Michael Jackson videography
American entertainer Michael Jackson debuted on the professional music scene at age five as a member of The Jackson 5 and began a solo career in 1971 while still part of the group. Jackson had seven of his solo albums promoted with music videos, or as he would refer them as "short films". Some of his short films drew criticism for their violent and sexual elements; others were lauded by critics and awarded Guinness World Records for their length, success and expense.
In the early 1980s, Jackson became a dominant figure in popular culture and the first African American entertainer to have a strong crossover fanbase on MTV. The popularity of his music videos that aired on MTV, such as "Billie Jean", "Beat It" and "Thriller"—credited for transforming the music video from a promotional tool and into an art form—helped bring the relatively new channel to fame; MTV's focus shifted in favor of pop and R&B from channel's original 'rock 'n' roll only' format.
Michael Jackson's Thriller short film marked an increase in scale for music videos, and has been named the most successful music video ever by the Guinness World Records.
In the 19-minute music video for "Bad"—directed by Martin Scorsese—Jackson began utilizing dance moves first learned as a kid into the big stage, innovating the dance scene as a whole. For the "Smooth Criminal" video, Jackson experimented with an anti-gravity lean where the performer leans forward at a 45 degree angle, beyond the performer's center of gravity. Although the music video for "Leave Me Alone" was not officially released in the US, in 1989 it won a Golden Lion Award for the quality of the special effects used in its production. In 1990, "Leave Me Alone" won a Grammy for Best Music Video, Short Form.
He received the MTV Video Vanguard Award in 1988 and the MTV Video Vanguard Artist of the Decade Award in 1990; in 1991 the former was renamed as Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award in his honor.
"Black or White" was released on November 14, 1991. Along with Jackson, it featured Macaulay Culkin, Peggy Lipton, and George Wendt. It helped usher in morphing as an important technology in music videos. "Remember the Time" was an elaborate production, set in ancient Egypt, it features appearances by Eddie Murphy, Iman, and Magic Johnson, along with a distinct complex dance routine. The video for "In the Closet" featured supermodel Naomi Campbell in a courtship dance with Jackson.
The music video for "Scream", directed by Mark Romanek and production designer Tom Foden, is one of Jackson's most critically acclaimed. In 1995, it gained eleven MTV Video Music Award Nominations—more than any other music video. A year later, it won a Grammy for Best Music Video, Short Form; shortly afterwards Guinness World Records listed it as the most expensive music video ever made, at a cost of $7 million. "Earth Song" was accompanied by an expensive and well-received music video. The video had an environmental theme, showing images of animal cruelty, deforestation, pollution and war. Using special effects, time is reversed so that life returns, wars end, and the forests re-grow. Released in 1997 and premiering at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival, "Michael Jackson's Ghosts" was a short film written by Jackson and Stephen King and directed by Stan Winston. The video for Ghosts is over 38 minutes long and broke the Guinness World Record as the world's longest music video. The music video for "You Rock My World", which is thirteen and a half minutes long, was directed by Paul Hunter, and was released in 2001. The video features appearances from Chris Tucker and Marlon Brando. The video won an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Music Video at the award show's 2002 ceremony.
In 1978, Jackson appeared in his first film, The Wiz. It was nominated for four awards at the 51st Academy Awards. Jackson later starred in films such as Disney's Captain EO in 1986, the anthology film Moonwalker in 1988 and the posthumous documentary This Is It in 2009.
Music videos
| Title | Year | Other performer credited | Director | Description |
| "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough" | 1979 | It was Jackson's first music video as a solo artist. The music video shows a smiling Jackson dancing and singing "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough" in a black and white tuxedo with a black bow tie while appearing chroma keyed over a background of abstract geometric figures. At one stage, Jackson is seen dancing in triplicate, which was considered innovative at the time. | ||
| "Rock with You" | 1979 | The video featured Jackson in a sparkly sequined suit singing the song with a bright laser behind him. It was filmed on a stage in Los Angeles called the 800 Stage. | ||
| "She's Out of My Life" | 1980 | The music video for the song featured Jackson sitting on a stool in a darkened room singing the song, lit by a single spotlight. The video uses a split screen technique to simultaneously show Jackson from two different angles during the second and third verses. | ||
| "Billie Jean" | 1983 | The short film for "Billie Jean" is considered the video that brought MTV, until then a fairly new and unknown music channel, into mainstream attention. It was one of the first videos by a black artist to be aired regularly by the channel, as the network's executives felt black music was not "rock" enough. | ||
| "Beat It" | 1983 | The music video for "Beat It" helped establish Jackson as an international pop icon and cost Jackson $150,000 to create after CBS refused to finance it. The video was filmed on Los Angeles' Skid Row—mainly on locations on East 5th Street. | ||
| "Say Say Say" | 1983 | In the short film, the duo play "Mac and Jack", a pair of conmen who sell a "miracle potion". The video was filmed at Los Alamos near Santa Barbara, California and the video cost $500,000 to produce. Cameo appearances in the video are made by McCartney's then wife Linda, as well as Jackson's older sister La Toya. | ||
| "Thriller" | 1983 | This music video became one of Jackson's most successful and was filmed at the Palace Theatre in downtown Los Angeles. Ola Ray co-starred in the short film as Jackson's love interest. The zombie dance in the video remains a halloween favorite today. | ||
| "We Are the World" | 1985 | USA for Africa | The song for the music video was created as a charity single recorded by the supergroup United Support of Artists for Africa. | |
| "Bad" | 1987 | The video is an 18-minute short film written by novelist and screenwriter Richard Price. In the video, Jackson portrays a teenager named Darryl, who has just completed a term at an expensive private school. He returns home where he is greeted by old friends, including gang leader, Mini Max played by Wesley Snipes. Darryl takes the gang to the subway station in an attempt to show his friends he is still "bad" by robbing an elderly man. He has a change of heart at the last minute and Mini Max chastises him, telling Darryl he's no longer bad. The camera pans away only to return to Darryl surrounded by less menacing gang members where they all then break out in song and dance as Darryl's new way of proving "who's bad.". | ||
| "The Way You Make Me Feel" | 1987 | The short version of the video is six minutes and thirty-four seconds long and the full version is nine minutes and thirty-three seconds in length. The video begins with a group of men attempting to get the attention of women. Jackson's character appeared to stand apart from the group in his approach to get the attention of their female counterparts. Former model Tatiana Thumbtzen plays Jackson's love interest in the video. After playfully chasing her throughout the video and captivating her through dance, the video ends with a warm embrace of the two characters. Joe Seneca and Sean Cheesman have roles in the video. | ||
| "Man in the Mirror" | 1988 | This video differs from Jackson's other videos mainly because Jackson himself does not appear in the video, aside from a brief clip toward the end of the video in which he can be seen donning a red jacket and standing in a large crowd. It also features a montage of clips of children in Africa, Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, kids in graduation, and other historical figures. | ||
| "Dirty Diana" | 1988 | The five-minute music video for the song was directed by Joe Pytka. The woman who appears in the video is model Lisa Dean. A second seven-minute long accompanying video of a live performance was filmed in early 1988 in front of a live audience during Jackson's show in Madison Square Garden. | ||
| "Smooth Criminal" | 1988 | In the music video, Michael Jackson and the dancers immediately around him perform a seemingly impossible forward lean. To accomplish this maneuver, a hitching mechanism which Jackson co-patented was built into the floor of the stage and the performers' shoes, thereby allowing performers to lean without needing to keep their centers of mass directly over their feet. | ||
| "Speed Demon" | 1988 | Jackson filmed a promotional video for the song, seen first as a segment in the anthology film Moonwalker. Directed by Will Vinton, the video was produced by Vinton, Jerry Kramer, Michael Jackson and Frank Dileo. | ||
| "Come Together" | 1988 | Jackson filmed the video as a promotional video for the song, which originally was a segment of his 1988 film Moonwalker. | ||
| "Leave Me Alone" | 1989 | The music video featured llamas and peacocks from an animal preserve and an amusement park, Oak's Park. The video was the result of the media criticizing his idiosyncrasies. | ||
| "2300 Jackson Street" | 1989 | Rebbie Jackson Marlon Jackson Janet Jackson | The music video featured seven of the nine Jackson siblings, except for La Toya and Marlon. | |
| "Liberian Girl" | 1989 | The music video featured many of Jackson's celebrity friends who gathered on a soundstage to film the music video for "Liberian Girl", only to discover that Jackson was filming them all along. It features Paula Abdul, Dan Aykroyd, Danny Glover, Steven Spielberg, John Travolta, and Olivia Newton-John. | ||
| "Black or White" | 1991 | The video featured Macaulay Culkin, Tess Harper, and George Wendt. This was the second time John Landis and Jackson worked together, the previous time being Thriller. It was choreographed by Vincent Paterson. | ||
| "Remember the Time" | 1992 | It was a nine-minute video directed by John Singleton and promoted as a "short film." Choreographed by Fatima Robinson, the video clocked in as one of Jackson's longest. It was set in ancient Egypt and featured with what has been described as "elaborate special effects" and appearances by Eddie Murphy, Iman, The Pharcyde, Magic Johnson, Tom "Tiny" Lister, Jr. and Wylie Draper. The video also featured Jackson's first on-screen kiss. | ||
| "In the Closet" | 1992 | The sepia colored music video featured Jackson performing sensual dance routines with supermodel Naomi Campbell. The spoken vocals by Princess Stéphanie of Monaco were re-recorded by Campbell for the video. The clip was filmed in Salton Sea, California. | ||
| "Jam" | 1992 | Heavy D | The video featured cameo appearance by the rap duo Kris Kross and Michael Jordan. Both Jordan and Jackson teach one another their special talents in this video; Jordan's basketball skills and Jackson's "moonwalk". | |
| "Heal the World" | 1992 | The music video featured children living in countries suffering from unrest, especially Burundi. It is also one of only a handful of Michael Jackson's videos not to feature Jackson himself. | ||
| "Give In to Me" | 1993 | It was shot in Munich, Germany and featured Jackson performing the song on stage at an indoor rock concert with ex-Living Color bassist Muzz Skillings, Guns N' Roses guitarists Slash and Gilby Clarke, as well as the band's touring keyboardist Teddy Andreadis. | ||
| "Who Is It" | 1993 | In the music video Jackson was featured falling in love with a high-priced escort and stares sadly at the city skyline. | ||
| "Whatzupwitu" | 1993 | This video features Jackson and Murphy instantly materializing from a cosmic cloud. The pair playfully sing and dance as peace signs and music notes scrolled across the screen behind them. This was the second time Murphy and Jackson had worked together, the first being for the music video for "Remember the Time". | ||
| "Will You Be There" | 1993 | The music video featured Jackson performing the song during his Dangerous World Tour and footage from Free Willy. | ||
| "Gone Too Soon" | 1993 | The footage in the music video featured scenes of Jackson and Ryan White together, as well as brief coverage from White's funeral. Home movies, donated by White's mother Jeanne, were also shown in the short film. | ||
| "" | 1995 | A promotional music video for Michael Jackson's HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I studio album. | ||
| "Scream" | 1995 | The music video was 4:46 minutes in duration and was choreographed by Travis Payne, LaVelle Smith Jnr, Tina Landon, Sean Cheesman and Sacha Lucashenko. It features a dystopic, playful spaceship dance-off between Jackson and his sister Janet and the video cost $7 million to make. | ||
| "Childhood" | 1995 | Jason James Richter and Francis Capra, actors from the movie Free Willy 2, both make a cameo appearance in the video. | ||
| "You Are Not Alone" | 1995 | The video featured temple scenes that were a homage to Maxfield Parrish's 1922 painting "Daybreak" and theater scenes which was filmed at the Pantages Theatre, in Los Angeles. Lisa Marie Presley, Jackson's wife at the time, appears in an affectionate semi-nude scene with him. | ||
| "Earth Song" | 1995 | The video was filmed in three geographic regions. The first location was the Amazon rainforest, where natives of the region appeared in the video and were not actors. The second scene was a war zone in Karlovac, Croatia, with Croatian actor Slobodan Dimitrijević and the residents of the area. The third location was Tanzania, which incorporated scenes of illegal poaching and hunting into the video. The final location was in Warwick, New York, where a safe forest fire was simulated in a corn field. | ||
| "Why" | 1996 | 3T | The video featured 3T and Jackson and is shot in black and white. The music video was released on the Michael Jackson's box set, Michael Jackson's Vision. | |
| "They Don't Care About Us" Brazil Version | 1996 | One of two music videos made for the single. The first was filmed in Salvador and in Rio de Janeiro. Jackson also collaborated with 200 members of the cultural group Olodum, who "swayed to the heavy beat of Salvador's 'samba-reggae' music". | ||
| "They Don't Care About Us" Prison Version | 1996 | One of two music videos made for the single. The video was filmed in a prison with cell mates; in the video Jackson is seen handcuffed. It also contains real footage of police attacking African Americans, the military crackdown of the protest in the Tiananmen Square, the Ku Klux Klan, war crimes, genocide, execution, martial law, and other human rights abuses. | ||
| "Stranger in Moscow" | 1996 | The music video was shot in Los Angeles and is based on Jackson's personal life, portraying him walking around looking for new people to talk to, as he did in his real life. | ||
| "Blood on the Dance Floor" | 1997 | Carmit Bachar, member of The Pussycat Dolls, was featured as a dancer in the music video. Another version of the music video was made, presented as the "Refugee Camp Mix". | ||
| "Ghosts" | 1997 | Written by Jackson and Stephen King, Ghosts is a 38-minutes epic. For this video, Jackson revisits the gothic-horror genre and depict Jackson playing the antagonist and protagonist. Jackson unveiled the film at the Cannes Film Festival, as part of the album promotion. | ||
| "HIStory " | 1997 | Boyz II Men | The video featured scenes from his short film Ghosts, and live performances from the Bad World Tour and the Dangerous World Tour. | |
| "You Rock My World" | 2001 | The video, which is over thirteen minutes long, was described as being a short film. The video features appearances from Chris Tucker, Marlon Brando, Michael Madsen and Billy Drago. | ||
| "Cry" | 2001 | The video was filmed in six different locations, five of which were in California and another in Nevada. People featured in the video included members of a real-life gospel group. | ||
| "What More Can I Give" | 2001 | The All Stars | The song for the music video was created as a charity single recorded by various artists for 9/11. | |
| "One More Chance" | 2003 | This video was released in its incomplete form. The video features Jackson dancing on table tops for a group of fans standing on an elevated stage watching him perform. | ||
| "Cheater" | 2004 | The music video featured clips from the DVD, which was included in the same album the song appears in. | ||
| "This Is It" | 2009 | The video was premiered posthumously on the webpage of Lee's production company 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks. The video, almost five-minutes long, features various scenes of Jackson's hometown and former residence in Gary, Indiana, along with photos and videos of him and tributes from his fans around the world. | ||
| "We Are the World 25 for Haiti" | 2010 | The music video for the song was formatted similar to the original "We Are the World"; the video opens with the song's title with the recording artists' signatures surrounding it, as well as clips of the artists performing their parts in the recording studio and included archive footage of Michael Jackson performing his part of the song. The video was intercut with clips showing people in Haiti following the earthquake. | ||
| "Hold My Hand" | 2010 | Akon | There was a casting call posted on Jackson's official website looking for fans to participate in this video. The video is a compilation of archived Jackson performances and fans paying tribute to their hero, while Akon is featured singing throughout. | |
| "Hollywood Tonight" | 2011 | It was shot in front of the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood, California. Sofia Boutella portrays the lead dancer in the video. | ||
| "Behind the Mask" | 2011 | Aggressive | Two versions of the music video were made, the first being made in 2011 and the second, known as the alternative version, being made in 2013. | |
| "All in Your Name" | 2011 | The video shows unveiled footage of Gibb recording an unreleased track of the song with Michael Jackson in 2002. | ||
| "Love Never Felt So Good" | 2014 | Two versions of the music video were released. The first features a crowd of young dancers lip syncing with Justin Timberlake singing along and performing some of Jackson's signature moves. The second version of the duet features clips from other Michael Jackson music videos, such as "Dirty Diana" and "You Rock My World", along with some of Jackson's live performances, such as "Billie Jean". | ||
| "A Place with No Name" | 2014 | The video weaves rare clips from Jackson's "In the Closet" video shoot. A second music video was released on Michael Jackson's Vevo page, with choreographed dances performed by the dancers of Cirque du Soleil's "Michael Jackson: One" world tour. | ||
| "Say Say Say " | 2015 | McCartney released this music video that unveiled new vocal recordings by Jackson. |
Video albums
| Title | Album details | Description |
| Moonwalker |
| Contains a collection of short films about Jackson, several of which are long-form music videos from Jackson's Bad album. |
| ' | Contains the music videos for Jackson's eighth studio album, Dangerous. | |
| Video Greatest Hits – HIStory | Contains the music videos for Jackson's ninth and penultimate studio album, '. | |
| HIStory on Film, Volume II | Contains a collection of music videos from six of Jackson's studio albums. | |
| Number Ones | Contains a collection of music videos from eight of Jackson's studio albums. | |
| The One | Contains interviews with other celebrities about Jackson's influence, and also contains footage from Jackson's previous music videos. | |
| Contains the special as it originally aired on HBO in October 1992 along with new content. | ||
| Michael Jackson's Vision | Contains forty-two music videos with newly restored color and remastered audio. | |
| Live at Wembley July 16, 1988 | Contains a performance of the Bad world tour, performing songs from the album Bad. |