screen
Don't make it factual, actual
They say he's homosexual
[Verse 2]
In the hood, frame him if you could
Shoot to kill, to blame him if you will
If he dies, sympathize
Such false witnesses, damn self-righteousness
In the black, stab me in the back
In the face, to lie and shame the race
Heroine and Marilyn
As the headline stories of all your glory
[Pre-Chorus]
It's slander
With the words you use
You're a parasite in black and white
Do anything for news
And you don't go and buy it (Buy it)
And they won't glorify it ('Fy it)
To read it sanctifies it ('Fies it)
Then why do we keep foolin' ourselves?
[Chorus]
(Baby! Baby!)
Just because you read it in a magazine
Or see it on the TV screen
Don't make it factual
Everybody wants to read all about it
Just because you read it in a magazine
Or see it on the TV screen
Don't make it factual
See, but everybody wants to believe all about it
Just because you read it in a magazine (Release me)
Or see it on the TV screen (Somebody release me)
Don't make it factual
See, but everybody wants to believe all about it
Just because you read it in a magazine
Or see it on the TV screen
Don't make it factual, actual
She's blonde and she's bisexual
[Pre-Chorus]
Scandal
With the words you use
You're a parasite in black and white
Do anythin' for news
And you don't go and buy it (Buy it)
And they won't glorify it ('Fy it)
To read it sanctifies it ('Fies it)
Why do we keep foolin' ourselves?
Slander!
You say it's not a sin
But with your pen, you torture men
But why do we keep foolin' ourselves?
[Chorus]
(Baby! Baby!)
Just because you read it in a magazine
Or see it on the TV screen
Don't make it factual
Though everybody wants to read all about it
Just because you read it in a magazine
Or see it on the TV screen
Don't make it factual
See, but everybody wants to read all about it
Just because you read it in a magazine
Or see it on the TV screen
Don't make it factual
Just because you read it in a magazine
Or see it on the TV screen
Don't make it factual
[Outro]
Just because you read it in a magazine
Or see it on the TV screen
Don't make it factual, actual
You're so damn disrespectable