NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Black or White (Michael Jackson song)

"Black or White" was a 1991 worldwide smash hit single for singer Michael Jackson. It was the first single taken from his acclaimed album Dangerous, released in November 1991. Image File history File links Black_or_White. ... A collection of various CD singles In music, a single is a short record, usually featuring one or two tracks as A-side, often accompanied by several B-sides, usually remixes or other songs. ... For other people with the same name, see Michael Jackson (disambiguation) Michael Joseph Jackson (born August 29, 1958 in Gary, Indiana) is an American musician and entertainer whose successful music career and controversial personal life have been at the forefront of pop culture for the last quarter-century. ... Dangerous was a hit album for singer/songwriter Michael Jackson released in 1991 and went on to become the biggest selling album of 1992. ... November 11 is the 315th day of the year (316th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 50 days remaining. ... 1991 (MCMXCI) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... World map showing Europe Political map Europe is one of the seven continents of Earth which, in this case, is more a cultural and political distinction than a physiographic one, leading to various perspectives about Europes borders. ... 1991 (MCMXCI) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... A music genre is a category (or genre) of pieces of music that share a certain style or basic musical language (van der Merwe 1989, p. ... For Popular music (music that is popular, rather than of a specific genre or style), see Popular music. ... Rhythm and blues (or R&B) was coined as a musical marketing term in the United States in 1949 by Jerry Wexler at Billboard magazine, and was used to designate upbeat popular music performed by African American artists that combined jazz, gospel, and blues. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Epic Records is an American record label, and subsidiary of Sony BMG. // History Epic was launched originally as a jazz and classical music label in 1953 by CBS. Its bright-yellow, black and blue logo became a familiar trademark for many jazz and classical releases. ... A songwriter is someone who writes the lyrics to songs, the musical composition or melody to songs, or both. ... For other people with the same name, see Michael Jackson (disambiguation) Michael Joseph Jackson (born August 29, 1958 in Gary, Indiana) is an American musician and entertainer whose successful music career and controversial personal life have been at the forefront of pop culture for the last quarter-century. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... For other people with the same name, see Michael Jackson (disambiguation) Michael Joseph Jackson (born August 29, 1958 in Gary, Indiana) is an American musician and entertainer whose successful music career and controversial personal life have been at the forefront of pop culture for the last quarter-century. ... A record chart, also known as a music chart, is a method of ranking music according to popularity during a given period of time. ... Motto: (traditional) In God We Trust (official, 1956â€“present) Anthem: The Star-Spangled Banner Capital Washington, D.C. Largest city New York City Official language(s) None at the federal level; English de facto Government Federal Republic - President George W. Bush (R) - Vice President Dick Cheney (R) Independence - Declared - Recognized... For other people with the same name, see Michael Jackson (disambiguation) Michael Joseph Jackson (born August 29, 1958 in Gary, Indiana) is an American musician and entertainer whose successful music career and controversial personal life have been at the forefront of pop culture for the last quarter-century. ... Liberian Girl was the ninth and final single to be released from Michael Jacksons Bad album (1987). ... Black or White (The ClivillÃ©s & Cole Remixes) (commonly titled Black Or White (Remix)) was the 1992 European hit sequel of Michael Jackons smash single Black Or White. ... 1991 (MCMXCI) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... A collection of various CD singles In music, a single is a short record, usually featuring one or two tracks as A-side, often accompanied by several B-sides, usually remixes or other songs. ... For other people with the same name, see Michael Jackson (disambiguation) Michael Joseph Jackson (born August 29, 1958 in Gary, Indiana) is an American musician and entertainer whose successful music career and controversial personal life have been at the forefront of pop culture for the last quarter-century. ... Dangerous was a hit album for singer/songwriter Michael Jackson released in 1991 and went on to become the biggest selling album of 1992. ... 1991 (MCMXCI) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Written, composed, and arranged by Jackson with the rap lyrics by Bill Bottrell, the song was a response to racist statements made against Jackson about his changing skin color and his fight against racism in general. The rap line "I'm not gonna spend my life being a color" was also a very personal statement from Jackson that was echoed throughout the song. Bill Bottrell is an American music producer, songwriter and musician, probably best known for his Grammy Award-winning collaboration with Sheryl Crow. ... An African-American man drinks out of the colored only water cooler at a racially segregated street car terminal in the United States in 1939. ...

The song featured a guitar solo by ex-Guns N' Roses guitarist Slash, who is biracial. Guns N Roses (GNR) is an American hard rock band that gained fame during the late 1980s and early 1990s. ... Saul Hudson, better known to the world as Slash, is a guitarist, known as the chain-smoking, hard-drinking lead guitarist of the hard rock band Guns N Roses, and is currently the lead guitarist of rock band Velvet Revolver. ...

The song dominated the charts around the world peaking at number one in more than twenty countries.

Music video

The music video for "Black or White" generated controversy. The video was considered quite spectacular when it was first broadcast on MTV, BET, VH1, and the Fox Network on November 14, 1991. It featured cameos by celebrities such as Macaulay Culkin, Peggy Lipton, and George Wendt, and helped usher in morphing as an important technology in music videos (though a more primitive version of the technique had been used six years earlier by the duo Godley & Creme on their song "Cry"). Actors and models who appear in the sequence include Cree Summer, Tyra Banks, Jeffrey Anderson-Gunter, and Glen Chin. Jackson's niece Brandi also features. Like Jackson's equally successful music video, "Thriller", "Black or White" was directed by filmmaker John Landis. A music video (also promo) is a short film or video that accompanies a complete piece of music, most commonly a song. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Black Entertainment Television is a U.S. cable network targeted toward African-American audiences in the United States. ... VH1 (spelled VH-1 (Video Hits One) until 1994) is an American cable television channel that was created in January 1985 by Warner-Amex Satellite Entertainment (at the time a division of Warner Communications and owners of MTV, which originally came up with the idea of the channel). ... The Fox Broadcasting Company, usually referred to as just Fox (the company itself prefers the capitalized version FOX), is a television network in the United States. ... November 14 is the 318th day of the year (319th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 47 days remaining. ... 1991 (MCMXCI) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Macaulay Carson Culkin (born August 26, 1980) is an American actor. ... U.S. actress who was born on August 30, 1947, in New York City to a Jewish-American father and an Irish-born mother who was also Jewish. ... George Wendt George Robert Wendt (born October 17, 1948) is an American actor best known for the role of Norm Peterson on the long-running television show Cheers (1982-1993). ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... In popular music, Godley & Creme was a duo of English musicians and music video directors, namely Kevin Godley and Lol CrÃ¨me. ... CD Promo. ... Tyra Lynne Banks (born December 4, 1973) is a supermodel, author, actress, television personality, and talk show host. ... This article is about the Thriller song. ... John Landis (born August 3, 1950) is a movie actor, director, writer, and producer. ...

The first few minutes of the video featured an extended version of the song's intro, in which Macaulay Culkin is yelled at by his enraged father (George Wendt) over playing rock music too loud and too late at night. Culkin decides to forego his father's request to go to sleep by setting up large speaker cabinets behind his father's reclining chair, donning leather gloves and sunglasses, and playing an extremely loud power chord on an electric guitar. The sound shatters the house's windows and sends his father (seated in his chair) halfway around the world, where the actual song starts. Culkin's mother declares that his father will be "rather upset" upon his return. The song from the CD does not feature Culkin nor Wendt, but the voices are similar and the dialogue is changed. In music, a power chord is, in the broadest sense, a chord that remains euphonious when distorted by amplification. ...

The video proper, still shown regularly today, featured a montage of sequences in which Jackson is choreographed engaging in dances among people of different cultures of the world (African, South-East Asian, Native American, East Indian, Russian). Jackson walks through visual collages of fire (defiantly declaring "I ain't scared of no sheets; I ain't scared of nobody"), referring to KKK torch ceremonies before a mock rap scene shared with Culkin and other children. The group collectively states, "I'm not gonna spend my life being a color." At the end of the song, many different people (shown as "talking heads") dance as they morph into one another. This technique had only been previously used in films such as Willow and Terminator 2. Culture of Africa encompasses and includes all cultures which were ever in the continent of Africa. ... The culture of Asia is the artificial aggregate of the cultural heritage of many nationalities, societies, religions, and ethnic groups in the region, traditionally called a continent from a Western-centric perspective, of Asia. ... An Atsina named Assiniboin Boy Photo by Edward S. Curtis. ... Taj Mahal, a popular icon of India The culture of India is one of the oldest in the world. ... Members of the second Ku Klux Klan at a rally during the 1920s. ... Willow is a 1988 fantasy film directed by Ron Howard, based on a story by George Lucas. ... Terminator 2: Judgment Day (commonly abbreviated T2) is a 1991 movie directed by James Cameron and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, and Robert Patrick. ...

The controversy was related to the last four minutes (the silent "panther" scene) of the original eleven-minute music video, or "short film", as Jackson preferred to call it. Here, Jackson smashed car windows containing racist graffiti such as Nazi symbols and slander such as "wetbacks" written on the glass of the car windows and store windows, as well as a store window with "KKK RULES" emblazoned on it; Jackson then jumped on the car, grabbed his crotch, smashed a storefront window by throwing a garbage can at it, and began screaming in an enranged manner causing a building sign to collapse. This section caused such a negative reaction that Jackson was forced to announce a formal apology for its content. At the end of this short, Jackson stares on while "prejudice is ignorance" appears at the bottom of the screen in white text. The racist graffiti is not on the car or store windows in some versions of the video — it is unknown whether this was done by the record company, Fox network or certain affiliates. The cut out section is available here.Also , he moaned during the dance and when touching his crotch , it feeled it was risqué and Jackson was masturbating. National Socialism redirects here. ... Masturbation is the manual excitation of the sexual organs, most often to the point of orgasm. ...

A year later, MTV re-aired the original, uncut version of the video. To date, this version has generally only been seen in the United States on MTV2 between the hours of 01:00 and 04:00, as part of their special uncensored airing of the "Most Controversial Music Videos" of all time. The extended version is also available on Jackson's DVDs. The video was parodied by the sketch comedy TV show In Living Color, and by the band Genesis in their video for "I Can't Dance". It was still shown in its entirety for some years in Europe. Indeed, it was seen on VH1 in the UK as recently as 2004, though most recent airings have omitted the last portion of the video, which also included a brief cameo by Bart and Homer Simpson before the "prejudice is ignorance" image. The version available in the iTunes Music Store contains neither the panther scene nor the Simpsons cameo, and is cut after the morphing sequence. In Living Color was an American sketch comedy television series which ran on the Fox Broadcasting Company from 1990 to 1994. ... The original Genesis lineup in 1967, with Anthony Phillips, Mike Rutherford, Tony Banks, Peter Gabriel and Chris Stewart. ... World map showing Europe Political map Europe is one of the seven continents of Earth which, in this case, is more a cultural and political distinction than a physiographic one, leading to various perspectives about Europes borders. ... Bartholomew Jo-Jo Simpson, better known as Bart, is a fictional character featured in the animated television series The Simpsons. ... Homer Jay Simpson (voiced by Dan Castellaneta) is one of the main characters in the animated television series The Simpsons. ... The United Kingdom iTunes Music Store. ... The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox network. ...

Mixes

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Mixes

See also

Music video